Angelica Pickles

Angelica Pickles
First appearance	Rugrats "Tommy's First Birthday" (1991)
Last appearance	Rugrats Pre-School Daze "Finders Kreepers" (2008)
Voiced by	Cheryl Chase
Information
Relatives	Parents: Drew and Charlotte Uncle: Stu Pickles Aunt: Didi Pickles Cousins: Tommy Pickles and Dil Pickles Grandparents: Lou Pickles and Trixie Pickles Step-grandmother: Lulu Pickles

Angelica Pickles is a character who appears in the Nickelodeon shows Rugrats, All Grown Up!, and Rugrats Pre-School Daze, and is among one of the series' original characters. She is a spoiled child and the cousin of Tommy and Dil Pickles, and serves as the main antagonist of the series, but she's portrayed as an anti-heroine in the films who would side with the babies near the end against the respective main villains.^[1] In 2002 TV Guide ranked Angelica Pickles 7th in their list of "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time".

In Rugrats

Angelica is portrayed as the mean, sadistic, bratty and ridiculously spoiled older cousin of Tommy and Dil Pickles (their fathers are brothers). Depicted as a pigtailed blonde, Angelica serves as the main antagonist of the series; she is vain, conceited, self-centered, irritating, bossy, selfish, self-righteous, arrogant, and obnoxious yet beautiful. She derives pleasure from teasing the infants by providing ludicrous explanations to their ponderings on the workings of devices, objects, or even the world itself, around them, thus crafting the plot of many episodes. She also frequently takes advantage of the naïve, gullible babies, tricking them into assisting her in carrying out a plan or doing her bidding. However, she seems to be friends with Kimi. Angelica's outrageously spoiled by her indulgent, workaholic parents, Drew and Charlotte, who cater to her every whim nonstop. However, her Aunt Didi and Uncle Stu, especially her Aunt Didi, pay considerably more attention to Angelica and actually discipline her more often than the other adults on the show, including Drew and Charlotte (to a certain extent, Stu and Didi are more like parents to Angelica than her actual parents are).

Angelica's main character hallmark is her beloved fashion doll, Cynthia, which she cherishes and speaks to as though it were real, and she owns many forms of merchandise spawned from the doll. The very thought of losing Cynthia horrifies her at times, as seen in Tricycle Thief, when she fought to keep her innocence so that the babies wouldn't let her go up in Chuckie's balloon. In The Seven Voyages of Cynthia she mentioned to Tommy that she would hurt anyone who took Cynthia. Angelica shares a friendship/rivalry with Susie Carmichael, who's better-liked by the infants and much more understanding and always more likely to provide them with truthful, logical explanations to their questions, due to the fact that Susie has been known to thwart her sinister plans. However, Susie usually tries to be nice to Angelica, and despite their rivalry, Susie's shown to be essentially the closest thing Angelica's ever had to an actual friend. Angelica also thinks she's a very talented person, even though she's really not all that talented and is actually very irritating, especially her singing, which always comes out horrible, and becomes extremely jealous when Susie sings taking away all the attention she wants. In most episodes, her rude and bratty behavior often gets the best of her, which causes her to get into a lot of trouble, resulting in her parents to harshly punishing her until she learns her lesson. But, deep down, despite her normally bad behavior, Angelica has a good heart and truly does care about the babies (especially when they get picked on by someone other than her) and will, at times, do the right thing.

Development

Arlene Klasky did not like the cruelty in Angelica in the earlier seasons and often had disputes with the writers about it. By the time the new seasons appeared around 1996, Klasky had a more positive reception to the softened Angelica.^[2]

In All Grown Up!

Angelica at age 13 in the Rugrats TV movie All Growed Up (2001)

In All Growed Up!, Angelica is depicted similarly to her original toddler portrayal in Rugrats, but has developed more maturity in her tastes and interests average for a girl her age, and got less sadistic and more sarcastic. Angelica is still spoiled by her parents, but to a lesser degree and in an altered fashion from the previous series, and still habitually dominates her younger cousins and acquaintances and maintains her materialistic personality. Angelica also still behaves selfishly and grouchily, and still envies Susie Carmichael (her best friend/rival) for her amazing singing voice and various other talents, although she is shown to be much nicer than in the original series.

Some episodes have shown that she has incredible talents of her own as well, such as being a champion debater and a well-known advice columnist. In one episode, she even upstaged Susie and her brothers in domestic house chores, which she hated at first, but grew to like and be good at. Angelica's goals and priorities throughout the episodes have also matured to fit her age, and she strives to acquire a position amongst popular cliques at her school (a goal she succeeded at, but which earned her a "frenemy") or impress boys, albeit still aided by the geeky, redheaded Harold (whom she and Susie had met when they were in preschool). She began dating a boy named Jeremy in Season 2, but shortly after she left him for another character named Ty.

References