To Catch an Ice Cream Man: What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

This one goes way way back. This episode is a pre-series Pete & Pete special. This is back when Nickelodeon would play Pete & Pete shorts in between programming, and occasionally air these half hour long specials. "What We Did on Our Summer Vacation" aired on September 8th, 1991. Michael Maronna (Big Pete) was 14 and Danny Tamberelli (Little Pete) was 9. Though if you had asked me I would have said 12 and 7. Regardless, a very young cast compared to other episodes I reviewed.

As a special and not a regular series episode, you can tell that the writers wanted to jam a lot of ideas into this as a stand alone episode. Because of that, I remembered a lot of moments that I couldn't attach to any full episodes, and that's because they all came form this one special. Big Pete even takes the time to announce in his opening narration, "I'm Pete, and this is my brother Pete." a phrase used in all the shorts, and clearly not necessary in later seasons.

Big Pete narrates, expressing his thoughts on the brevity of summer. Everyone has their own concept of what puts summer to an end. His dad is very literal, claiming it's at the stroke of midnight on September 22nd. His friend Ellen says it's as soon as you start to think about your options for school supplies. Big Pete knows it's the end of summer when Little Pete and Artie, the strongest man in the world, go to the beach to "beat up the ocean."

We get some amazing footage of Artie and Little Pete punching at waves and screaming at the water. Little Pete has a back tattoo of a boat that is only seen in this episode. His famous tattoo Petunia is also there. I guess they felt Little Pete needed the extra edge.

Big Pete opens the episode by recalling some summer memories from 653 photos he had printed from the Quick Pic Photo Booth.

His friend Ellen Hickle (played by Alison Fanelli) works there all summer long, dealing with a hot, ugly polyester uniform and no bathroom. This episode is near and dear to me because I used to work at a photo lab (under much better working conditions).

The photo is a gateway into a series of non-sequitur summer moments. The first one is Little Pete's ice block races with Mort Mortenson (played by Carlton Beener).

Mort shaves his whole body to try and beat Little Pete with less wind resistance, to no avail. Little Pete spouts a classic Little Pete-ism, "Eat my turf chrome dome!"

The signs of summer are here. Your shadow gets shorter, electricity gets louder, Dad and Mrs. Blowtard feud over the property lines, and killer bees come up from the Yucatan peninsula to bother Artie.

On the first hot day of the year, another sign of summer arriving is Mr. Tastee, the ice cream man, making his first appearance in the neighborhood.

Mr. Tastee wears a mascot head over his uniform constantly, making it look like he has a soft serve twist for a head.

The mask is always smiling, and no one knows who he is. It's something everyone has speculated about (from escaped mental patient to Sonny Bono) but he's so nice it doesn't make a difference. In lieu of money, he once accepted a "huge and evil bug" that eats flesh from Little Pete for a Blue Tornado Bar.

The mysterious, glamorous, blind millionaire, Mrs. Van Devere (played by The B-52's Kate Pierson) calls Mr. Tastee, "Lenard." She will come to her doorstep at the sound of his truck and seem to lament a love lost with him.

One day at the Quick Pic, Ellen finds an envelope of developed prints with the name "Tastee" on it.

There are also a bunch of question marks on it, meaning that either Mr. Tastee added them in the telephone, address, and pick up time fields for effect, or the worker who took in the order added them to emphasis their own confusion about the reticent ice cream-headed man.

Ellen shows Big and Little Pete the envelope but swears she can't open it because it's against the rules. Ellen's character has always been industrious and honorable. In true Little Pete form he shouts, "Rules bite!" and opens the envelope.

They turn out to be typical ordinary photos of Mr. Tastee on vacation in various cities. But the kids thought they would at least be seeing Mr. Tastee's human face. Not so. He never takes off his mask for any of the photos. It's alike a creepy art project.

Judging by the photos of him alone, and certainly not his fake, ever-present smile, Ellen says that he looks lonely. They all decide to be better friends to Mr. Tastee and show more interest in his life. This is a beautiful idea. However, the kids, particularly Ellen would not be satisfied with what they find.

The gang do what they can to get Mr. Tastee to open up. Ellen even asks if he has a girl friend.

His reply, "Sure I do! I've got forty-nine of them." and he proceeds to list all the ice cream bars on the side of his truck. He's very good at deflecting, and normally turns the conversation back to ice cream.

