Mathnet Ranked
At the Phoenix tournament this past February, we got to talking about Square 1 TV, my favorite show when I was a kid. I had all the episodes on VHS and used to watch them over and over again. We’re talking hundreds of times here.
Square 1 TV aired from 1987 through 1993 on PBS and taught mathematics via sketch comedy and song. The final segment of every episode was “Mathnet”, a Dragnet parody where two detectives solved crimes using mathematics. All the episodes are on YouTube, and I was compelled to watch them all again.
Last year, I did the same thing with Ghostwriter, another PBS show from my youth. Ghostwriter had some great moments, but Mathnet just blew it out of the water. It was maybe the greatest show no one ever watched. I promise, it isn’t just nostalgia. The show was fantastic.
The two leads (Beverly Leech and Joe Howard as Kate Monday and George Frankly) had great chemistry, and really embodied their characters. In Season 4, Beverly Leech left the series and was replaced by Toni DiBuono as Pat Tuesday. DiBuono did ok in the role, but that je ne sais quoi was missing.
The two leads were accompanied by a strong supporting cast, including James Earl Jones as Thad Greene, Chief of Police. Oftentimes, there would be a child actor as a guest star. These performances were more hit-and-miss, with more hits than misses.
Mathnet had a dry, deadpan sense of humor and featured some cute running gags. For instance: people gratuitously correcting each other’s grammar or being unfamiliar with common expressions; George's trouble answering the phone, and anecdotes about George's polymath wife Martha.
One gag that always fell flat was George being oblivious to Kate. In the best episodes, Kate and George are congenial toward one another-perhaps a little more than congenial, leading the fanbase to speculate. That dynamic works much better than when they squabble.
Anyway, go watch Mathnet! I’ve ranked all the episodes below so you know which ones to watch!
A Tier
1) The Unkidnapping (Season 3)
I found it difficult to choose the best episode. Any of these top three are strong contenders, but none are perfect. I went with “The Unkidnapping” because it has some great jokes, lively banter, and a memorable ending that comes out of left field. Warning: If you have any intention to binge-watch Mathnet, as surely you must, don’t start with this one.
In this Broadway-themed episode, the leading lady is kidnapped and Kate’s friend Eve is the prime suspect. This mystery has elements that are similar to Season 1’s “The Passing Parade” (also about a kidnappee who sends a coded message) but is better in every way.
2) Despair in Monterey Bay (Season 4)
In general, Mathnet’s best mysteries are simple and down-to-earth. By contrast, the more ambitious ones tend to wear a bit thin. This is the singular exception.
At 90+ minutes, this is the longest mystery, and probably the most expensive too. But the slower pace, beachfront setting, and delightful characters give it a breezy, leisurely feel, and when the Mathnetters finally crack the case, it feels earned.
This episode is a sequel to Season 1's "Trojan Hamburger", another A-tier entry; you should watch that one first.
3) View from the Rear Terrace (Season 2)
This one is based on Rear Window, the first Hitchcock movie I ever saw, and still my favorite. Here, Kate has the Jimmy Stewart role: stuck in her apartment with a broken leg, she staves off boredom by spying on her neighbors. Meanwhile, George has to hold down the fort alone at Mathnet HQ, solving a case of petty vandalism that rapidly escalates. There is some tight writing here, and some suspenseful setpieces, but also some awkwardness when George talks to himself or clumsily attempts to recap previous episodes.
4) The Missing Baseball (Season 1)
This was the pilot episode, filmed more than two years before the rest of Season 1. It’s much faster paced and has a sillier sense of humor relative to later episodes, but it all works. The guest stars are quite good too, particularly Billie Hayes as the ornery Mrs. MacGregor. This episode maybe belongs lower on the list, but gets extra credit for setting the groundwork for all subsequent episodes, including the iconic calculator gag.
5) The Parking Meter Massacre (Season 3)
Some wackadoo is stalking the streets of New York, chopping down hundreds of parking meters with a chainsaw. It’s up to the Mathnetters to put an end to it. It’s an inventive premise with a real sense of danger. Wayne Knight (who played Newman on Seinfeld) has a bit role.
6) The Swami Scam (Season 3)
If we’re just grading the mystery itself, this is the best episode. It’s an intriguing scam and I think it has an actual name. This episode also capably establishes the New York cast and is a good candidate to start your Mathnet journey. The ending doesn’t really work, however; Mathnet was usually funnier when the humor was understated.
