Pete and pete summer vacation
The Adventures of Pete & Pete is an American comedy television series created by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi for Nickelodeon. It centers around two brothers, both named Pete Wrigley, and their humorous and surreal adventures in suburbia among their equally eccentric friends, enemies, and neighbors.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete began on Nickelodeon in 1989 as minute-long shorts that aired as interstitials. Owing to the popularity of the shorts, five half-hour specials were made, followed by a regular half-hour series that ran for three seasons from 1993 to 1996. As of October 5, 2015, reruns of the shorts and the shows run on TeenNick as part of the NickSplat block. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic called the series “the greatest children’s show ever”, while IGN called it “one of the most well-written kids shows ever”.
Pete and pete summer vacation
Ah, summer.
In Wellsville, the signs of approaching summer are unmistakeable. Little Pete racing his friend Mort Mortensen down the hill on ice blocks. Shadows getting shorter. Electricity getting louder. Killer bees arriving from the Yucatan Peninsula. The annual “border dispute” between the Petes’ dad, Don Wrigley, and Mrs. Blotard next door. And the arrival, like clockwork, of the mysterious ice cream vendor Mr. Tastee, on the first day of the season.
But what brings such a beloved ice cream man as Mr. Tastee to the neighborhood? Ellen, who takes a summer job at a local photo booth, discovers through some photos left for development that the ‘smiling’ ice cream vendor is all alone in the world. It’s hard to believe that a man who brings happiness to the local children would be so lonely, so she and the Petes try to offer him their friendship, only to be rejected by the embarrassed Mr. Tastee… who disappears the next day.
The kids spend the rest of the summer trying to both track down Mr. Tastee and learn why he disappeared, and they get a lead when Artie, engaged in a staring contest with the queen of the invading killer bees while climbing a water tower, spots his truck somewhere in Kentucky. Ellen monitors other photo booth client pictures for clues to Mr. Tastee’s whereabouts, Little Pete takes a guard spot on the high dive at the Splankton Municipal Pool (to the dismay of lifeguard Den Cleary, whom Little Pete has a history of antagonising), and Big Pete tries to get information from other people who may have known him. All the while, the summer heat gets more and more intense, and with no ice cream to beat the heat, the local kids begin hallucinating that Mr. Tastee has returned.
On a trip to the beach, Big Pete is told by sleazy ice cream vendor Captain Scrummy that he and his friends should have let Mr. Tastee be; he explains that many ice cream vendors are fleeing tragic pasts, and that the kids’ friendship would just awaken bad memories. Meanwhile, Mr. Wrigley finds a working 1978 Oldsmobile buried in the sand with his metal detector and drives the family home in it.
The summer days get shorter, and still no sign of Mr. Tastee. Shadows get longer again. Electricity gets quieter. Mr. Wrigley and Mrs. Blotard make peace with each other. The killer bees return to Mexico, with Artie vowing that their battle will continue next year.
One night in September, with the Petes and Ellen deciding to put an end to their quest, the mysterious ice cream vendor appears at the local photo booth, having found their trail… and having not picked up his photos from earlier in the summer. The kids accept that he is just the ice cream vendor who appears in Wellsville every summer rather than a friend, but Mr. Tastee agrees that maybe he could be a little bit friendlier with the kids without causing his job performance to suffer. He invites them to help him wax his truck and his ice cream mask.
As night falls, Tastee asks the kids to take a Polaroid picture with him to keep the memories of their afternoon together alive, and then he drives away from Wellsville, to return the following summer. Perhaps, after all, it is for the best that the ice cream vendor remains a man of mystery.
