"The Journal" is a two-part episode of American animated television series ''

Hey Arnold! ''Hey Arnold!'' is an American animated comedy television series created by Craig Bartlett. It originally aired on Nickelodeon from October 7, 1996, to June 8, 2004. The show centers on fourth grader Arnold Shortman, who lives with his grandpare ...

'' that aired as the nineteenth and twentieth episodes of the show's fifth season. It originally aired in the United States on

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

on November 11, 2002. The episode, which ended on a

cliffhanger A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhang ...

, revisited a plotline from the May 2000 episode "Parents Day". The cliffhanger remained unresolved up until the television film '' Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie'' premiered on November 24, 2017.

Plot

Arnold finds his father's journal in the attic of the boarding house that describes the adventures of his parents in the jungle of San Lorenzo, their marriage, Arnold's birth, and other details of their life. On the final page, it contains a map showing where they had to go after they left him to deliver medicine to the people of the jungle.

Production

''The Journal'' originally premiered on November 11, 2002. It was originally designed as a

as a lead-in to ''The Jungle Movie'', a theatrical feature that was cancelled and years later revived as a two-part television movie. Bartlett described the decision to end the episode on a cliffhanger was meant to act as a dare directed at

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

who were considering producing a follow-up to the episode that would also act as a sequel to '' Hey Arnold!: The Movie''. However, after the theatrical film failed to meet box office expectations, the studio made the decision to cancel the film, leaving the questions posed by the episode unresolved for over a decade until ''The Jungle Movie'' was released in 2017.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Journal (Hey Arnold!), The Hey Arnold! episodes 2002 American television episodes Television episodes set in the United States