This pilot for Odd Squad was originally conceptualized in 2012 and was filmed in New York City. Originally in the hands of Inner Dog Productions and 400th Town Productions, the pilot was eventually released on the website of PBS before it was greenlit and turned into a full series. Jaden Michael, the actor for Agent Otto, released the pilot on his YouTube channel in 2015 before it became private a few years later. The plot of the pilot would later end up being retooled into the episode "Zero Effect".
After a brisk walk outside, where Agent Olive introduces herself and Agent Otto, they return to the office of their boss, Ms. O, who informs them that the giant ball of gum situated in the center of town has been shrunken down to a single inch. Oscar, an agent who serves as her assistant, then shows them footage of the crime's aftermath, where citizens are shown distraught over what happened. Within the midst of the panic, the owner of a new ice cream shop puts himself on camera to advertise his business, but Oprah tells Oscar to shut off the video before he can get very far. With a hunch in mind, Olive and Otto set out to solve the case.
They arrive at the lemonade stand of Polly Graph, a young lemonade stand owner who is the go-to gal for everything happening within the town. After she accepts Otto's invitation to his birthday party, she explains that she hasn't made much money, and Olive informs her that the price of her lemonade has gone down from 50 cents to only 5 cents, stating that zeroes are disappearing all over town.
Olive and Otto go back to Ms. O's office, who, along with Oscar, teaches them about number hogs and the harm they can do. Otto then comes to the horrid realization that if the number hog is not confronted and the zeroes are not returned — including the one that disappears from his invitation — he'll age downwards and become a one-year-old infant. Olive asks Ms. O if she has a number hog finder, but instead, she gives them the name of one person that might be able to help.
That person? Baby Genius, who is very knowledgeable and can retrieve items no one else in town can get, but is feared along with the nanny that helps him get around in his stroller. With a bag of items in tow, Olive and Otto try to bargain with the Brainy Baby for clues on how to find the number hog using items ranging from a squeaky bunny toy to pocket lint. Eventually, Otto gives up his invitation, which pleases the baby and allows him to give the duo a baby bottle full of milk as well as a message telling them where to go: walk 8 feet, turn right, then walk 9 feet. They follow the instructions to a T, measuring their footsteps as they go, and wind up back at Polly Graph's lemonade stand. The girl is quickly accused of being the number hog, to which she insists she isn't, and both Olive and Otto quickly realize that they misread the directions, which lacked any zeroes.
Wanting to figure out the real directions, they head to the Mathroom and figure out that they were supposed to walk 800 feet, turn right, and then walk 900 feet to the new ice cream shop opening up in town. In addition, they are able to pinpoint the number hog as being the owner seen previously in the footage Oscar showed them, and quickly go to confront him and retrieve the zeroes on his sign. The owner expresses guilt over his act of oddness, and after Otto returns the zeroes to where they belong, he asks how he can get customers.
Luckily, Olive decides to make it the locale for Otto's birthday party, which helps drum up business. During the festivities, she gives Otto a few gifts. The first one is a pacifier, something she defends by saying that she wasn't sure they were going to solve the case. The second one, on the other hand, is a new tie, which he is much more elated about as he pulls her into a hug and thanks her. Oscar, walking to Otto's party with a present in tow, then spots a cluster of peanuts in the sky, and immediately contacts Ms. O to let her know.
Tropes:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Otto is having his tenth birthday, and he and Olive must find and defeat a number hog who inadvertently sucks up the zero from his invitation.
- The Alcoholic: It's implied that Oprah is this, just as she is in the series, going by how she orders Oscar to give her juice.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: One woman at the scene of the crime is distraught that the ball of gum has shrunken to one inch. A distraught mail carrier then points out the sign, which now reads "1-inch tall ball of gum". And then a new business owner pops up to ruin the mood and advertise his business.
- Big "NO!": Otto does this when Olive tells Polly that the zeroes are disappearing across town.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Otto doesn't trust fish solely on the basis that they're slimy and they have the same puckered-up face. He also is under the belief that they stole all the zeroes.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Every main character has a differing design from their series counterpart.
- Olive's outfit is predominantly gray instead of navy. While keeping the white undershirt, she has a gray jacket and a gray skirt with black tights underneath, as well as gray shoes. She also dons a red-and-blue-striped tie, and has long straight hair instead of a corkscrew ponytail.
- Otto's outfit is mostly the same, bar the differing gray color of his jacket and pants, his red-and-blue tie, black sneakers, and afro.
- Oscar has the same outfit as Otto, only he keeps his jacket open and his tie looser. His glasses are also rounder.