After a long courtship, the kids decide to ask Mr. Tastee out on a real friend date; trout fishing. Little Pete chimes in that he's bringing the dynamite. Mr. Tastee claims he can't because it's his day to wax the Tastee Mobile. Ellen, offers their assistance with that. This guy cannot get these kids off his back. "Well, it's kind of a one-man job..." he says. Hint hint. The kids sulk away but Ellen won't let it go. She asks Mr. Tastee if he has any friends. To that he says, "All kids are my friends." Ellen isn't taking the bait and she presses him harder, really trying to get him to confess he's got no one, "Doesn't it get lonely sometimes?" He brushes it off. No way! How can a jolly ice cream man be lonely?

Ellen is trying to make this guy cry, saying, "Yeah like, maybe you feel like nobody really knows you, or even cares?" Ouch. Damn, Ellen. At this point she's not trying to relate to him; she's goading him into admitting he's all alone so he will turn to them is his darkest hour. Then they can say they're friends with the ice cream man. But Mr. Tastee is a tough nut to crack because he simply says that everyone knows him and changes the subject to selling them ice cream.

Ellen pouts and says they just want to be Mr. Tastee's friend, as if this wasn't clearly what he was avoiding. Then he offers them free Blue Tornado Bars to make them go away. Little Pete is very much ok with this outcome, as he gleefully exclaims "Boffo!" a phrase which I have never heard anywhere outside this episode. Ellen will not accept these pops till Mr. Tastee has admitted he's lonely and agrees to be their friend (meaning, divulging all his personal secrets).

Now she turns it all on Mr. Tastee and tells him that his pops aren't enough for them. Pleading with the kids to just take them before they melt, Mr. Tastee tries to convince the kids that ice cream is really all they need. After Ellen, exasperated, tells him that they're just popsicles, he finally says, "I'm just an ice cream man, and you're just my customers, and that's the way it has to be." Big Pete finally says something, "How can you sat that?!" Mr. Tastee, who knows it's creepy to be friends with kids that young, simply reiterates that it's just the way it has to be and says goodbye... maybe forever.

Unfortunately there's a heatwave coming, and Mr. Tastee is nowhere to be found. The kids in town start hallucinating under their "Blue Tornado Bar withdrawal." The summer has officially "turned to crud" as the kids wander the streets like zombies with nothing to satiate their burning thirst for ice cream. The rumors about Mr. Tastee's whereabouts run wild. 

Side note: the little girl in blue and pig tails on the right of this photo is actress Heather Matarazzo. Her character's name is Natasha, and she is in one other episode, "Night Crawlers" from Season 1.

They're easily distracted by such mundane things as Mrs. Blowtard's arm flub. The kids are hypnotized by the veritable "flesh avalanche" as she tends to her bird feeder. It's one of the strangest body humor jokes on the show.

Meanwhile, Artie scales the Wellsville water tower, where the killer bees are nesting. He manages to overpower the hive by winning a starring contest with the queen. That's when he sees in the distance what could only be the Tastee Mobile.  He inexplicably jumps from this great height down to the Quick Pic, startling Ellen.

 
He tells her about the truck sighting, and Ellen uses highly advanced trigonometry calculations to conclude that Mr. Tastee must be in Northern Kentucky.

At this point Ellen turns the Quick Pic into a command center. She breaks all the rules by perusing every roll of film that comes through the store, checking for signs of Mr. Tastee in people's vacation photos. She actually does find him and the truck in the background of some photos, pinning them on a map and sending missing person fliers to the police station of each city.

To help with the effort Big Pete mans a payphone in case any calls come in. Ahh, pay phones and photo huts, what a time to be alive.

Little Pete also has a look-out on the diving board of the Splankton Municipal pool. It's not very high up, so I'm not sure how effective this is. I found that this section of the episode must be a precursor to the Season 3 episode "Splashdown." I just reviewed it last week. Even with such a short and simple plot line, this B story is clearly an early concept for "Splashdown" which would air four years later.

In this segment, Little Pete's post as lookout on the diving board is constantly thwarted by a blonde, Max Headroom-esq lifeguard, Den Cleary (played by Dave Bannick). Den threatens Little Pete to get off the board. Every time Little Pete jumps off, he promptly goes back on, jumping up to 104 times in a row. Den is no stranger to Little Pete's antics.

The previous year Den caught Little Pete eating in the pool, and banned him for the rest of the summer. To try and stop the jumping, Den calls Adult Swim as often as possible to keep him off the diving board. Nothing seems to work, and with Little Pete jumping 269 times in one day, Den has a mental breakdown.

He begs Big Pete to negotiate with Little Pete but they both end up jumping in the pool together in spite of him. This is a super simplified version of the plot to "Splashdown." At this point Den steps down as lifeguard. Luckily Artie is his replacement, allowing Little Pete to go back to his post on the diving board uninterrupted.