7) The Poconos Paradise (Season 4)
As a mystery, this one might be second best. It’s intelligently constructed and keeps you guessing. It’s not as interesting, however, as the other A-tier episodes, and the many passages about databases feel, well, dated. However, the discussions about privacy and junk mail still feel relevant, and there are a lot of funny moments.
8) The Trojan Hamburger (Season 1)
This imaginative story combines a kidnapping and a whimsical jewelry heist at Citizen Kane’s house. The kidnappee, Hans Ballpeen, is played by Kenneth Mars, who previously played the nutty Nazi playwright in The Producers. Both Mr. and Mrs. Ballpeen are absolutely delightful.
B Tier
9) The Missing Monkey (Season 1)
In the first episode to air, the Mathnetters investigate a string of robberies seemingly committed by a gorilla named Grunt. Guest starring Yeardley Smith (who went on to play Lisa on The Simpsons) as Grunt’s best friend: can she clear his name?
One thing that bugged me about this episode as a young boy is that I didn’t buy that Yeardley Smith was a child. And she’s not: in fact, she’s only five years younger than Beverly Leech, who plays Kate Monday. Kind of like how in The Graduate, Anne Bancroft’s character is supposedly the age of Dustin Hoffman’s mother, when in reality she is only six years older than him.
Worse, not only is Yeardley Smith not a child, but she doesn’t give that good of a performance; an actual child would have probably been more effective in the role.
10) The Maltese Pigeon (Season 1)
This episode is a rather gratuitous parody of The Maltese Falcon, but it does have an engaging story with above-average writing; the Jasper Stoutman character is particularly well-done.
11) The Dirty Money (Season 1)
When I say that Mathnet did best when it kept its stories small and simple, this is kind of what I mean. This is otherwise a rather drab story about stolen dirt, but because the writers took it seriously and put effort into it, it all works.
12) The Calpurnian Kugel Caper (Season 4)
This one was much better than I remembered, involving the man-child king of a small banana republic who’s getting ripped off by some wealthy tycoons. This episode introduces “The Dollar Game”, which I used to play with my sister in moments of boredom. (Don’t judge; I grew up before the Internet.)
13) Off the Record (Season 5)
Season 5’s best entry still isn’t that good, and the ending is particularly weak. But the premise is solid (corruption in the music industry), and the subplot involving George’s pet gerbil (also named George) is pretty hilarious.
14) The Trial of George Frankly (Season 1)
This episode was nightmare fuel when I was 4, to the point where I really don't think it's suitable for young children. Even as a grown man, it’s pretty unsettling. It's impressive that PBS actually went this far on a kid's show, but it's simply too traumatizing. If something like this happened to you, you’d go nuts.
The big problem with this episode is that it writes itself into a corner with its impossible story involving criminals who are basically gods. What these crooks manage to accomplish is so far beyond any human capability that my 4-year-old brain just couldn’t deal with it.
James Earl Jones plays a more active role in this mystery, giving the proceedings a certain gravity that is completely absent from “The Galling Stones”, an episode that covered similar ground.
15) The Smart Dummy (Season 5)
The obnoxious premise here is that a ventriloquist is so traumatized by the disappearance of his prized dummy that he becomes catatonic and his other dummy has to do all the talking for him. Once you get over that, it’s not that bad.
16) The Masked Avenger (Season 3)
This episode, involving a pro wrestler who is being blackmailed by the mob, is like a dumb knock-knock joke, but I laugh anyway. Possibly belongs lower on the list.
C Tier
17) The Strategic Weather Initiative (Season 3)
It’s hard to hate an episode where Donald Trump and his cronies all get sent to prison at the end (very forward-looking for 1990), and the mad scientist character is pretty funny. But overall, the story is too outlandish and the ending drags on too much.
18) The Great Car Robbery (Season 2)
Another episode that pushed the envelope. What’s conflicting here is that, while the climax is pretty exciting for a PBS Kids show, the writing quality is substantially worse than most other episodes, and the guest star can’t act.
19) The Unnatural (Season 4)
This one is unsettling in the same way as Season 1’s “Trial of George Frankly,” and also features a godlike antagonist. However, the pacing is a bit too slow for my tastes, with some awkward humor. Also, you’ll solve the mystery way before the Mathnetters do.
