Found out a show I loved as a kid only had 13 episodes total

I was scrolling through a wiki page the other day looking up that old show The Adventures of Pete & Pete from Nickelodeon. I remembered watching it all the time in the 90s, felt like it was on for years. But turns out the whole series only had three seasons and like 13 actual episodes that aired on TV. I mean, there were a bunch of shorts before that, but the real show was super short. It blew my mind because those episodes stuck with me so much, like the one with the little Polaroid camera or the guy who painted stripes on the road. I guess when something is good you don't realize how little of it there actually is. Has anyone else looked back at a childhood show and found out it was way shorter than you thought?

2 comments

2 Comments

umamoore8d ago

@the_joel I actually just checked because that one stuck out to me too - Freaks and Geeks had 18 episodes total but one of them (the one with the mom's birthday dinner) never even aired. So it's more like 17 that actually played on TV. But I get what you mean about episodes being packed. Pete & Pete is the same way, every episode had like five different weird subplots going on. The writing was so dense that a 22 minute episode felt like a whole movie. It's funny how the short shows end up being the ones we remember most.

the_joel9d ago

Saw the same thing with "Freaks and Geeks" - that show felt like a whole era of my high school life but it only had 18 episodes. Rewatched a few on streaming and they're so packed with good scenes per episode it makes up for the short run. Crazy how our brains just fill in the gaps when we really like something.