Mathnet | The Calpurnian Kugel Caper

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• published: 03 Jul 2012
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Here's part 3 of my 4th of July Special. In this 1991 episode of Mathnet, while George and Benny are in the middle of a game of "Wheel of Jeopardy", Captain Greco sends George and Pat on loan to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). When the Mathnetters arrive at Pennsylvania Avenue, they meet with undercover CIA agent Ovitz, who asks them to keep an eye on Christmas Family Special III, or Chris, the king of a country known as Calpurnia, after his father died in a tragic auto accident. He is accompanied by his strict finance administer, Sylvia Sherwood. However, Chris is not as "kingly" as he seems. He is highly addicted to game shows and wants to be a game show host. He owns a portable computerized edition of Wheel of Jeopardy, the same game George and Benny were playing earlier. The Mathnetters take Chris on a tour of the Big Apple on the way to his meeting. He suddenly wanders off in Central Park, only to play a game of Wheel of Jeopardy with tourists. While Chris takes the meeting, Sherwood tells George and Pat about chuckberries, Calpurnia's sole export, which is denigrated due to a phony study in a journal which falsely implies a causal relationship in a correlation between chuckberry consumption and teenage zits. Unfortunately for the Calpurnian king, a conglomerate known as Buy it, Loot it, and Trash it (BLT) (and a lot of other conglomerates), refuses to purchase the chuckberry crop for the year, destroying the economy of Calpurnia. The Mathnetters find that BLT previously paid for the crop in cash with nearly half of all of Calpurnia's currency. While George and Pat play the Dollar Game, using serial numbers on the dollar bills, using kugels, the currency of Calpurnia. They notice that in each serial number has no repeated digits. They suspect that counterfeit money is the main issue. That night, George, Pat, and Benny stake out Indelible, Incorporated, a New York City company where kugels are printed, where they find Sherwood leaving the building. As she leaves, she drops a brochure to an upcoming theme park called "Kaboom Land". The next morning, Chris is more worried than ever about his country's economy. The Mathnetters show him the brochure, which is from a company called K.P., Ltd. The king soon gives George and Pat a message from Agent Ovitz, asking them to meet him at the zoo. There, they find Ovitz, disguised as a llama, and he tells them that BLT is owned by an entrepreneur named Kaboom Pickens, and Indelible, Inc. is owned by Carl Iconmeister through BLT. They soon suspect that whoever is destroying Calpurnia's economy also wants to turn the country into a theme park. Back at headquarters, Benny arrives with Chris, who urgently informs the Mathnetters that Kaboom Pickens has offered to buy Calpurnia for one billion kugels. Sherwood had breakfast with Pickens that morning. Pat asks the king to set up a meeting for the next day and to tell Pickens that she herself wants to buy the country for the same amount of money. She plans on catching him by playing the kugel version of the Dollar Game. Joe Howard as George Frankly Toni DiBuono as Pat Tuesday Bari K. Willerford as Benny Pill Emilio Del Pozo as Captain Greco Charlie Heath as King Christmas Family Special III/"Chris" Carol Lacatell as Sylvia Sherwood Jon DeVries as CIA Agent Ovitz Lanny Flaherty as Kaboom Pickens NOTE: This is from a PBS special, only I edited out the commercials, and did a few other edits. I also threw in the WNET promo for it. (c) 1991 Children's Television Workshop DISCLAIMER: Nothing seen here is my property. Upload intended solely for entertainment purposes.