It was a moment that defied expectations. The year was 2015, and there I was, pressed against the front of the stage at The Crocodile, gazing upwards at a band I believed existed only within the flickering world of my childhood television screen. But there they were, in real life – Polaris, the iconic house band from Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete, a show that had premiered its first episode 25 years prior. Friends who were there with me that night still talk about how animated I was, completely immersed in the sensational pop-rock anthems of “Hey Sandy” and “Waiting For October.” In a truly surreal moment, Mark Mulcahy – the singer-songwriter, former Miracle Legion frontman, and the on-screen persona of Muggy – leaned down, wordlessly handed me his guitar, and stepped away to deliver a blistering harmonica solo center stage. This wasn’t just a concert; it was a portal back to Wellsville, the wonderfully weird town at the heart of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
That night, the energy in the venue transported me back to a specific episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete: “Hard Day’s Pete.” In this episode, Little Pete, the younger of the two identically named brothers, stumbles upon Polaris rehearsing in a neighbor’s garage. Up until this point, music hadn’t really registered with Little Pete. He even dismissed song requests on his pirate radio station, WART. But then came Polaris, shrouded in their signature scarves and thermals, launching into the electrifying, lovestruck energy of “Summerbaby.” As the song neared its end, Muggy, in character, gave Little Pete a subtle, cool nod of approval. It was a moment of pure connection through music, perfectly capturing the show’s ability to make the ordinary feel extraordinary.
“As he raced toward school, a strange new feeling raced through him,” Big Pete narrates in the subsequent scene. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to care. But as the feeling blasted through his heart, he knew nothing could ever be the same. He had a favorite song. A song he could call his own.” This scene encapsulates the core of what made The Adventures of Pete & Pete so captivating: its ability to elevate everyday childhood experiences to the level of myth.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete thrived on crafting a sense of childhood mythology. It was suburban folklore, the kind you could imagine neighborhood kids retelling and embellishing over generations. Even with fantastical elements like Artie, The Strongest Man in the World – a pajama-clad superhero who could perform incredible feats like slightly lifting a house and had a peculiar aversion to the Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster” – the show remained grounded in relatable reality. The Wrigley brothers, Pete and Pete, became our guides through the wonderfully strange landscape of Wellsville, a town where summer payphones rang incessantly and kids attempted time travel by racing Daylight Savings Time. Episodes like “Hard Day’s Pete” perfectly exemplify the show’s unique magic, reimagining common experiences with an imaginative, childlike sense of wonder. Even the simple act of discovering your favorite song became an epic, life-altering event within the world of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
“Hard Day’s Pete” is about more than just Little Pete’s musical awakening. After his initial encounter with Polaris, he’s consumed by the desire to hear their song again. He doesn’t know the song’s title or even the band’s name. Driven by this musical obsession, he forms his own band, hoping to recreate the song from memory and broadcast it on WART. In a truly Wellsvilleian twist, he even enlists his mother to use the metal plate in her head to scan radio waves in a global search for the elusive tune. The song feels perpetually out of reach, leading to near-despair before inspiration finally strikes at the episode’s climax, reuniting him with his beloved “Summerbaby.” Looking back, this relentless, almost comical pursuit of music felt incredibly prescient, mirroring my own future obsessions, and with the very same band that captivated Little Pete.
For years, The Adventures of Pete & Pete felt almost like a figment of my imagination. I had vague memories of watching it as a young child during its original run, but the images were fragmented and dreamlike. As a child, I struggled to articulate what I was trying to describe when asking about a show featuring “two kids who have the same name, a superhero friend, and a world that’s like real life but… different.” The most vivid image I could recall was Polaris performing in the Wrigley’s front yard during the opening credits – especially the shot of Mulcahy standing on the bass drum, his curly hair blowing in the wind. Years later, in middle school, I rediscovered The Adventures of Pete & Pete in syndication, and it felt like an epiphany. Wellsville, with its peculiar charm, felt deeply familiar, as if it had always resided in the back of my mind. The realization that it wasn’t just a dream was incredibly reassuring, and I wasn’t alone in my affection for The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Image: Polaris, the band from The Adventures of Pete & Pete, performs their iconic theme song in the show’s opening credits.
Long before we entered what’s now considered the “Golden Era of Television,” I spent a considerable amount of time glued to the glowing screen. Looking back, I realize I probably watched an unhealthy amount of TV. I have clearer recollections of obscure, short-lived cable series and daytime talk shows than of neighborhood adventures. Truthfully, I didn’t have many neighborhood friends, family issues kept me somewhat isolated from cousins, and it wasn’t until high school that I began to forge meaningful friendships outside of school. Quintessential “indoor kid” territory. But I never saw it as a negative thing. TV (and later, the internet) was my companion, and TV Guides offered a sense of anticipation. I was adept at keeping myself occupied and out of trouble, but The Adventures of Pete & Pete ignited a new passion within me.