The version on YouTube has been edited in a bizarre, non-chronological way not seen in the original. I don’t think the new cut is an improvement.
20) The Mystery Weekend (Season 5)
This Agatha Christie-style mystery was my favorite episode as a child, but unfortunately, it doesn't hold up very well. It's cartoonish without being funny, and the mystery makes no sense. It’s possible that the later seasons were dumbed down to appeal to children specifically, and I guess it worked.
21) The Willing Parrot (Season 2)
The YouTube version is of poor quality, and it’s just as well. The child actor got on my nerves when I was a kid, and I stand by my original assessment. There is, however, some interesting math in this episode, which introduced me to both the Fibonacci sequence and modular arithmetic.
22) The Missing Air (Season 2)
I couldn’t think of anything to say about this episode, so I watched it again. Didn’t do me any good the second time either. It’s not especially funny, but also doesn’t try to be. It’s neither boring nor interesting. The writing is neither good nor bad. It’s just forgettable. Never quite figured out what the title refers to either.
23) The Passing Parade (Season 1)
This was the only mediocre episode in Season 1. Rewatching it later in life, I realized that I wasn’t imagining celery tonic. That really was a drink back then, and it’s still around. I guess it’s no weirder than the more adventuresome Jones Soda variants.
What’s wrong with this episode? It has many dull moments, particularly in Part 1, as the Mathnetters plan the parade route. Also, many of the jokes don’t land, and the child actor isn’t that good.
24) The Piggy Banker (Season 5)
This episode is better than the average episode of Full House, while suffering from many of the same problems: it’s saccharine, maudlin, and emotionally manipulative. Also, I can only think of a few people who would want to have a birthday party at the Mathnet office (myself being one of them). What’s implausible is that anyone else would attend.
D Tier
25) The Map with a Gap (Season 2)
Here, the Mathnetters visit an old western ghost town to dig up some lost gold. There’s some interesting math in this episode, but it’s otherwise pretty dumb, especially the ending. It’s like they had a rule where every episode needed to have a villain getting arrested at the end, and so they arbitrarily made someone a villain rather than break the rule.
26) The Ersatz Earthquake (Season 3)
The Season 3 premiere is a mess, and was likely written as an afterthought, serving as the transition from California to the New York office. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were production issues with this one. The writing is downright weird in places, and Kate and George often seem like they would rather be elsewhere. The biggest problem is that the final episode is unnecessary. Once it becomes clear how the illusion works, there is already sufficient evidence for an arrest, and the trap is superfluous.
27) The Purloined Policies (Season 4)
Clumsily written with some truly cringeworthy moments. The one-note appeal of John Moschitta had already started to fade at the time of this episode’s release, but it’s not his fault that he’s given nothing to do here. Talking really fast is not funny in and of itself, it’s just exhausting. The other guest star-an overeager bicycle enthusiast who tags along for no reason-is comparably annoying as well.
28) The Bermuda Triangle (Season 5)
What do daytime talk show hosts, pirates, a Humphrey Bogart impersonator, Revolutionary War espionage, and Belle from Beauty and the Beast have in common? They’re all in this bewildering episode for some reason. This is what I’m referring to when I say the more extravagant mysteries suffered. This one actually could have appeared higher on the list. Parts of it are ok, but the ending is particularly atrocious.
29) The Deceptive Data (Season 2)
It testifies to the strength of the writers that they could take a deadpan, middle-grade police procedural about math and make it not merely interesting, but fascinating a lot of the time. With some of the lesser episodes, well, the problems are real, but they’re never boring. This is the one exception. From start to finish, it’s just insufferably dull. The premise is already rather pointless (George’s favorite TV show is cancelled… but why?) and nothing worthwhile happens.
F Tier
30) The Galling Stones (Season 4)
It was hard to pick a favorite episode, but this one is clearly worst. It’s hopeless from start to finish; all the rewrites in the world couldn’t have saved it. The writing is poor, the premise is stupid and utterly ignorant of legal procedure, and pretty much none of the jokes land. “The Trial of George Frankly” covered similar ground and also had plausibility problems, but one thing it did very well was convey a sense of existential dread. Here, everyone is maddeningly blasé about everything, which is very dissonant to watch.