The Adventures of Pete & Pete

If you haven't heard of it, Pete & Pete is a children's show on Nickelodeon about two equally red-headed brothers named Pete. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to big, teenage Pete as "Clem" and little Pete as "Pip" to avoid confusion.

Fifteen minutes into my first episode, I was hooked. Against the backdrop of their faux-'50s neighborhood in Wellsville, USA, Clem, Pip and Clem's best friend, Ellen, seek out the true identity of neighborhood frozen treat vendor Mr. Tastee. When Tastee drops his vacation pictures off at the photo developing shop where Ellen works, they think they have it made. Instead, they're shocked discover that not only does Tastee appear at the Statue of Liberty and other tourist spots with his plastic head on, but that he's always alone. Their young hearts bleed -- Tastee has no friends!

The little details did it for me -- the shot of Pip in his bathing suit with a large tattoo on his back; Artie, Pip's personal superhero, warning "don't eat metal"; Clem and Pip laying around and pondering stuff like "what if you could get a (driver's) license now, but for six months you'd have a trout head?"; and my all-time favorite moment, from an episode about a ringing pay phone that terrorizes the town: Pip is startled by a man carrying a toy bazooka and wearing a large, transparent plastic bubble over his head. "Don't worry," the man says. "I'm a psychatrist."

It was only after watching a couple of episodes that the humor started to get tedious. Practically every episode, for example, finds some reason to not only mention the metal plate in Mom's head, but to put it to use (broadcasting radio signals, reflecting automated garage door signals, etc). The weirdness comes off as overly self-conscious, calculated in a way similar to that of, say, Gen X beverages. From the celebrity cameos (Buster Poindexter, Michael Stipe, Kate Pierson, LL Cool J) to the indie-rock background music (Magnetic Fields, Nice, Chug and others), there's something uncomfortably hip about the show. There's even an episode where Pip forms a math-rock band (his algebra teacher, Syd Straw, plays bass) called Blowholes. His guitar is made by Kreb's, Wellsville's house brand, which I can only assume is named after the bongo-beatin' beatnik in Dobie Gillis.

In a sense, Pete & Pete is a kid's show for the Nick at Nite set, those who are as familiar with the white-picket-fence cardboard families of the `50s as their "surreal" counterparts in so many David Lynch works. Much of the humor probably goes over the little one's heads, no more noticeable than the band performing in the opening credits. It makes everyone over 12 feel like they're in on a big inside joke.

But then, come to think of it, who cares whether that band is Polaris (former members of Miracle Legion) or a mediocre, `80s-inspired hair band? I didn't "get" half the stuff in Mad magazine or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I first saw them but was still a fan.

Ok, so maybe I'm paronoid but it seems like, with Pete & Pete, Nickelodeon is going after that alternative to alternative demographics, the CULT FOLLOWING. And maybe it's just me but -- given the popularity of retro kiddie-wear, twee pop, Hello Kitty, etc. with people my age -- the idea that someone would market to twenty-five year olds via a kid's show is a bit much to stomach. So what I want to know is: where are the product endorsements? All we get are Krebs products and lookalikes such as Fig Noolies with "twice the sugar of regular cookies." And where's the Pete & Pete merchandise? I checked a couple of New York's so-called grocery stores for the Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats box with the Pete & Pete tape offer (three songs by Polaris!) to no avail, so I'll leave this one for someone in Jersey to figure out.

-- Carrie McLaren