Some heroes fight crime with super powers or guns. As Officer George Frankly on the long-running PBS series “Mathnet,� Joe Howard did it with exponential powers and puns.

Starring as the crime-solving mathematician on the “Dragnet� parody that concluded each episode of “Square One TV� from 1987-1994, the Yonkers native reportedly beat out “Saturday Night Live� alumnus Phil Hartman for the part. A year after “Mathnet� closed its final case, Howard moved with his wife into a Sherman Oaks, Calif., house previously owned by “Curb Your Enthusiasm� star Larry David.

Throughout the 58-year-old actor’s career, Howard has worked steadily in film, television and more than 100 commercials. In the process, he shared scenes with Academy Award winners Ben Kingsley in “House of Sand and Fogâ€? and Anthony Hopkins in “The World’s Fastest Indian.â€? Despite this credibility, he graciously accepted a phone interview with Suburbarazzi last week.

• Since Children’s Television Workshop was the creative force behind both “Sesame Street” and “Square One TV,” you’ve said on SquareOneTV.org that your wife Sharon thought you had an edge getting hired for “Mathnetâ€? because you “look like a Muppet when (you) grin.â€? Did she really say that?

That’s true…. I figured there was some kind of subliminal thing going there that they couldn’t resist.

• Was the calculator holster uncomfortable?

That was a standard police holster and it was quite comfortable. In fact, I’m kind of kicking myself I didn’t ask them if I could keep it. (But) the calculator itself was just one of these little cheesy things that you could buy in any Staples store. I used to think, talking to myself, “What a cheesy prop this is.”

Learn about Joe Howard’s off-screen friendship with “Saved By The Bell’s” Mr. Belding and on-screen family bonds after the break!

(Photo courtesy of Joe Howard.)

• So, Glock did not manufacture the calculator you used.

No, Glock did not manufacture the calculator. I remember when we did “The Map with a Gap” episode — our Western one — they put a little loop on it, which they put on with some hot glue, so I could twirl the thing into my holster. … The first big, big job that I got in New York was a (Western) musical that was supposed to go to Broadway, and one of the reasons they hired me for it was because I could fast-draw and twirl a Colt 45. So when they did they did “The Map with a Gap” scene, I said, “Well, let me see if I can twirl my calculator and do a fancy thing with the holster,” so they put that on camera and got a big kick out of that. But I remember thinking, “Here I am: I’m finally on a Western on television – and I got a calculator (for a gun).” I mean, geez.

• My favorite George Frankly quote involved you on the phone with a caller the audience couldn’t hear. In between pauses, you said, “Who? Scarlett? No, this isn’t Kate. It’s Frankly, Scarlett, and I don’t give a —� only to be cut off by your on-screen partner just in time to keep the PBS censors happy. What’s your favorite “Mathnet� line?

It’s not necessarily my favorite, but one that pops into my mind: After I said it on the show, the producer used to say it when he was on the set because he thought it was a really funny line: ‘It’s better to know news than not know news, even if we know the news is not nice.’ And there was (another) line that I always liked; it was banter before we got into the meat of the episode. It was Pat Tuesday (Toni DiBuono) who came in and said, ‘I’m going to the Museum of Natural History.’ And I turned to her and said, ‘I’ve been there. I saw a dinosaur. It was dead.’ That was one of my favorites.

• You once said that you were once confronted by “three people in black leather, chains, green spiked hair, and piercings� who wound up being “Mathnet� fans and “could not have been sweeter.� How do you think those fans were applying math concepts?

Well you know, that’s hard to say. [Laughs.] … The whole point of the show was to basically change kids’ attitudes about math – not so much to teach them a lot about math, but to make the concepts that were being put forward fun and interesting and to show that (they) are related to daily life.

• What’s it like living in Larry David’s old house?

I hadn’t realized at the time that when we bought this house (12) years ago, it had belonged to Larry David. He had apparently bought this house in 1990, moved away in ’92 – I guess when “Seinfeldâ€? took off – and was renting it out for a while, and we bought it in ’95. … The place he had used for his office, which is sort of a studio, I presume was where “Seinfeld” was created. So we’re living in sort of a historical landmark here.

• Since the ’70s, you’ve been friends with Dennis Haskins, who played Principal Richard Belding on “Saved By The Bell.� How’d you meet?

Dennis Haskins and I used to see each other on commercial auditions all the time. So, I knew him on a casual basis for quite some time, and then I guess shortly after I started doing “Mathnet,� he started doing “Saved By The Bell.� I remember bumping into him after “Mathnet� was over … and he was talking about his show and we were comparing notes. He was in a much higher-profile show, but the thing that was common to us was that doing a show like that is that it doesn’t really have any impact on the casting consciousness that’s out here in Los Angeles. These kinds of shows are just kind of seen as paychecks by the agency representing the actors involved. But the damnable thing is that you really can’t use it to get into prime time. But the young actors in “Saved By The Bell,� a lot of them have done quite well for themselves. … My son (actor Jeremy Howard) is the magic age (25). He was all set to go to college (in 1999) and he went in for two auditions with his agent and booked both jobs for a total of six or seven months’ work, and college just went out the window and he’s been working ever since.

• Speaking of your son, the two of you appeared in completely different television episodes of “My Name is Earl� and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.� And both of you joined your wife playing completely unrelated roles in the 1992 Charlton Heston TV movie, “Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232.� If you had your pick, name another show in which you and other members of your family could appear.

Oh my gosh. That’s kind of a hard question; I’m not even up all that much on television. “Lost� is one of the few series that I actually follow. That’d be a fun series to be on with all the disparate characters on there. It would certainly be easy to cast all of the members of my family without a stretch.