- Ms. O has the most differing design of all — purple glasses, a light purple undershirt (her undershirt is a darker purple in the series), a black button-up jacket with one button secured and a pink rose brooch attached, pearl earrings, and a ponytail instead of a bun.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The seal for Odd Squad is vastly different, featuring coils instead of bananas, a part of its mission statement at the bottom, and six stars instead of the usual sixteen.
- Instead of agents using badge phones and gadgets, they carry one singular rectangular device that can be used as walkie-talkies, can grab objects and release them, and can produce holograms.
- The Mathroom is depicted as a computer in a gritty-looking warehouse room rather than a fortune teller in a paper world.
- Instead of Tube Travel, Olive and Otto get to where they need to go by placing their badges on various "ODD SQUAD" boxes situated across town. Presumably, this is also how they can enter the Mathroom, since badge phones are nonexistent, although it's not shown.
- Oscar is an agent in the same vein as Olive and Otto, and appears to function as Ms. O's personal assistant. The series had him serve as Ms. O's assistant a couple times, but otherwise strictly stuck to his role as a Scientist and the Lab Director in Headquarters.
- When Polly Graph shows off her pie graph asking people what flavors of pie they like, Olive doesn't do so much as flinch, whereas in the series, Olive would have had more of a reaction to it due to her Absurd Phobia being pies.
- The pilot's setting is in a small town in America, as opposed to the series' setting of Toronto. Similarly, the pilot was filmed in New York City, while the show is filmed in Toronto for the first two seasons.
- Here, Olive is more stoic, Ms. O is shown to be less of a Bad Boss, and Oscar isn't as klutzy. Olive and Otto in particular are also not Determinators here, with Olive stating that she gave Otto a pacifier for his birthday because she honestly wasn't sure they were going to solve the case.
- Baby Genius, along with Rivka (who goes unnamed here), set up shop in a residential driveway and in broad daylight rather than a dark warehouse hallway. They're also shown to be far more malicious here, to the point where they mark their debuts by Rivka running the stroller directly over the neck of a teddy bear.
- Uniforms for both male and female agents are shown. The series has one gender-neutral uniform for all Investigation agents, with distinct uniforms being for those in the Management department only.
- Polly Graph is shown to be the town's resident know-it-all when it comes to current events and happenings in addition to a Young Entrepreneur. In the series proper, she's just the latter, although she keeps her intelligence.
- A new ice cream shop owner is found to be the number hog and advertises his business via footage from the aftermath of a robbery. The series changes the character to a cupcake shop owner named Glenn, who is selling numerous flavors of cupcakes and goes directly to Headquarters to advertise to Olive, Otto and Ms. O.
- Ms. O has a computer on a stand that she uses to display footage, rather than the computer she has built into her office in the series which she controls with a do-it-all remote.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: A few shots of Oprah from the side reveal that she is sitting in some kind of booster seat to prop herself up in her office chair — quite a contrast from her series counterpart, who doesn't have any assistive objects for her height.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Inverted. Olive is taller than Otto here, to the point where she has to bend down to make proper eye contact with him when he begins to launch into a Heroic BSoD.
- Little Miss Snarker: Oprah isn't a deadpan snarker, but she still has plenty of snark to give nonetheless.Olive: Ms. O, do you have a number hog finder?Oprah: What does this look like, a number hog finder store?
- Number Obsession: A number hog is someone who is obsessed with a certain number, so much so that they start to suck up all of that number. The owner of the new ice cream shop advertises it by saying it'll have "one million billion trillion" flavors, and his drive to deliver on that claim starts sucking up every single zero in town.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Olive has a slight New York accent that tends to only crop up at certain times. Justified by the fact that her actress, Isabela Moner, was born in Cleveland, Ohio and not anywhere in New York.
- Opening Narration: The pilot opens with Olive introducing herself and Otto, and explaining the concept of Odd Squad as an organization to the audience.
- Percussive Therapy: In order to stop the ice cream shop owner and retrieve the zeroes, Otto lunges for the sign only a mere few seconds after he flashes his badge at him and begins to tear it down, much to Olive's surprise as she backs up and watches him wrestle with it. As with Olive in the series, it's a rather out-of-character moment for him, as he's not shown being aggressive at any other point.
- Proper Tights with a Skirt: Olive's uniform is like this, with a gray skirt (to match her gray jacket) and black stockings.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Ms. O keeps a pair of glasses around her neck, but she doesn't seem to rely on them too much for seeing, as she's shown without them in one scene and wears them in another.
- Toilet Humor: Just like in the show, the "Mathroom/bathroom" pun is used and exploited, with Olive telling Otto that she has to go to the Mathroom.
- Will Not Tell a Lie: When confronted about being the number hog, Polly Graph pulls up an empty graph that shows all the times she's ever lied. All it has on it is an X and a Y to mark the X-axis and the Y-axis.
