What kind of job do you think Helga might want?
Might want? Anything that offers easy accolades and ego strokes. She likes the idea of being a famous poet, being president, being a world-class spy, traveling the world, dominating the world. She’s a sad kid that just wants control over her life and to be loved for having that control. In Aptitude Test, however, more realistically (as she usually is around Phoebe), she predicts owning her own ball team, writing lots of books and being a greedy land-baron, which would all satisfy her need for power, esteem and creativity, as well as her viciously competitive nature.
Objectively, I see her starting out as a poet and eventually branching out into novel-writing, and that would be her primary career. Part time, she’d help out with Big Bob’s Beepers, acting as a manager along with her mom. Those are two things I can’t really see her not doing in some capacity. She enjoys the thought of power, but she’s an artistic soul at heart. She has a talent for rallying people and getting them to do what she believes needs to be done, but once she has them rallied, there isn’t a whole lot of substance to her plans, which is why I’d personally rather she didn’t go into politics. She has no faith in people or the world, and isn’t very good with strategy. She’s manipulative, but I don’t trust her to know what’s right. Maybe in conjunction with Arnold, her talents there would shine – I have Arnold pegged as San Lorenzo’s Ambassador, and can see Helga traveling with him and helping out with the less savory aspects of the job, and it seems to me with aptitudes for “international business affairs” and “political science,” this is the outcome the show was hinting at anyway – but outside these specific circumstances, I wouldn’t vote for her. I feel bad about it, but that’s my truth. I feel like her talents are better directed at making poignant observations about the world through fiction and grabbing hold of more straight-forward business opportunities.
Coaching a team isn’t out of the question, but it would be a very aggressive team and I think if Arnold were ever to coach a team against her, she would probably lose, and I don’t think she would enjoy that very much, lol. I could be wrong, character development is like this whole thing, but that’s my current take. Maybe in conjunction with Arnold, again. A lot of parallels were made between Helga and Arnold and Coach Wittenburg and Tish throughout the series, and I would like to see those parallels realized, but honestly I can’t see Arnold being the greatest political leader without Helga or Helga being a very good ball coach without Arnold.
Land-owning would be fantastic for her, I think she’d be great at it, although that is a challenging career path to break into independently and would take up a lot of her time and money in the beginning stages. So, later in life, maybe.
A little less objectively, I really enjoy the thought of her going into the theatre or even the movie business, actually. Like one of her books doing really well and it getting picked up for TV, and Helga insisting on having everything done her way and ending up as a director/producer/actress of sorts. Downtown as Fruits shows that she does have aspirations in that direction, and she’s really good at it. I think that’d be a pretty exciting career path for her, along with something she’d deeply enjoy and gain a great deal of fulfillment from on many different levels. It’s got everything: art, drama, social and political sway, the rallying and worship of a large crowd. No downsides.