Every Episode of the Mystery Show Podcast, Ranked
The beloved Gimlet podcast ended its run after just six episodes—so we ranked them all.
Late yesterday, Starlee Kine, host of the much-beloved podcast Mystery Show, announced via Facebook that Gimlet Media let her go and ended her podcast after one six-episode season. Gimlet issued its own statement, calling Mystery Show "an ambitious production," and adding that Kine's "uncompromising vision" made the show "unsustainable to produce and publish on a consistent basis." Kine is currently looking for a new home for the show, but until it finds one it's a one-season wonder of a podcast. Since going through the entirety of the series would only take a few hours, and the cases Kine tackled on her show range from fascinatingly mundane to supremely bizarre, we ranked each episode so you can go back and enjoy the best of what Mystery Show has to offer.
- 01A young boy finds a mysterious belt buckle on a Phoenix street in the 1980s. It is elaborately designed—outfitted with a chef's hat, a frying pan, a corkscrew, and a mini-toaster equipped with a switch that pops up a tiny piece of toast. Fortunately for the ensuing investigation, it's also engraved with two delightfully mysterious names: Hans Jordi and Bob Six. "The buckle was that rarest of things: an object as enchanting in actuality as it was as a story," Kline says. As Kline chases down the owner of the extravagant buckle, she finds eccentric characters with their own strange stories, tracing every step in its history. But when she reaches its origin, it's the single best moment in the show's short run.*—Joseph Bien-Kahn*
- 02Exactly how tall is Jake Gyllenhaal? And how far would you go to find out for sure? That’s the central premise of this episode, which sends Kine into the argumentative world of [CelebHeights](http://www.celebheights.com/), a website that could not agree on Gyllenhaal’s exact height. Going through multiple avenues to reach Gyllenhaal—once via a friend at a restaurant, then finally over the phone—was the kind of overly serious investigation into a mundane question that made *Mystery Show* great. But the best part about this episode is that it didn’t settle the mystery, since having the actor say his height on a podcast wasn’t definitive proof. Kine had to book an [appearance on *Conan*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_MZy7vBTo) to measure Gyllenhaal’s height once and for all.*—K.M. McFarland*
- 03An author of a poorly-selling self-help tome stumbles upon an old photo of Britney Spears… holding her book! Kine sets off to find out what Spears thought of it and how she got her hands on it in the first place. At first, it seems like it’s going to be another of Kine’s charming star-stalkings, but the real centerpiece of this episode is a long and surprising conversation she has with a Ticketmaster customer service representative that ends up a meditation on death and sadness. It pulls off the promise of the best *Mystery Show* episodes: that a deep and searing humanity lurks behind even the most seemingly innocuous interactions.*—Jason Tanz*
- 04This hunt for the meaning behind a confusingly-illustrated *Welcome Back, Kotter* lunchbox doesn’t work as well as some of the episodes that came before it. The mission is never succinctly defined, and—while the diversions into the finer points of the lunchbox-illustration economy are pretty fascinating—Kine’s conversations with professional wrestlers sometimes tip into the self-indulgently quirky. Still, there’s lots of fun to be had here, including *Kotter* co-creator Alan Sacks’ tale of being held at gunpoint by Phil Spector. A must-listen for any self-respecting Travolta fan.*—Jason Tanz*
- 05In the first episode, Kine introduces her listeners to her personal obsession with mysteries with a story from her friend Laura. In 2005, somewhere in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, Laura rented a videotape of *Must Love Dogs*—but when she returned the next day, VHS in hand, the store was completely shut down. Kine’s quest to solve the case of the disappearing video store takes her to the corner of Franklin and West Broadway, where the cast of a local diner help her track down the store's owner. It’s not the most compelling episode, but the details—a three-fingered man, an alleged Madonna sighting, a love of Fellini—suggest the mix of intimacy and curiosity that made *Mystery Show* so good.*—Charley Locke*
- 06The mystery of the "ILUV911" license plate, an inside joke between Kline and Miranda July, was always a precarious hook on which to hang an episode. That after many false starts, we learn in an unrecorded conversation that the plate was, in fact, attempting to communicate affection for September 11th is surprising, but not especially revelatory. The podcast's best moments are intimate disclosures from Kline's sources along the way, but in "Vanity Plate," many of the possible leads, and subsequent revelations, feel contrived. Did we ever really think the plate represented a love for 91.1 FM? Do we care that the producer's brother wins a lot of radio contests? Was the juice really worth the squeeze?*—Joseph Bien-Kahn*
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