The Adventures of Pete & Pete

The Adventures of Pete & Pete is an American television sitcom created by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi for Nickelodeon. It focuses on 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 and 30-second shorts that aired as interstitials. Because of 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 aired 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". The first two seasons were released on DVD in 2005; the third was planned for 2006 but was indefinitely postponed.
Plans for a film based on the show fell through and the script was reworked into the Nickelodeon movie Snow Day, released on February 11, 2000. That film in turn, got a musical remake in 2022 as well.
Pete & Pete is set in Wellsville, a fictitious town in the United States whose exact geography is never specified. License plates in the show refer to "The Sideburn State", and according to the series' canon, the Wrigley house is set miles from the Canadian border, 500 miles from Hoover Dam and "not far from the beach". The name of the town is also a nod to The Embarrassment's song "Wellsville". Certain locations were fictionalized for the purposes of the show; Glurt County, mentioned in "Yellow Fever" and "The Good, the Bad and the Lucky", does not exist in any state.
The show was filmed largely in Leonia, New Jersey, with location shots done in a variety of other spots around northern New Jersey, including the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey, and the Wrigley House in Cranford, New Jersey. The exteriors of Pete & Pete's house (as seen in the credit sequence and other shots) were filmed on Vreeland Avenue in Leonia. The football field used for various episodes is that of Bayonne High School in Bayonne, New Jersey. The fictional Wellsville High School's mascot is a squid.
The many guest stars that appeared on Pete & Pete include:
One widely reported guest appearance – Hunter S. Thompson in "New Year's Pete" – has been described as "apocryphal" by show creator Will McRobb, who has said the Hunter Thompson listed in the credits is instead a similarly named extra.
The show featured music by such artists as Luscious Jackson, Nice, Drop Nineteens, Racecar, Chug, Poi Dog Pondering, Syd Straw, and The Apples in Stereo. The music of Stephin Merritt can also be heard throughout the series, including songs from his projects The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, and The Gothic Archies. On the DVD commentaries, the director and the creators revealed that they tried to use a song by the Pixies, but could not afford the rights.
Polaris, a side project of Mark Mulcahy's Miracle Legion, served as the show's "house band", providing the theme song and many other tunes heard throughout the series and even appearing in "Hard Day's Pete" as a local four-piece playing out of a garage. Some of the Polaris' music from the show was released as a CD, Music from The Adventures of Pete & Pete, including the theme song "Hey Sandy".
Polaris' music for the show was released on vinyl on Record Store Day 2015. The album tracks are:
With a total of 2100 pressings, the album sold out promptly and was considered a must-own by many reputable collector sites, such as Modern Vinyl, Consequence of Sound, and Paste.
Music from the show was also available in 1995 on a promotional cassette mini album, titled Happily Deranged, available by sending in UPC symbols from Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats. This cassette includes the Polaris songs "Hey Sandy", "She is Staggering" (listed on the cassette as "Staggering"), and "Coronado II". The cassette includes a short introduction and closing read by Big Pete.
Robert Agnello was the writer and creator of numerous pieces of music for Pete & Pete and wrote the Blowholes music for the "Hard Day's Pete" episode. The show runners originally intended to use the song "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain for the episode, but could not afford the song rights and instead asked Agnello to write a "sound-alike" version. Agnello's sound-alike song, "Marmalade Cream", was so catchy that he was asked to produce three other songs for the episode: "Summer Wind", "Piledriver", and "You Color My World". He also wrote "One Lousy" Dance which was sung by Iggy Pop and the Garbageman theme sung by David Johanson. Many incidental songs in the series were performed by Agnello and his band Lamb to Slaughter.
The show also used music from standard production music libraries.
Nickelodeon VHS tapes were first released through Sony Wonder, then through Paramount.
Nickelodeon DVDs are released through Paramount.
Season Releases
The Adventures of Pete & Pete first ran on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996. Reruns continued to air from 1996 to 1999, and again from 2003 to 2004 on U-Pick Live. It also aired reruns on Noggin's teen block, The N, from 2002 to 2003. In Canada, it aired on the Family Channel in the early 2000s.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete was one of the series mentioned as a potential future series that would air on The '90s Are All That. Despite images of the show appearing in the often-shown The '90s Are All That commercial promos, no episodes of the series have aired on the block. The 1989 shorts began airing on the block in 2013. When the block expanded into The Splat (now NickSplat) in 2015, Pete & Pete was listed as part of the block's lineup, but had yet to be scheduled (only the shorts have been aired on the block).
On May 28, 2017, it was announced that Mike Maronna and Danny Tamberelli would take part in a weekend-long event on NickSplat called "The Adventures of Pete & Pete: The Strongest Reunion in the World" on June 17 and 18, where classic episodes were replayed while they share various moments from making the series.
In late 2011 and early 2012 a series of cast and crew reunions took place in Los Angeles and New York City respectively. Tamberelli, Syd Straw and Marshall Crenshaw performed a rendition of the theme song "Hey Sandy" in addition to other Pete & Pete compositions. Creators McRobb, Viscardi, along with Michael Maronna, Hardy Rawls, Judy Grafe, Alison Fanelli, Toby Huss, and director Katherine Dieckmann were all in attendance.
The 2011 Los Angeles reunion was billed by the Cinefamily as the "KrebStar Film Festival", a reference to the show's own brand. Additionally, many products from the show were available, including Krebex, Kreb Scouts, KrebStore 24 and Krebgate Toothpaste. Staff members also handed out "performance-enhanced" Orange Lazarus.
Since September 2013 Danny Tamberelli and Mike Maronna release a monthly podcast, The Adventures of Danny and Mike, on the Last Podcast Network (produced and edited by Seltzer Kings). Maronna has occasionally appeared on Tamberelli's stage show Nostalgia Personified. The two have remained close friends since the end of the series.