Mister Rogers famously had objections against shows like Nickelodeon's You Can't Do That on Television. The slime factory's producer, Roger Price, has even gone on record — telling the Ottawa Citizen that Rogers (the sweater-wearing one) "hated" it.

Recently I began another deep-dive of nostalgia, binge-watching old episodes of Ghostwriter and Square One Television, two series I faithfully watched during my developmental years.

Square One ended each episode with a segment called "Mathnet," where two detectives use mathematics to solve crimes. One of the serials, "The Case of the Deceptive Data," seems to take a veiled potshot at another Nickelodeon classic: Double Dare.

Guest star McLean Stevenson plays the lead in a daily detective serial, "The Mike Pliers Show," which has been canceled due to what turns out to be ratings data manipulated to look like the show is being turned off by viewers in their thousands.

The culprit — 38-year-old spoiler ahead — turns out to be the host of a competing game show, "The Vicious Vinnie Vermin Show." Vicious Vinnie is the alter-ego of a ratings expert named Wellworth Watching, played by Darrin #2 from Bewitched, Dick Sargent.

"Shouts and Yells and Throws Pies at People"

The attack isn't against Double Dare host Marc Summers personally, but dialogue in the "Deceptive Data" episodes clearly slants against a certain kind of TV game show. Vermin, says Detective George Frankly, "shouts and yells and throws pies at people and makes kids crawl around on the stage to win cheap prizes."

A child who brings the case to the Mathnetters chips in, saying that a friend of hers appeared on Vermin's show, where the host "made her jump off a stepladder into a vat of gunk."

"Totally mindless," Frankly replies.

Now, the next thing Frankly says is where I — a staunch Double Dare Defender — would take issue. He says that some of the trivia questions posed to Vermin's contestants are "just plain wrong." At the end of Friday's episode, where Vermin is exposed, the host is sitting on a stool talking to a sock puppet, telling kids that the capital of Illinois is Chicago. Which, obviously, it isn't.

Could It Have Been Someone Else?

I could be wrong about this being an attack on Double Dare, of course. At the time, DD was still taping at WHYY, the PBS member station in Philadelphia. Marc would go on to host the one-episode special The NOVA Quiz on PBS in 1993 — hardly the résumé of someone PBS considered an enemy.

There were also plenty of kids' game shows considered sub-par that were blooming all over TV around the time this installment of "Mathnet" aired: I'm Telling, a Newlywed Game-style quiz featuring brothers and sisters, plus the litany of DD knockoffs including Slime Time and the oft-maligned Fun House (oft maligned by Double Dare, as it happens).

Worth Rewatching for the Cameos Alone

Despite the jabs, game show fans might want to revisit "The Case of the Deceptive Data" for the many references that happen to involve Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, and game shows in general.

McLean Stevenson was a semi-regular game show panelist on Match Game and Pyramid. Dick Sargent appeared on Hollywood Squares, Password, and Password Plus — as well as another Marc Summers vehicle, Couch Potatoes. Plus, keep your ears peeled for a deep, deadpan voice: that's Jack Riley, the voice of Rugrats' Stu Pickles, playing a very unlucky man being questioned by the Mathnetters.

Nedra Volz also appears as a Mike Pliers Show fan who happened to appear on Family Feud once upon a time. In real life, Volz said one of the most memorable things to ever come off an appearance on Tattletales — but that's a story for another post.

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We covered Double Dare on the show — watch our episode below if you want to hear us go head-to-head with the messiest game show in Nickelodeon history.