The Adventures Of Pete And Pete: “Grounded For Life”

“Grounded For Life,” (season 2, episode 1; original airdate Sept. 4, 1994)
And we’re back, kicking off season two—some might say the best season—of The Adventures Of Pete And Pete. It’s been a long couple months off and it’s plum refreshing to rejoin our wacky pals in Wellsville, USA for whatever scrapes and conflicts of individuality they’ll get themselves into this season.
Season two is notable for a few things, one of them being, of course, the introduction of Michelle Trachtenberg as Nona F. Mecklenberg. She’s just weird enough to be little Pete’s best friend, and just adorable enough to make it entirely unsurprising that she’s still working—and working deviously well on shows like Gossip Girl—today. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, the exposition.
It’s summer, of course. Pete And Pete loves summer. Little Pete decides to solve a problem that’s baffled scientists for all eternity—what happens when you turn a humidifier and a dehumidifier on at the same time—but, having inexplicably decided to do this test outside, ends up making a gigantic scorch mark on his dad’s pride and joy, the lawn. After being forced to re-plant the lawn seed by seed, turned into a human sprinkler, and give the lawn a deep Swedish massage, Pete still doesn’t show enough remorse to satisfy Don’s seething rage. Thus, he ends up grounded for a month, well past Pete’s favorite holiday: the Fourth of July.
Don’s pissed because he’s in a lawn contest with evil neighbor Mr. Lerdner, but that’s almost negligible here. What does matter is that Pete’s all too blasé, and so he feels the wrath of the International Adult Conspiracy. He’s trapped inside with only an Artie-gifted ant farm to keep him company. And thus, an idea is born.
Using a 24-gauge paperweight shaped like the Statue of Liberty, Pete starts tunneling from the Wrigley’s basement into the Mecklenberg’s yard. When he emerges, ideally on the Fourth of July, he’ll make a run for it, heading anywhere but the Manitoba peninsula—where he had a run-in with a mountie earlier in the show.
Setting aside that a 24-gauge paperweight probably wouldn’t get the job done when there were presumably tools in the house, it’s a valiant plan. He uses Christmas lights for tunnel illumination and the sprinkler pipes for air. Big Pete helps him hide the dirt in the family’s coffee pot before learning to make his own pottery.
Somewhere along the way, Nona hears Pete working and starts chatting him up through the sprinkler pipes. She misses her old house so much she’s been putting up pictures of the brick on the siding of her new one. Her dog, Nimbus, hasn’t peed once since they moved to Wellsville. And while the “F” in her name stands for Frances, she’s planning on legally changing it to frame or forklift.
For a new girl on the block, Nona’s got Pete’s back from minute one. When his tunnel starts killing his dad’s lawn, Nona’s out there with a squirt can of green paint. When she gets busted talking to the lawn, she convinces Don that it’s a botanical fact that talking to the lawn makes it grow, thus setting up some quasi-romantic scenes of Don sprawled out on his Kentucky Blue waxing rhapsodic about how its “verdant lushness tickles [his] cheek and takes [his] breath away.” When evil neighbor Lerdner loosens the Wrigley’s water socket in the middle of the night, flooding the lawn and collapsing Pete’s tunnel, it’s Nona’s impassioned version of the words on the base of Lady Liberty that pushes Pete to finish up and break free.