As a 90s kid, I have a lot of memories and attachments to Halloween episodes of popular kids’ TV series of the time. Even if I didn’t necessarily like a particular series, or watch it regularly, I usually tuned into whatever they were offering at Halloween-time. I’ve often said, I’ll pretty much watch Halloween-relating anything.
One such instance was with an early-90s Nickelodeon series called The Adventures Of Pete & Pete. I enjoyed this show to some extent, but I was a little young to truly get it at the time during which it initially aired. (It started in 1993, when I would have been turning six, and ended in 1996, when I was nine.) I also wasn’t super into live-action shows, so I don’t have vivid memories of watching it, though I know I did. I just remember it being a show about two brothers, both for some reason named Pete, going on adventures that were sort of surreal at times.
On a strange sidenote, I do remember contemplating the lyrics to the theme song for a long while, and remember exactly how I initially heard them:
Hey smilin’ strange!
You’re lookin’ at these same four walls.
Uh, Trevor, Trevor, Sinbad!
Or have you picked your car just yet?
It’s in me!
Ay yi yi yi!
It’s in me!
It’s a dog bi-i-i-ite!
It’s in me!
For the record I know now that the second line sounds nothing like “four walls”, but I think it was the only sentence that made sense to my young mind at the time in the context of the words I could make out. My mind just filled in the blanks. (Now I think it sounds like “You’re lookin’ at the leaky rain”.) I am not surprised to find that the real lyrics to this song (“Hey Sandy”, by a band called Polaris) are still widely unknown and it remains a controversy/mystery to this day.
Anyway, another thing I remembered about this series was that there had been a Halloween episode. I had very, very vague memories of it, and then one day, someone, I can’t recall who now, posted about it on Instagram. So many people were giving it positive reviews that I felt I had to see it again. And thankfully, it is available onYouTube. It’s become a fun, nostalgic comfort watch for me, and honestly is a nice little Halloween tale even if you know nothing else about the show.
The episode is called Halloweenie. (Please excuse the quality of the pictures I will share in this post as they’re all screenshots of the YouTube video which isn’t exactly 4K quality.) It starts out with Big Pete (the older brother, obviously), giving a commentary on Halloween and what it means to kids, which I think he actually words very well, and it has some great imagery.
Big Pete, however, has outgrown Halloween (I’m unsure of his age but I’m assuming he’s in high school.) and seems to absolutely abhor it at this point in time, while Little Pete still considers it a holy day, mainly because he’s determined to break a record set by a brother and sister duo in the 60s, who trick-or-treated to three hundred houses in one Halloween night.
Little Pete is annoyed that his brother has quit Halloween, as he doesn’t believe the record can be broken alone, so he plans to team up with his best friend, an interesting little girl named Nona, instead.
While they’re making their plans, we learn about a group of delinquents calling themselves the Pumpkin Eaters, who set out every Halloween night to bully the “Halloweenies”, vandalize property, etc.
Apparently their ultimate goal is to destroy Halloween forever, and if they’re not apprehended on this Halloween night, the town of Wellsville will never have another Halloween.
Now, I have to say, for a group of people who apparently hate Halloween to the point of trying to stop it from existing, the Pumpkin Eaters actually seem to be doing the absolute most in terms of effort. I mean, these guys were carving wearable pumpkin heads long before it became a social media trend. They may hate Halloween, but they look like they care, a lot, about their appearance on that day. Also, I remember briefly being terrified the first time I saw this episode as a child (I would’ve been seven.) that something like this was going to happen in my town, as we did have a lot of problems with Goosey Night pranks/vandalism. (That’s Mischief Night or Devil’s Night if you didn’t grow up in New Jersey.)
Anyway, Little Pete is appalled, but for some reason, Big Pete is so sick of Halloween that he hopes it is the town’s last. So much so, he finds what appears to be a “pumpkin graveyard”, and smashes the one remaining pumpkin himself.
That night, Little Pete and Nona are ambushed by the Pumpkin Eaters, leading Nona’s father (notably portrayed by Iggy Pop) to forbid her from trick-or-treating the following night.
Big Pete basically decides it’s his brotherly duty to go with Little Pete now, but his best friend, Ellen, reminds him of a story from the previous year, of a fifteen-year-old boy named Ned Richmond, who went trick-or-treating and was caught by the Pumpkin Eaters, and publicly shamed.
Apparently, trick-or-treating over a certain age is the absolute worst thing you can do in the town of Wellsville, since now no one will go near Ned Richmond, not even in the yearbook.
