how few episodes Larry Matthews was in. He must have only been in 5-7 episodes of the entire third season!

Here's the breakdown of appearances by Larry Mathews, by season, using the first DVD book (by Weissman and Sanders) which listed the cast by episode:

Season 1: 27 out of 30 eps
Season 2: 22 out of 32 eps
Season 3: 14 out of 32 eps
Season 4: 10 out of 32 eps
Season 5: 7 out of 32 eps

total: 80 out of 158 eps, just over half

At this rate, if the show had gone into color eps, he probably would've been dropped from the cast and Ritchie Petrie would've gone to the childhood neverland where Judy Winslow of Family Matters and Brendan Lambert of Step by Step ended up. At least he appeared in the last two eps, even though he had no new lines in The Last Chapter. Also the last ep ever rerun in primetime on Sept. 7, 1966, Go Tell the Birds and Bees, featured Ritchie. I haven't counted Richard Deacon's total of appearances, but there were probably a lot more than 80.

Thank you, that is certainly more that I thought he was in!

Does that book offer any information on how many episodes Jerry Parris was in? He seemed to be in fewer and fewer as the series progressed, probably because he was dedicating most of his time to directing.