''Mathnet'' is a segment on the children's television show ''
Square One Television
''Square One Television'' (sometimes referred to as ''Square One'' or ''Square One TV'') is an American children's television program produced by the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) to teach mathematics and abstr ...
'' that follows the adventures of pairs of police mathematicians. It is a
pastiche
A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking i ...
pastiche
A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking i ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
s who use their mathematical skills to solve various crimes and mysteries in the city, usually thefts, burglaries, frauds, and kidnappings. Each segment of the series aired on one episode of ''
Square One
Square One may refer to:
Film and TV
* '' Square One: Michael Jackson'', a 2019 investigative documentary about the first allegations of child sexual abuse brought by the Chandler family
*''Square One Television'', a children's television series ...
'', a production of the
Children's Television Workshop
Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-know ...
(CTW) aimed at teaching math skills to young viewers. Five segments made up an episode (one for each weekday), with suspense building at the end of each segment.
Characters
* Kate Monday (Beverly Leech) - A pastiche of
Jack Webb
John Randolph Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 23, 1982) was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the ''Dragnet'' franchise, which he created. He was a ...
's ''Dragnet'' character
Joe Friday
Joe Friday is a fictional character created and portrayed by Jack Webb as the lead for his series '' Dragnet''. Friday is a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. The character first appeared on June 3, 1949 in the premiere of the NBC ...
, Kate usually does not show her emotions when on the job and tackles almost every situation with a calm and rational mind. She appears in the first three seasons.
* George Frankly (Joe Howard) - The partner of Kate Monday (and later Pat Tuesday), George takes his job seriously but is frequently prone to fits of comical mishaps and immature reactions. He appears in all five seasons. He has a wife named Martha whom he often mentions but who is never seen or heard.
* Pat Tuesday (Toni DiBuono) - George's second partner, appearing in Seasons 4 and 5 to replace Kate. Like Kate, Pat shares the deadpan mannerisms and no-nonsense attitude of Joe Friday.
Los Angeles cast
* Thad Green (
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor. He has been described as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile" actors for his performances in film, television, and theater, and "one of the greatest actors in America ...
) - The Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He briefly appears in Season 4.
* Debbie Williams (Mary Watson) - Technical analyst at the LAPD division where Kate and George works, she is frequently called upon to process data obtained during Mathnet investigations.
New York City cast
* Joe Greco (Emilio Del Pozo) - Captain of the New York City precinct, he is the man who George, Kate, and later Pat report to when they move to New York City starting in Season 3.
* Benny Pill (Bari K. Willerford) - An undercover
NYPD
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
officer, he is Mathnet's semi-regular backup support.
Guest stars
A number of well-known actors and actresses made guest appearances on this show. Among them were:
*
Bob Arbogast
Robert "Bob" Arbogast (April 1, 1927 – March 21, 2009) was an American radio broadcaster, voice actor, and television host.
Early life and education
Bob was born in Bellingham, Washington, the only child of Lewis, a champion tennis player, st ...
Betty Buckley
Betty Lynn Buckley (born July 3, 1947) is an American actress and singer. Buckley is the winner of a Tony Award, and was nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and an Olivier Award. In 2012, she was inducted into the American ...
*
Maddie Corman
Maddie Corman (born Madeleine Cornman; August 15, 1970) is an American actress. She has appeared in over 25 films, including ''Seven Minutes in Heaven'', '' Some Kind of Wonderful'', ''The Adventures of Ford Fairlane'' and '' A Beautiful Day in t ...
*
Paul Dooley
Paul Dooley (born Paul Brown; February 22, 1928) is an American character actor, writer and comedian. He is known for his roles in '' Breaking Away'', '' Sixteen Candles'', and ''Popeye''.
Early life
Dooley was born Paul Brown on February 22, ...
Andre Gower
Jon Andre Gower (born April 27, 1973) is an American television and film actor.
Life and career
Born in Los Angeles, California, Gower began his career at the age of five years as a child actor. His first substantial role was as Brookes Prenti ...
