Talk:The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo

I noticed that the airing order of the episodes currently listed on the main page (as of April 9, 2021) seemed inconsistent with the order I remember the episodes airing in back in the 90’s, so I used my newspapers.com subscription to look at archived TV listings in newspapers from the 90’s and revised the air dates on the main page accordingly. -Allgood2000 (talk) 19:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

For season 1, the newspapers did not list the episode synopses for the season’s initial run in March-April of 1996, but a couple of articles I found confirmed that “Fools Gold” was the season premiere (it aired as a sneak preview on Saturday, March 16 and re-ran in its normal Sunday time slot on March 17),^[1] followed by “The Missing Dolphin” on March 24.^[2] Amazon Prime's episode list is the only source that does not conflict with any of the newspaper airdates (all of the season 2 air dates match, and the two known season 1 episodes match), so I am fairly confident that Prime has the correct air dates for the other four episodes in season 1 (thus my using it as the air date source in the episode tables for seasons 1-2). TVGuide’s episode lists for season 1 and season 2 are mostly consistent with the newspapers and Prime, with the exceptions of “The Missing Dolphin”, “Hot Seats – Part 2” and “Two Faced”. -Allgood2000 (talk) 19:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Season 3 is not on Amazon Prime, but TVGuide’s season 3 list is consistent with the newspapers except for “The Shell Game Mystery”, which is obviously wrong on TVGuide because the air date listed conflicts with “The Hit and Run Case”. I actually taped the first six episodes of Season 3 when it aired back in the 90’s, and “Shell Game” was definitely the sixth episode to air (and it aired some time after the first five episodes, which aired over five or six consecutive Sundays with a repeat or two thrown in). -Allgood2000 (talk) 19:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Trying to figure out the air dates for season 4 was a hot mess. The newspapers conflicted with TVGuide and sometimes even with each other, with different newspapers listing different episodes airing on the same date.

I’ve included a table below with the air dates according to both sources. The table includes each Sunday from 9/6/98 until 4/4/99 (when all episodes are accounted for). Two titles in the same cell indicates two conflicting episodes are listed as airing on that date. Bold episode titles indicate first air dates (hypothetically, supposing the previously listed air dates for that source are correct); bold titles in gray indicate possible first air dates, if the episode was previously part of a conflicting listing with another episode.

The only dates I’m confident enough about to keep on the main page are “Paul Revere”, “Spare Parts”, and “Mice That Roared”. I am guessing “Haunted House” and “Egg Mystery” are probably correct, since they aired around Halloween and Easter, respectively (although the latter could have been the 12/6/98 episode).

TVGuide is most likely wrong about “Baseball Fan” and “UFO”, as the show’s time slot was on Sunday, and October 13 and 20, 1998 were Tuesdays (the newspapers indicate no episodes airing on those days). TVGuide stopped keeping track of the air dates after 11/1/98 (except for “Mice that Roared”), so there is not much basis for comparison for air dates listed after that. The newspapers indicate that an episode aired on 12/6/98, but none that I could find gave the synopsis, so it’s possible one of the episodes listed as airing after that actually premiered on 12/6/98, if that episode wasn’t a rerun.

I remember from childhood that “Paul Revere” and “Spare Parts” were the first two episodes to air that season, but I lost interest and quit watching after the first few episodes. I do recall seeing “Itchy Shorts” and “Robot Mystery” before I quit watching, so those were probably toward the beginning of the season.

Does anyone know of any reliable sources that might have the correct season 4 air dates? -Allgood2000 (talk) 19:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply