The Misadventures Of 'Pete & Pete's' Unreleased Season 3 Box Set

​If you didn't grow up with it, coming across "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" today would probably feel like finding a TV show made in a different dimension. Created by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi for Nickelodeon, the show stands alone at the crossroads of sincere children's programming, absurdist experimental filmmaking and '90s alt-rock. Like many fellow fans, there's one thing that really upsets me about "Pete & Pete" — the third season has never been released on DVD. It had a release date, McRobb and Viscardi have said the discs were packaged and ready to go, then… poof. Nothing.

Fans of "Pete & Pete" are legion. It may not be "normie" TV, but judging from the dozens of articles about it online, Michael Maronna and Danny Tamberelli's (the two Petes) successful podcast and the occasional sold-out "Pete & Pete" event or reunion show, there's no shortage of demand for the third season. Just this week, Justin McElroy (former Polygon editor and co-host of "My Brother, My Brother and Me," "Sawbones," and "The Adventure Zone") tried leveraging his "beloved family entertainer" sway¹ to get the third season out there.

Season three's elusiveness bugs me not just because I'd like to watch it again (the internet, naturally, provides subpar ways) or because I think the show is extra deserving of it (even really special TV comes to show its age). What's annoying is that "Pete & Pete" met this fate because of legal snafus over music, and it's just one of many shows to do so.

The first time I watched "The State," the '90s MTV sketch comedy show that preceded "Reno 911" and "Wet Hot American Summer," I didn't know that the bland rip-off tracks underlying many of the show's most memorable bits were actually new. They were created for the downloadable release I bought so that it could see the light of day at all — where once Barry and Levon sensually celebrated $240 worth of pudding set to "Sexual Healing," now they gyrate to soundalike R&B.

Both "The State" and "Pete & Pete" — which, as MTV and Nickelodeon shows respectively, are both Viacom properties — have been hamstrung by restrictive music licensing deals signed back in the '90s. The contracts signed to use a band's music may have allowed use for a limited period of time, or could have included clauses prohibiting home video release without further negotiation.

The list of bands featured on "Pete & Pete" serves as a reminder of one reason why the show's so special and as evidence of how difficult arranging for its release would be. Here's another way of looking at it: an individual can find the original songs made for the show by Miracle Legion frontman Mark Mulcahy's side-project Polaris quite easily, but even "Pete & Pete" superfans couldn't dig up even a shred of info on "Lamb to the Slaughter," one of the listed bands. Now imagine you're trying to re-up licensing deals with all of these bands, even the ones that have hopped between record labels in the years since. That's expensive, tricky work. As Chris Viscardi put it in an interview with IGN last year, "it's been brutal to get the rights to a lot of the music we had on the show."

The third season of "Pete & Pete" — along with tons of other shows — will remain out of reach for fans and preservationists so long as music licensing remains an issue, and as the potential profits of home video releases continue to dwindle in a streaming-dominated ecosystem. Granted, copyright laws are important for making sure that artists are fairly compensated for their work, but the contracts of old are such a headache now that nobody, not the musicians, actors, writers, producers or rights holders for the show, are seeing any benefit from a rerelease.

Especially with television, home releases are pretty much the only guaranteed, accessible form of preservation we have. We're far from the days of, say, early "Doctor Who" when station's copies of shows were routinely taped over or otherwise lost. Even if those "Pete & Pete" season three DVDs supposedly gathering dust in a warehouse no longer exist, Nickelodeon has surely held on to the versions that went on-air (TeenNick has re-aired episodes it has clearance to on it's retro-programming block "The Splat").

Sure, an altered cut of the show with music removed would be better than nothing, I suppose, but that might not even be cost-effective or possible depending on what Nickelodeon has in its archives. Plus, separating "Pete & Pete" from its sonic identity would be disappointing no matter what. This is the same show that got Michael Stipe (REM), Kate Pierson (The B-52's), Debbie Harry, LL Cool J and Iggy Pop to do guest roles. You can't just leave out part of what gave the show its identity.

If this all seems inconsequential, consider how upset people get about the unavailability of the original "Star Wars" trilogy on Blu-Ray. There are legal issues there too, but that's primarily due to a choice to withhold something, whereas music licensing issues illustrate what happens when laws intended to protect works of art come around to hurt them. I just recently wrote about a new favorite show of mine that based an entire episode around a single song by "The Who," and I wonder if I should make a copy of it now in case its licensing ever expires.

It's just so irritating to think that contracts signed decades ago are limiting access — when we have technology enabling nigh-limitless access — to works of culture that are bone-deep for the people who grew up with them (if you think that this "kid stuff" doesn't matter, talk to anyone who just walked out of a screening of "Won't You Be My Neighbor"). I asked Justin McElroy about why "Pete & Pete" matters to him, and I think his answer gets at the heart of the matter quite well:

I've been a fan of "Pete & Pete" since the original shorts.² It's the first TV show I can remember that really felt like it was made specifically for me. In the pre-internet era of the early '90s, that meant a lot. Also, as someone who is a creator now myself, it kinda drives me crazy thinking of dozens of people putting their heart and soul into something that nobody can even watch now. I know there are more meaningful things in the world to struggle against, but I guess I just thought it would be nice to get a "W" for a change.

"Pete & Pete" still stands out today because it's so clearly the work of thoughtful, enthusiastic people who got to load up a kids' TV show with ideas, characters and music they loved. Not every show comes out of the tangled creative and legal battles of network TV with a sure-footed identity, but you can bet that pretty much every show that has ever aired mattered to someone out there. In the grand scheme of things, getting the third season of "Pete & Pete" back would be a small "W," but it's the small ones along the way that keep us going.