*
Tammy Grimes
Tammy Lee Grimes (January 30, 1934 – October 30, 2016) was an American film and stage actress.
Grimes won two Tony Awards in her career, the first for originating the role of Molly Tobin in the musical '' The Unsinkable Molly Brown'' and the ...
John Michael Higgins
John Michael Higgins (born February 12, 1963) is an American actor and comedian whose film credits include Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, the role of David Letterman in HBO's '' The Late Shift'', and a starring role in the American versio ...
*
Russell Johnson
Russell David Johnson (November 10, 1924 – January 16, 2014) was an American actor. He played Professor Roy Hinkley in ''Gilligan's Island'' and Marshal Gib Scott in '' Black Saddle''.
Early life
Johnson was born in Ashley, Pennsylvania, o ...
James Karen
James Karen (born Jacob Karnofsky; November 28, 1923 – October 23, 2018) was an American character actor of Broadway, film and television. Karen is known for his roles in ''Poltergeist'', ''The China Syndrome'', ''Wall Street'', ''The Return ...
*
Wayne Knight
Wayne Elliot Knight (born August 7, 1955) is an American actor. In television, he played Newman on '' Seinfeld'' (1992–1998) and Officer Don Orville on '' 3rd Rock from the Sun'' (1996–2001). He also voiced Igor on ''Toonsylvania'' (1998 ...
Geoffrey Lewis Geoffrey Lewis may refer to:
* Geoffrey Lewis (actor) (1935–2015), American character actor
* Geoffrey Lewis (scholar) (1920–2008), British professor of Turkish
* Geoffrey Lewis (philatelist), Australian philatelist
* Geoffrey W. Lewis (died ...
Kevin McCarthy
Kevin Owen McCarthy (born January 26, 1965) is an American politician, serving as House Minority Leader in the United States House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he served as House Majority Leader under spea ...
*
Eve McVeagh
Eva Elizabeth "Eve" McVeagh (July 15, 1919 – December 10, 1997) was an American actress of film, television, stage, and radio. Her career spanned 52 years from her first stage role through her last stage appearance. Her roles included leading ...
*
Jayne Meadows
Jayne Meadows (born Jane Cotter; September 27, 1919 – April 26, 2015), also known as Jayne Meadows Allen, was an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards duri ...
John Moschitta Jr.
John Moschitta Jr. (born August 6, 1954), also known as "Motormouth" John Moschitta and The Fast-Talking Guy, is an American actor, singer and spokesman. He is best known for his rapid speech delivery. He appeared in over 100 commercials as "The ...
*
Ron O'Neal
Ron O'Neal (September 1, 1937 – January 14, 2004) was an American actor, director and screenwriter, who rose to fame in his role as Youngblood Priest, a New York cocaine dealer, in the blaxploitation film '' Super Fly'' (1972) and its seq ...
*
Rex Reed
Rex Taylor Reed (born October 2, 1938) is an American film critic, occasional actor, and television host. He writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for '' The New York Observer''.
Early life
Reed was born on October 2, 1938, in Fort Wo ...
Dick Sargent
Richard Stanford Cox (April 19, 1930 – July 8, 1994), known professionally as Dick Sargent, was an American actor, notable as the second actor to portray Darrin Stephens on ABC's fantasy situation comedy ''Bewitched''. He took the name ''Dick ...
*
Ronnie Schell
Ronald Ralph Schell (born December 23, 1931) is an American actor and stand-up comedian. He appeared on the May 28, 1959, episode of the TV quiz ''You Bet Your Life'', hosted by Groucho Marx. Schell demonstrated a comic barrage of beatnik jive t ...
Yeardley Smith
Martha Maria Yeardley Smith ( ; born July 3, 1964) is an American actress, artist and writer. She currently stars as the voice of Lisa Simpson on the long-running animated television series ''The Simpsons''.
Smith became an actress in 1982 aft ...
