PopFilter Vs. Our Childhood

In which we reminisce about childhood entertainment, then go back and watch it and re-assess.

ERIN WILSON

VS

SQUARE ONE TV

I’ll be honest, math always evoked clinical anxiety in me.  I’ve never been able to do well in any mathematical discipline, from the very beginning.  The way my warped-ass child brain saw it, if it didn’t come easy to me, I was a failure.  If I got one problem wrong, it meant I had failed to learn (never mind that getting things wrong is part of the process of learning, but try explaining that to a neurotic child who feared parental punishment and yelling even more than the dread that she actually might be stupid.)  I cried trying to learn my multiplication tables, I cried when I did poorly on tests, and, like Milhouse, I cried when I did long division and there was a remainder. So yeah.  Never really got a chance to develop a love for mathematics.

This might have been why I tended to zone out during Square One TV (1987-92) after school.  I watched it because it was sandwiched between Reading Rainbow and Carmen Sandiego (“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” that is, not that ridiculous “Where in Time” crap that came later with that shitty non-Rockapella theme song.)  While hardly any information sank in, I do remember enjoying it for its energy and quirky style.  The one thing that sticks out in my memory is the segment “Mathnet,” a Dragnet parody that was freaken awesome, and could have been its own show.  (It even made my parents laugh.)  Oh, and I remember that the show was my first introduction to the concept of negative numbers.  (What can I say?  I didn’t grow up in a place that got snow.)

INTERMISSION

Okay, so the intro has the style of a late-night sketch program, with energetic saxophone and goofy colorized footage of the actors.  Who do they think they are, Saturday Night Live?  It’s 4:00 pm, morons.  Whatever.  It’s fine.  Okay, so the first sketch is–what??  Reg E. Cathey (!) introduces game show host Larry Cedar (?!) for a game similar to Hollywood Squares.  No way!  It’s got all the awkwardness of game shows with adult contestants.  And it sure feels better watching it twenty years later, since I know all the answers.  (That is a bomb prize sweatshirt, by the way.)

But Cathey and Cedar aren’t the only two Easter eggs you’ll find in this episode, because guess who shows up later…  The Fat Boys.  Holy crap.  Yes.  How could I not remember this shit?  But there they are!  Rapping about having a billion dollars and ordering a million hamburgers.  Man, I forgot that kids’ shows used to feature honest-to-God rappers.  These days, if someone starts “rapping” in a kids’ show, it’ll be a cabbage-patching schoolteacher or some stupid animated dog.

There’s also the obligatory Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon segment, featuring math hero… Dirk Niblick?  Christ, but that’s the porniest name I’ve ever heard.  Was there no one supervising the writers?

Ahhh, the Mathnet comedy foils.  Kate’s straight man to George’s comic.  The best part of the show.  Too bad it takes an entire week’s worth of episodes to finish each story.  I guess we’ll never know what happens to the haunted house or the Fibonacci parrot.

I like this show.  I really do.  But I never realized how… weird it is.  It’s not even Canadian, or anything.  I guess lots of things developed by Children’s Television Workshop were like that.  Anyway, it’s hard to know what “weird” is when you’re still a kid.  But it makes me miss the days when kids’ TV was allowed to be strange.  Everything after this period turned into a beige Barney-fied mush–shows started putting more emphasis on bland jokes that were impossible to miss, and stupid platitudes about positivity, instead of just letting writers create fun material born of their own genuine enthusiasm.  Kids today have it rough.  Of course, it’s hard to tell how much Square One TV really helped me.  I’m now an adult who sweats bullets when she has to make change in her head, methodically counting it backwards, then handing the customer the money while blurting out, “My SAT Verbal score was 750.”  I mean, if PBS or Nickelodeon couldn’t solve a childhood problem, then why even bother with therapy?-EW