Arnold Pearlstein and Little Pete Wrigley: Tween Tamberelli’s split personalites

As the Big Orange Couch podcast prepares to punctuate its 200th episode with Danny Tamberelli — “Nickelodeon royalty,” cohost Joey called him upon announcing the booking — it’s time to loosely pattern a write-up after George Carlin’s baseball-football routine.

I’d like to talk a little about Walkerville and Wellsville. Specifically, I’d like to compare/contrast (mostly contrast) each town’s definitive tween redhead from the mid-’90s.

Tamberelli’s tenure as Little Pete Wrigley on Nick’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete overlapped with his run as the voice of Arnold Pearlstein on PBS’s The Magic School Bus during the 1995-96 TV season. He replaced Amos Crawley in the latter role for Seasons 2 through 4, after completing two of his three seasons in the former.

That, in part, may be why BOC cohost Andrew called Tamberelli “Entertainment royalty in my own special little world” at the end of Episode 199. There was certainly more to him on ’90s Nick and beyond, but his performances as Pete and Arnold combined for 34 and 39 full-length installments, respectively.

Before and in between, he turned in a slew of Pete & Pete shorts and specials plus an archival appearance as Arnold on the Kids for Character VHS. Now primarily a musician, he has not reprised anyone else more frequently before or since.

The unmatched Arnold-Little Pete footrace thus accentuates Tamberelli’s precocious versatility in his days as a child/teen actor. His top animated and live-action roles draw jutting distinctions, especially through what Arnold’s teacher, Ms. Frizzle, might call a “spirit of adventure” or dearth thereof.

Can you imagine Arnold being erroneously locked in at school overnight, let alone with a ghoulish figure looming? He can barely handle a supervised sleepover field trip at a haunted sound museum.

Granted, that misadventure for Ms. Frizzle and company comes from the Crawley era. But then MSB’s “In the Haunted House” joined Season 2’s “Going Batty” on a Halloween VHS in 1995. There Tamberelli plays a live-action Arnold alter-ego, Howard (or Howie), opposite two other and more decidedly daring kids in wraparound sequences depicting another spooky museum overnight gone awry.

Conversely, Little Pete braves his extended-detention predicament with two friends in “Allnighter”. If anybody is a Howie/Arnold among that episode’s protagonist trio, it is, in Monica Perling’s words, “wuss on a stick” Wayne Pardue. Or, to put in in Walkerville Elementary student Wanda Li’s terms, Wayne is the “weasley wimp” of Wellsville.

If Arnold were Little Pete, odds are he would think twice before going to the Friz for advice or assistance on recharging a lucky penny.

This is not to say Pete is immune to hesitancy, as his “Dance Fever” episode confirms. Meanwhile, school in the daylight is Arnold’s ideal setting, and his boldness is most likely to break out there. In one classroom-based court proceeding, he serves as the Friz’s defense attorney when classmate Keesha Franklin presumes the teacher pilfered her cucumber experiment.

At other times, Arnold stays put while the rest of the class shrinks or otherwise ventures out. To underscore his scarce self-assurance, he reluctantly takes it upon himself to explain everyone else’s absence to Principal Ruhle (from MSB’s “Makes a Rainbow”). He can do little more than run Ruhle around the building and run out the clock until the others return.

If he could only Xerox a page from Little Pete’s playbook against Principal Schwinger, young Wrigley’s go-to prank target, he might have channeled more self-confidence.

But challenging authority is hardly the antidote to Arnold’s cautious streak. He is not about to concern himself with any International Adult Conspiracy or catalyze his classmates in a students-versus-faculty dodgeball match.

Only helping an adult in need, like the fossilized-egg-missing paleontologist Dr. Skeledon (from “The Busasaurus”) can awaken Arnold’s spine. And even then he needs some of Ms. Frizzle’s magic to precede psychological empowerment with the physical variety.

There needs to be a stake for someone else to get Arnold to break his habits. Otherwise, on a more typical day — such as typicality is for Ms. Frizzle’s students — Arnold perennially rues not having “stayed home today.” With the Friz’s syllabus of spontaneity, excitement gets excessive for him in a hurry.

Conversely, bogged down by the ennui of his school, Little Pete plays sick for the purpose of staying home. Yet when the coast is clear, he leaves the Wrigley property, doubling his daredevil disposition.

The sagas of Tamberelli’s two most-played TV characters are not an out-and-out contrast, though. For starters, both have a momentary mishap with orange-colored treats.

Perhaps Arnold is too timid, too honest, or too lacking in forethought to pursue such a ploy. Even if he could reach that step, he would surely quit while he was ahead. He knows from his class’ Arctic excursion, prompted by his own question of what happened to his hot cocoa’s heat, that some mysteries are better left unsolved. (So you know if he were dropped into Wellsville, he would be the last of the already tentative locals to pick up the perpetually ringing payphone.)

Setting aside the cocoa-mug hack he learns by “In the Arctic” episode’s end, if Arnold were Little Pete, odds are he would think twice before going to the Friz for advice or assistance on recharging a lucky penny. But even that is a comparatively careful step below solving the problem on his own or merely with his peers, as Pete prefers to do (“The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky”).

When the two damage another character’s prized possession, another loosely common thread bears can’t-miss divergences. Arnold wants to make amends after inattentively sending Wanda’s soldier, which she needs to attend an anticipated production of The Nutcracker, on a path to perdition whilst recycling (“Holiday Special”). Pete just wants to make a jailbreak when his dad grounds him for recklessly wrecking the Wrigleys’ lawn (“Grounded for Life”).

The sagas of Tamberelli’s two most-played TV characters are not an out-and-out contrast, though. For starters, both have a momentary mishap with orange-colored treats.

Season 2’s “Field of Pete” sees Little Pete and the baseball team for which he is a de facto mascot foolishly chug the infamous Orange Lazarus slush, inducing agonizing brain freezes. Three years later, MSB’s Season 4’s “Goes Cellular” has Arnold overdosing on the carrot-based Seaweedie snacks, inducing embarrassing carotenosis.

There you have a couple of classic cases of kids being kids, and living and learning from it.

Before another common thread could grow too tall, and before Pete & Pete could hurdle the carnivorous fish (and I’m not talking about Bob from “On Golden Pete”), the Nick hit closed up shop. But not before Little Pete deviates his adamant resistance to romance by taking an interest in the local mail carrier, Eunice.

Little Pete’s infatuation with an older female in Season 3’s “Crisis in the Love Zone” is not unlike Arnold’s implied feelings for Tiffany, who debuted six months earlier on MSB’s “Wet All Over” episode. But both of these storylines start and stop with a single episode, and that is likely for the best.