It took several days and multiple attempts to decipher the rapidly scrolling credits at the end of The Adventures of Pete & Pete before I finally found the information I craved: “Opening Theme Song and Original Music: Polaris.” I repeated the name to myself, searching frantically for a piece of paper to write it down, afraid it would vanish from my memory. As my fascination with the show grew, so did my obsession with its soundtrack. I was particularly desperate to find a copy of the opening theme, “Hey Sandy.” Discovering the band’s name in the fleeting end credits felt like a major breakthrough, but it was just the beginning of a sprawling musical quest – the first of many deep dives into musical rabbit holes that would define much of my life. When I typed “Polaris” into the search engine on my grandparents’ bulky Gateway PC (likely using Dogpile or Ask Jeeves, pre-Google dominance), the results weren’t what I expected. Instead of information about the band from The Adventures of Pete & Pete, I was met with results about the North Star and snowmobiles.
It’s amusing to reflect on those early attempts to extract information from the nascent internet. Trial and error with odd keyword combinations was the name of the game, a tactic I still employ today. Hunting down Polaris proved to be a more significant undertaking than I initially thought. Given the catchy and accessible nature of their songwriting, I had naively assumed legions of fans were already raving about the Pete & Pete band. Instead, my limited online searches led me to niche message boards and fan sites, where enthusiasts traded fragments of information. Even the lyrics to “Hey Sandy” were (and still are) subject to debate. Before this, my musical experience had been largely confined to mainstream artists. My mom’s cassette and CD collection ranged from Prince’s Purple Rain to Aerosmith’s Pump, artists constantly celebrated on MTV and VH1. With Polaris, I was venturing into uncharted musical territory, thanks to The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Eventually, I learned that Polaris had indeed released an album, aptly titled Music From The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Back then, online purchasing was still met with skepticism, and convincing my parents was often a challenge. For years, whenever I visited a record store or even the electronics section of a department store, I’d ask the clerk if they carried the album. The answer was always no, often accompanied by puzzled looks. I continued to yearn for it, spending time on Mulcahy message boards and replaying the two grainy Polaris MP3s I had managed to find on Kazaa. Finally, one Christmas, my mother gifted me the CD, my holy grail. I played it endlessly in my room, a constant grin plastered across my face, finally hearing the full versions of songs I had only known as snippets from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Polaris was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the music of Pete & Pete. As I further explored online, I discovered that the show was a treasure trove of underground artists. The Magnetic Fields, Apples in Stereo, Luscious Jackson, Drop Nineteens, Syd Straw (who also played the memorable math teacher Ms. Fingerwood on the show), The 6ths, and many more provided the soundtrack to my childhood, unbeknownst to me at the time. And that’s without even mentioning the famous artists who made cameos on the show, including Iggy Pop and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. The musical landscape of The Adventures of Pete & Pete reminds me of another 90s icon, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Cobain famously championed his favorite lesser-known artists, which often led to a surge in popularity and even major label deals for those bands. His taste acted as a roadmap for young listeners into a whole new musical world. The Adventures of Pete & Pete achieved something similar, albeit on a smaller scale. For a long time, I believed I was perhaps the only person who cared this deeply about the music from this quirky kids’ show. I even used the AOL Instant Messenger handle “lastpolarisfan.” But when Polaris reunited in 2014 for Pete and Pete fan conventions and eventually their own tour, I discovered a community of people who had grown up worshipping the same songs. Being at The Crocodile in 2015, singing “Ivy Boy” alongside a crowd of strangers, felt like a dream come true, all thanks to the shared experience of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
For the most part, The Adventures of Pete & Pete utilized instrumental versions of songs featured in the show. However, there’s a poignant exception at the conclusion of the dramatic two-part episode “Farewell, My Little Viking.” The dynamic of Pete & Pete often revolved around the innocent, imaginative adventures of Little Pete juxtaposed with the teenage angst and drama of Big Pete navigating high school. While Little Pete also had his own “growing up” moments, the theme is most explicitly addressed in “Farewell, My Little Viking.”
Storylines rarely extended beyond a single episode in The Adventures of Pete & Pete, but Artie’s departure from the main cast warranted this two-part exception. Little Pete’s personal superhero finds himself exiled from Wellsville after the International Adult Conspiracy (a hilarious blend of the Legion of Doom and a PTA) grows tired of Artie’s antics and his influence on their children, with Little Pete’s own father, Don, reluctantly leading the charge. Already distraught, Little Pete also faces a new bully, Papercut, who terrorizes kids with Rock-Paper-Scissors matches – always throwing paper, naturally. After a series of typically bizarre Wellsville events, the arc culminates with Little Pete bravely confronting Papercut and inspiring his classmates to stand up to him, all while Artie watches from afar. Artie and Little Pete then reunite, only for Artie to explain that he needs to move on and help another child. Little Pete, he realizes, no longer needs him; he’s strong enough on his own.
