What do the aci film shorts and this series have in common? They were both: (1) Insanely produced and; (2) aired on PBS' GRETA (Gulf Regional Education Television Affiliates) time during the school years (mainly used by home schoolers at time, or what your parents made you watch instead of 'Gilligan's Island' when you were sick).

Anyway onto this series.. as the RiffTrax Crew knows from their plethora of aci shorts, producers had a bizarre way of 'education' the youth of the 70s. If it wasn't about making crafts out of refuse, it was counting turkeys in a pen, or creating unholy abominations and calling them 'puppets.' but I digress...

About the time of the mid to late-Seventies/Eighties, the world was going 'Metric Crazy' and was being 'converted' faster than the ghouls in 'Night of the Living Dead.' Naturally our country held out and fought the system, but during this battle, the US did attempt to force us to learn about this new form of measurement in the most insane way possible.

Before Square One TV, you had 'The Metric System.' Yes, that was the name of the show.. which basically was about a fictional television network that would show programs which were based on a metric/measuring theme. Some were direct parodies of other PBS shows, such as 'Centimeter Street,' with Big Bug (a giant version of the classic Cootie Bug Game character), whereas others were original send offs.

One memorable moment was 'Metric Man,' where they would use a weird, live head action with puppetry, before Marc Weiner popularized it with his stand up and Weinerville show. The hilarious thing was MM's archnemesis was (get this) an inchworm. Yes, you heard me right, an inchworm, who mainly got pissed off at Metric Man for using him to compare the difference between inches and centimeters in one episode.

Regrettably, I've attempted to locate something of this series for you so you can grasp the concept. To give you a frame of reference, imagine if the show was still running today: they would probably make a spoof on MST3K, probably calling it 'Metric Science Theater 10 K (because, you know, of the metric thing)' and have a Joel/Mike and the 'bots send off, watching cheesy metric-based films and making measurement comments, with the intermissions being based on metric-themed stuff, while the mads would probably get mad by using 'outdated' measuring methods. Though the show itself did educate in some way, it was hilarious for the fact this came off more like something along the lines of 'The Carol Burnett Show,' than an educational program. If you're wanting to accept this challenge of locating this classic, here's why I believe at least one of the episodes should be riffed:

(1) The pretense of being a network: Overlooking the corny title, the show does begin and end as if you had come across an actual network program. The sketches are devised as television shows. Centimeter Street happens to be one of the more hilarious parodies for the fact Henson and CTW did allow the producers to use the muppets of Ernie and Bert (but here are called, Bernie and Ert).

(2) Metric Man: Essentially the fact when you see how this is executed you can probably hear Mike go, "Oh, what new fresh Hell is this?" And Kevin go, "Wow, an inchworm for a villain? Who'd ever think of something like that?" Whereas Bill would comment on how the problems of the MM citizen deal more with measuring than real disasters.

(3) Just for the fact the whole concept was more disturbing than anything 'Fun in Balloonland,' or aci films could devise.

Sorry I couldn't locate anything on this classic for you, but if anyone out there can, I'd appreciate it if you submit it here and help see if this could get Riffed... even if it's just for one episode...