*
Arnold Stang
Arnold Sidney Stang (September 28, 1918 – December 20, 2009) ''
Guy Stockwell
Harry Guy Stockwell (November 16, 1933 – February 6, 2002) was an American actor who appeared in nearly 30 movies and 250 television series episodes.
Life and career
Stockwell was born in New York City, the son of singer/dancer Elizabeth "B ...
Marcia Wallace
Marcia Karen Wallace (November 1, 1942 – October 25, 2013) was an American actress and comedian, primarily known for her roles in television situation comedies. She is best known for her roles as receptionist Carol Kester on the 1970s sitc ...
*
Dick Wilson
Dick Wilson (July 30, 1916 – November 18, 2007) was an American actor who was best known as grocery store manager Mr. George Whipple in more than 500 Charmin bathroom tissue television commercials (1965–89, 1999–2000).
Biography
Dick Wi ...
*
William Windom
William Windom (May 10, 1827January 29, 1891) was an American politician from Minnesota. He served as U.S. Representative from 1859 to 1869, and as U.S. Senator from 1870 to January 1871, from March 1871 to March 1881, and from November 1881 ...
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. He is best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific ...
In addition, real-life
LAPD
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...
officers Sam Salazar and Steve Fellman have also appeared as themselves, as did head writers David D. Connell and Jim Thurman as various characters.
Math and science
Real principles of math and science and mathematical tools used by the detectives to solve crimes include:
*
Alphanumerics
Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are a combination of alphabetical and numerical characters. More specifically, they are the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits. An alphanumeric code is an identifier made of alphanumeric ch ...
("The Case of the Unnatural")
*
Fibonacci sequence
In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start the sequence from ...
and
modular arithmetic
In mathematics, modular arithmetic is a system of arithmetic for integers, where numbers "wrap around" when reaching a certain value, called the modulus. The modern approach to modular arithmetic was developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss in his boo ...
(see also
Pisano period
In number theory, the ''n''th Pisano period, written as '(''n''), is the period with which the sequence of Fibonacci numbers taken modulo ''n'' repeats. Pisano periods are named after Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci. The existence ...
) ("The Case of the Willing Parrot")
*
Kinematics
Kinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the motion of points, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause them to move. Kinematics, as a fiel ...
("The Problem of the Missing Baseball")
*
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce th ...
("The Problem of the Passing Parade")
* Displacement of fluids ("The Problem of the Trojan Hamburger")
*
Hamiltonian path
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a Hamiltonian path (or traceable path) is a path in an undirected or directed graph that visits each vertex exactly once. A Hamiltonian cycle (or Hamiltonian circuit) is a cycle that visits each vertex ...
("The Case of the Smart Dummy")
*
Process of elimination
Process of elimination is a logical method to identify an entity of interest among several ones by excluding all other entities. In educational testing, it is a process of deleting options whereby the possibility of an option being correct is clos ...
("The Case of the Great Car Robbery", "The View from the Rear Terrace")
* Number patterns ("The Case of the Missing Air")
*
Bar chart
A bar chart or bar graph is a chart or graph that presents categorical data with rectangular bars with heights or lengths proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally. A vertical bar chart i ...
s and
line chart
A line chart or line graph or curve chart is a type of chart which displays information as a series of data points called 'markers' connected by straight line segments. It is a basic type of chart common in many fields. It is similar to a ...
s ("The Case of the Purloined Policies", "The Case of the Great Car Robbery")
*
Triangulation
In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points.
Applications
In surveying
Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...
("The Case of the Map With a Gap")
Development and production
After a successful first season, production began on six new episodes for the second season. By the time production ended on the third season and its six episodes in 1989, Beverly Leech (Kate Monday) left, and was replaced by a new character named Pat Tuesday, played by Toni DiBuono. Production on the first six episodes with the new character commenced in 1990, and ended in 1991, in time for ''Square One TV's'' fourth season. Production on the final season and its five episodes began taping in 1991, and the last episode aired in 1992.
During production, the background music also changed. Originally, it had a synth score. Gradually, as the series progressed, it was replaced with an orchestral score.