As the credits roll, accompanied by a still image of Artie’s constellation drawn in the sky, The Magnetic Fields’ “Why I Cry” begins to play. Like many songs in the show, an instrumental version had served as a recurring motif for melancholic moments. The song’s desperate drum machine beat, chunky acoustic guitar chords, and mournful melody are inherently evocative of sadness. This time, however, the show’s creators let the full song play, with Stephin Merritt’s deep, mournful baritone filling the background. He sings:
All the summer days
Where we used to play
Walking hand in hand
Castles in the sandSo you said goodnight
But you meant goodbye
Now our love has died
This is why I cry
Image: Little Pete Wrigley and Artie, The Strongest Man in the World, a poignant moment from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
The lyrics perfectly capture the somber tone of the episode’s conclusion, reflecting on the fading days of childhood innocence and the pain of watching someone you care about depart. It’s remarkably heavy material for a kids’ show. I wonder if the showrunners considered the impact of exposing children watching Pete & Pete to music like The Magnetic Fields, with its themes of existential longing. Perhaps not, but who knows? I might not have fully grasped the lyrics to “Why I Cry” during my initial viewing, but something in the song resonated deeply and lingered with me, a testament to the emotional depth woven into The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
One of the remarkable aspects of The Adventures of Pete & Pete was its willingness to address loneliness. In the episode “King of the Road,” Big Pete gazes out at the endless night highway during a chaotic family road trip. As the harmonica solo from Polaris’ “Everywhere” plays, Big Pete muses in voiceover:
“I sat in the back, trying to make sense of the great mysteries of the open road. Why is it that you always see one lonely boot on the shoulder of the road? And those green signs, what are they trying to tell us? And finally, the biggest mystery of them all. Why is it that when you miss someone so much that your heart is ready to disintegrate, you always hear the saddest song ever on the radio?”
Had Big Pete heard the lyrics to “Everywhere,” he might have connected with Mulcahy’s sentiments: “I hear a song that you sang/It hits my head like a circus train/I cried out when you were there/You were there because you’re everywhere.” The Adventures of Pete & Pete understood the often-unspoken loneliness of childhood.
Childhood can be a lonely experience. As children, we don’t always recognize or understand that feeling of being disconnected or isolated from those around us. When I rediscovered The Adventures of Pete & Pete amidst the emotional turbulence of puberty, it resonated even more powerfully. I found comfort in watching both Petes, feeling like I existed somewhere between their respective worlds. Indie rock, thanks to the show’s soundtrack, was right there in front of me, even before I had a name for it. Later in life, seeking out music became an essential outlet during times of confusion and uncertainty. On solitary nights, I still find myself lost in the digital depths of Google and Last.fm, searching for demos and obscure tracks from bands I barely know. Occasionally, during these digital expeditions, I’m reminded of those initial musical explorations, the quest for the full version of a fleeting melody heard in the background of The Adventures of Pete & Pete. I’m sure I would have developed a love for music regardless, but I doubt it would have been the same kind of love. The reward of finally discovering that elusive song after tireless searching is euphoric. It forges a profound and personal bond between you and the music, a bond that The Adventures of Pete & Pete helped me discover.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete didn’t have a grand, planned finale. The final episode, “Saturday,” wasn’t conceived as a series conclusion. This is precisely what makes its final moments so profoundly sweet and resonant. The episode chronicles an ordinary weekend day in Wellsville. Big Pete struggles to engage in small talk with his barber (played by J.K. Simmons!), while Little Pete interrogates the barber’s friend. Big Pete’s “girl-friend” (not a girlfriend), Ellen, attempts to deliver a pizza on time while wearing a bunny suit, and the perpetually stressed-out bus driver Stu teeters on the edge of sanity at a traffic light that stubbornly refuses to turn green. Predictably, nothing goes as planned. The group finds solace in each other, deciding to share pizza on a snowy afternoon before spotting Stu outside, desperately trying to push his broken-down school bus up the road. The soaring guitar riff of Drop Nineteens’ “Delaware” swells in the background. Ever insightful, Big Pete narrates, “If you look at it one way, you might think it’s a day we’d want to forget. Look at it another way and you’ll realize why it’s a day we’ll always remember.”
I can recall countless Saturdays spent listening to bands like Drop Nineteens, doing nothing particularly noteworthy. But that was the essence of Wellsville: the extraordinary within the ordinary. The ice cream man could be a mythical figure, Slushee-induced brain freezes could become legendary, and a superhero could be your best friend. With the right music in my ears, my imagination takes flight. The Adventures of Pete & Pete taught me to see the magic in the mundane, to feel like an ordinary person living in an extraordinary world, and for that, its impact endures.