Fun fact: I was voted “Shyest” in my high school class and had to get a special picture taken for it for the yearbook. I would much, much rather have been known as the “Halloweenie”, even though I didn’t project it the way I do now. Seriously, though, the fact that people are so hung up on this poor kid trick-or-treating at fifteen is really disturbing to me. I don’t recall anyone in my high school, even the most “too cool for school” kids, acting this snarky about Halloween. Sure, there were kids who stopped trick-or-treating at a certain point, but I think a good 75% of us were still going at least until we graduated. Free candy was free candy. It’s very strange to me that in this town, although fictional, enjoying Halloween is apparently the fastest track to social suicide. If I lived in Wellsville I guess I’d be living life like a spooky version of Hester Prynne.
Anyway, Big Pete chooses being a good big brother over fear of being deemed a “Weenie”, and sets off to break the record with Little Pete.
Surprise, surprise, Big Pete’s Halloween spirit comes back, and it seems as if he probably started hating the holiday for no real reason at all, other than the fact that it’s just considered “uncool” at his age.
Meanwhile, the Pumpkin Eaters remain at large.
I have to ask, why are these goons terrorizing literal children? I mean, I guess if you’re that kind of asshole, I can at least understand bullying someone because you think they’re “too old”, but actual kids? Also, if this was really such a problem, why only have one cop, who’s actually portrayed as just being a crossing guard, handling it?
I’m genuinely starting to think the town of Wellsville just really, really has something against Halloween in general and wants it to go away, because this whole situation is pretty ridiculous. Sending a crossing guard, on his own, to deal with something that’s being taken so seriously, and socially ostracizing people who enjoy Halloween after preschool? It just doesn’t add up.
And speaking of social ostracism, just as Big Pete is settling back into a proud Halloweenie, whose house does he wind up at but the legendary-for-all-the-wrong-reasons Ned Richmond?
This scene is honestly a little painful to me, as you can just
feel this poor kid’s Halloween spirit shining through. I look at him and see a vision of my own self, if I’d grown up in a less trick-or-treat tolerant town. (Full disclosure, I was
twice his age the last time I trick-or-treated. You can read more about that in
this post if you so desire.) Ned Richmond has committed no crime; he simply has a favorite holiday and I have no doubt in my mind that if he were a real person, he’d be a prominent fixture in our current Halloween community and likely a well-known home haunter, possibly with a booth at Transworld. Somewhere he, too, would have a blog where he’d share the story of the Halloween when he was fifteen, and we’d all get something along the lines of #FreeNedRichmond or #ProudWeenie trending across social media upon reading it. Gourd bless this pioneer for the love of Halloween in adulthood.
Big Pete, however, is not nearly as moved by Ned’s enthusiasm and this is where he and Little Pete part ways, with the former inevitably running into the Pumpkin Eaters. Some typical chase scenes ensue, and, surprise, surprise, the head Pumpkin Eater turns out to be Big Pete’s high school bully, whom he refers to as “Endless Mike”. (The nickname is apparently due to his hatred for Big Pete being "endless", but I'm pretty sure I thought he had some sort of deformity when I was a child. I do hope he kept the nickname in college though. Probably got him a lot of chicks.) Mike tries to persuade Big Pete to join the Pumpkin Eaters and end Halloween once and for all, but Pete declines, smashing a pumpkin instead into Mike's own pumpkin mask, revealing him, and right as this all happens, Little Pete and Rent-A-Cop appear. The Pumpkin Eaters are unmasked and Halloween is saved. Little Pete didn't manage to break the record, having heard the commotion through a communication device in his space helmet and opting to help Big Pete, (He was literally right outside the last house when this happened and probably couldn't taken the extra ten seconds to just say "trick-or-treat", but I digress.) but the two brothers achieved their glory in saving Halloween, which in my mind is a much bigger accomplishment, especially in what I can only guess must be a town full of summer people. (Seriously...I get the feeling Endless Mike is now running a social media page somewhere under the nom de guerre EndlessSummerMike, where he just waits for the first signs of Halloween to appear and then pounces with rants about how we're preventing him from enjoying his watermelon dipped in mustard at the beach, with his wife, Summer Summers of Summerville, and should all be hung upside down from goalposts for daring to enjoy Halloween in adulthood, and early. He screams into the void that we are all "Weenies", and gets no response, as the term is a compliment now. The only person who ever comments is Ned Richmond, concerned with why he’s still so hung up on hating Halloween, thirty years after he couldn’t cause it to be cancelled permanently in one town.)
Though it has its silly and unbelievable moments, I definitely think that Halloweenie makes a grand statement on how you're never really too old for the things you enjoy, and you shouldn't give up on something that makes you happy just because someone suddenly deems it "uncool". I wish I had paid more attention to this message in my younger years, and had had a little more courage to be myself.
I will say this, though. If I lived in Wellsville, I don't think the Pumpkin Eaters could have stopped me from enjoying Halloween. Trying to blow out my Jack O'Lantern flame only seems to make it glow brighter.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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