The kids try to investigate further by interviewing Mrs. Van Devere.  Her character appears to be in a state of dementia.

She goes on about "Lenard" saying he told her that she had "eyes bluer than the bluest Blue Tornado bar." Honestly the kids probably should have listened to her more, but they write her off as a kook and move on. Cute Kate Pierson role anyway.

Later, at Cloghaven Beach (which is the most memorable segment of this episode for me) the Wrigley's enjoy their yearly pilgrimage - because Don thinks he's sure to find something buried in the sand. Every year they come to this merely decent beach and every year he tells his kids the story of how he met their mother there.

He found Joyce with a metal detector, since she has a metal plate in her head. He demonstrates by homing in on her with the device as he tells the tale. She is not fond of the beeping, or the story it seems.

Big Pete takes a break from the family fun to do more Mr. Tastee recon. He sees Capt. Scrummy the Sludgesicle man (played by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe), and figures he might know about Mr. Tastee. Capt. Scrummy says he heard Mr. Tastee got run out of town by some nosy kids.

Big Pete acknowledges that this is partially true, but says they just wanted to be Mr. Tastee's friend. Capt. Scrummy warns Big Pete that he's playing a dangerous game, that they went too far, and should have left Mr. Tastee alone. When asked why Capt. Scrummy explains that all the ice cream men in this world want to spread joy, but things get complicated if they get too close to the kids. (If this wasn't a kids show you could read into that in a really dark way). Then Capt. Scrummy goes on to list the great things they can provide for the kids despite the lack of a personal connection, such as fun flavors of ice cream like the ever popular "Pineapple Blurt."

"What more do you want from us?" Big Pete doesn't know anymore.

Then Don manages to find a fully functional 1978 Cutlass Supreme buried in the sand. This is one of those classic defining off-beat Pete & Pete moments.

The kids feel like they've hit a dead end in their investigation and decide to close of the command center. They figure Mr. Tastee has found a new town and moved on. Little Pete refused to give up his post, but one day in early September he finally gave up.

Now there were signs that summer was ending. The property line feud was over. The killer bees flew back to the Yucatan. 

"Back to Yucatan with you stinky!"

One evening at the end of her shift, there's a persistent knocking at the Quick Pic window.
Mr Tastee has come to pick up his photos! (Damn, nearly the whole summer? I know he was busy but seriously the Quick Pic isn't a storage facility!)

He tells the kids that he saw the missing person fliers in places as far away as Beloxy, MS and Deluth, MN. He seems flattered by their efforts. Mr. Tastee has unwavering positivity, not really acknowledging that the kids are crestfallen from missing him, and lightens the mood by talking about his travels.

Poring over the photos, the experience he had away from the kids turns from a point of contention to a celebration of travel, exploration, imagination, and joy. Mr. Tastee had a great summer traveling the country, and the kids really should have been spending more time enjoying themselves rather than worrying about what Mr. Tastee was doing.

Ellen has to bring it up, "We missed you Mr. Tastee."
"Please! Don't say that." says Mr. Tastee. He says, "Every year on this day the summer ends, and I always have to say goodbye. It's hard enough without having you kidos missing me."
Big Pete interjects, "Then don't go!"

"I have to, Pete. I'm an ice cream man. I'm what the summer is! Fire flies, thunderstorms, butt sweat on the car seat. And when it all goes I have to go with it." It's a lesson of the impermanence of things.

But as one last gesture of kindness, Mr. Tastee lets the kids wax his truck. And when the truck is finally waxed and the sun goes down, he asks for a group photo of them using a Polaroid Spectra System camera.

The kids say goodbye, and they know now that some things are supposed to stay a mystery. They know that they have to respect Mr. Tastee's boundaries, and that what they have together is a good thing, even though they don't know what he looks like, or what his relationship with Mrs. Van Dervere is all about. He's still going to be their incredibly nice, anonymous purveyor of ice cream.

Big Pete's narration ends with the following quote, "He's more than just an ice cream man, we're more than just his customers, and when it comes to people missing you it's really not that terrible at all." The episode is played out by Polaris's "She is Staggering" a sweet song with a Waltzing tempo. 

This episode is an excellent precursor to the series. It's very much on brand with the musician cameos, idiosyncratic phrases and character quirks, mystery, and a touching ending. Aside from some very minor choices I felt were clearly budget related, this episode is on point.

My next episode review is going to jump forward just a little bit to the official first episode of Season 1, and guess what, it's still about summer time.