Okay, so it may not be the coolest or most sophisticated pick, but honestly, the “Yellow Fever” episode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete was hugely influential on me.

Pete and Pete was a big favorite in general, but it’s this episode specifically that I remember watching as a kid with my brothers and my dad and all of us laughing so hard that our faces hurt. Also, it was probably the first TV show or movie that I wanted to watch regardless of what my parents thought I should be watching and it was certainly the first comedy that made me think, “this is funny. I like funny.” And I just remember watching how hard my brothers and dad were all laughing at this episode and feeling that I wanted to do something to make them laugh that hard too.

The basic premise and construct of the episode are fairly simple: it’s essentially a bottle episode set on a school bus that is making its way to the Milk Museum for a field trip. And the two main characters of the episode, Bus Driver Stu and Big Pete, are both dealing with the complications and emotional fallout of love and heartbreak. But the thing that really influenced my writing and comedy sensibility was how they executed this otherwise relatively simple story.

First, they populated the bus with an insane cast of characters (there’s Wendell Hyde, the shyest kid in school who reveals he wants to sing at weddings and bar mitzvahs; Della, the girl who needs to pee more than humanly possible; Teddy, the boy famous for eating his entire lunch the first 5 minutes of every trip and who is desperate to break the cycle using charts and math; and Endless Mike, the perfectly named, back-of-the-bus bully among others.) Second, they go full horror with their directing choices and music cues/sound effects/horror stings so that we’re basically watching two horror movies play out: Stu’s descent into heartbreak-induced mania and Pete’s descent into jealousy-induced/Endless Mike-nurtured bullying.

It’s amazing, it still makes me laugh and the blending of other genre styles into comedy stories is something that I very much see in my own writing. And third, there’s just a ton of really funny jokes and really, really hilarious sight gags in this episode. Bus Driver Stu has some truly great “off-bus” bits that just play in the background of the on-bus scenes and they’re all so wonderful. At one point Bus Driver Stu asks a scarecrow for directions and then fights it in the deep, deep background of a scene where Endless Mike is peer pressuring Pete and it still makes me laugh so hard to this day. It is great. Everything Damien Young (the actor portraying Bus Driver Stu) does in this episode is perfect. Every face he makes, every line delivery. It’s just perfect. I really recommend people just watch the episode, it’s very easy to find online.

And here’s one last endorsement of this episode: it deals heavily in romantic love, heartbreak, jealousy, features a character that wants to be a wedding/bar mitzvah singer, and there’s a field sobriety test at one point… and I first saw this episode when I was 7 or 8, didn’t know what any of those things were or what any of those feelings felt like, and I still laughed so hard and loved every second of it.

Rachele Lynn is a writer on HBO’s Silicon Valley and FX’s Baskets.

PART 2 COMING TOMORROW!

Where to Stream The Adventures of Pete and Pete