The exterior shots of the Los Angeles police station were filmed at the former LAPD
Highland Park Police Station
The Highland Park Police Station on York Boulevard in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, California, USA is the city's oldest surviving police station. Closed in 1983, the station is now operated as the Los Angeles Police Museum. It has ...
, which had closed in 1983. It now houses the Los Angeles Police Museum and is located at 6045 York Boulevard.
The exterior shots of the New York City police station for seasons 3 and 4 were filmed at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
. It now houses the
George Gustav Heye Center
The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...
of the
National Museum of the American Indian
The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers.
The museum has three ...
and is located at 1 Bowling Green. Exterior shots for the fifth and final season were filmed at the
Brooklyn Borough Hall
Brooklyn Borough Hall is a building in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. It was designed by architects Calvin Pollard and Gamaliel King in the Greek Revival style, and constructed of Tuckahoe marble under the supervision of superintendent St ...
.
Logo and motto
The Mathnet logo is a pastiche of the Los Angeles city seal. The symbols representing the city were replaced with mathematics iconography. The founding date is the year the pilot episode was filmed.
The Mathnet motto "to cogitate and to solve" is a pastiche of the LAPD motto "to protect and to serve."
At the conclusion of each episode, a title screen displays the Mathnet logo and motto against a blue background. The logo and motto were also featured on the doors of the police cars used in the Los Angeles episodes, mimicking the appearance of actual LAPD police cars.
Despite having their origins in Los Angeles, the show continued to use the logo and motto even after the setting of the show moved to New York City.
Home media and syndication
In 1991, GPN released five episodes from the first two seasons on VHS ("The Problem of the Missing Baseball", "The Trial of George Frankly", "The Problem of the Dirty Money", "The Case of the Missing Air", and "The View from the Rear Terrace").
Around the same time, select PBS stations combined parts of an episode to air in primetime. This was done primarily for seasons 3-5 (New York City era), although at least one omnibus from the Leech era was also broadcast. These versions were re-edited so that they would come in at just under an hour long, featured other segments from ''Square One TV'' as "commercials", and newly created end credits, among other differences. Two of the primetime airings were also commercially released as VHS tapes from Republic Pictures in 1992 ("Despair in Monterey Bay" and "The Case of the Unnatural").
Both ''Mathnet'' and ''Square One'' went off the air in 1994 (it was rerun until then after the final 1992 season was completed), reappearing from 1999 to 2003 on the cable television network
Noggin
Noggin may refer to:
General
* Noggin or gill (volume), a unit of volume
* Noggin (cup), a small cup
* Noggin, slang for head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, an ...
, a joint venture of
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...
and CTW. However, only 65 episodes were leased by the Noggin network. ''Mathnet'' segments also aired on ''
Phred on Your Head Show
''Phred on Your Head Show'' is an American children's television series produced for Noggin, a cable channel co-founded by Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop. The first episode aired on Nickelodeon as a sneak peek on June 6, 1999. Noggin aired encore ...
'' (one of Noggin's original programs).
Other media
A ''Mathnet'' comic briefly appeared in ''
3-2-1 Contact
''3-2-1 Contact'' is an American science educational television show produced by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, now known as Sesame Workshop). It aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988 and later ran on Noggin (a joint venture between the CTW ...
'' magazine.
Six ''Mathnet'' books, based on episodes of the show, were published:
# Casebook 1: The Case of the Unnatural (based on Season 4, Episode 1)
# Casebook 2: Despair in Monterey Bay (based on Season 4, Episode 2)
# Casebook 3: The Case of the Willing Parrot (based on Season 2, Episode 1)
# Casebook 4: The Map With a Gap (based on Season 2, Episode 6)
# Casebook 5: The Case of the Mystery Weekend (based on Season 5, Episode 1)
# Casebook 6: The Case of the Smart Dummy (based on Season 5, Episode 6)
Episodes
Season 1 (1987)
''All episodes this season were directed by Charles S. Dubin.''