Reflecting on Malcolm in the middle… remembering ‘parker lewis can’t lose’… basically a sort of surreal Ferris Bueller’s day off. synchronize swatches… and Pete & pete.. wow… I adored Pete & Pete.

Some memorable flashbacks from the show…

* The episode where the school bus driver was dumped by his girlfriend. Instead of taking the kids home, he drove them slowly around town for hours visiting places he and his girl had been, giving a depressed, running narration over the bus PA.

* The episode where the ice cream man introduces a new ice cream treat called the Orange Lazarus. A bad guy whose name I forget begins chomping on them too fast in order to achieve brain freeze. Ice cream man: “But I created the Orange Lazarus for good!” Bad guy: “It is good…good and FROSTY!”

* The episode where the Petes’ family is on a road trip vacation and begins competing with another, far more perfect family to see who can stack more luggage and belongings on top of their station wagon. The Petes’ family finally wins by taking off all their clothes and using them to raise their stack height, then drive off naked into the sunset.

* The episode where little Pete pretended to be sick so he could skip school. Hijinks ensued, and at the end he had to race home before his mom arrived. But he realized that he’d forgotten to close the garage door and didn’t have time to run downstairs, so he carefully aimed the door remote control and bounced the signal off the metal plate in his mother’s head as she drove down the street, activating the door just in time to close it before she saw anything. (The Metal Plate In Mom’s Head appeared in the opening credits to every show, and occasionally allowed her to listen to radio stations.)

* Artie, The Strongest Man In The Universe. He was little Pete’s personal superhero in the first season, a wiry, geeky-looking guy in striped long johns who always rushed to little Pete’s defense. When Artie went missing, little Pete had to summon him by getting big Pete’s high school marching band to play “Superfreak” because he knew it would draw Artie “like a giant funk magnet.”

* The episode where big Pete and his bestest friend Ellen were in a school band competition. They choreographed the band’s movements on the field to form the school’s initials, a standard maneuver, but in a daring move “we choreographed the initials not in the usual Helvetica, but in Times Roman Gothic.”

* The episode where Ellen becomes convinced that, statistically speaking, there must be a space alien disguised as some kid in their school.
She’s right.

* The great schoolyard villains: Paper Cut, who hurled pieces of paper like throwing stars to cut your flesh; Pit Stain, the boy who sweated acid; and of course, Endless Mike.

Just did a websearch…

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/entertainment/pete-and-pete/