Rewatch/Rewind: The creepiest episode of "Small Wonder"
It's a tough call, but an episode combining a PSA with gags about child robots witnessing adult sex takes the prize.
The internet loves a good fan theory, especially in science fiction. Because it’s science fiction, any nonsense is possible, and it only takes a small amount of mental pretzeling to apply it. Thanks to its multiple ambiguous endings, a particularly popular movie for fan theorizing is Blade Runner. Deckard is a replicant! Deckard isn’t a replicant! Deckard has Gaff’s memories! It’s all a fantasy! It exists in the same universe as the Alien movies! It’s all inside the mind of an autistic child!
Even I have my own theory: in an earlier script for Blade Runner, it’s mentioned that five Replicants escaped to Earth from the Off-World Colonies: Roy, Pris, Zhora, Leon, and a third female whose fate was unknown. A later version of the script identified her as “Mary,” a Replicant designed for housework duties. Though a small amount of test footage was filmed using Mary, she was eventually dropped from the final script altogether. However, consider the possibility that Mary fled Los Angeles, where she was found by an engineer/inventor who wiped her memories and reset her programming, so she must learn how to act like a human again. Then he changed her name and took her home to his family, where she was treated alternately like a daughter and a servant, while her true identity is kept a secret from the outside world.
Now, that may sound ridiculous, but is it really any more so than the plot of Small Wonder, in which a man invents a child robot that can be taught to act, think, and feel like a human, then goes to extreme lengths to keep this astonishing advancement in artificial intelligence a secret, for no discernible reason other than the plot declared it?
Small Wonder is the rare TV show that implausibly became a minor hit, while being fondly remembered by exactly zero people1. Having since watched the aforementioned Blade Runner, Westworld, Ex Machina, and other movies/TV shows that explore the moral implications of humans interacting with human-like androids, what used to be merely a no-budget sitcom on a third-tier network, a strange blip in 80s pop culture at the most, is now a blood-curdling experience to revisit.
Tiffany Brissette plays Vicki, the small wonder in question, and the creation of Ted Lawson (Dick Gautier), who is somehow both an engineering genius and a hapless boob at the same time. The rest of the Lawson Family includes Ted’s wife, Joan (Marla Pennington), and preteen son Jamie (Jerry Supiran), who gets at least as much screen time as Vicki, and is at least half as charming. Though Vicki is designed for housework, she possesses superhuman strength, and can do things like make her head spin around. She even occasionally exhibits some X-Men abilities, such as being able to change her size, and generate enough electricity to restart someone’s heart.
Much of the “humor” in Small Wonder comes from Vicki’s blank countenance and flat, affectless voice, which she uses mostly to repeat whatever she hears, usually at “hilariously” inappropriate times. If that’s not enough to shatter your funny bone, she also takes everything said to her literally, such as responding to an order to “knock it off” by raising her fist in a threatening manner. Now, you’d think that, given that Vicki exhibits superhuman strength, yet doesn’t understand simple commands like “throw the water out,” perhaps Ted would have done a little more fine-tuning in the lab, if for no other reason than so she doesn’t accidentally kill someone. But no, that kitchen floor isn’t gonna mop itself, so young Vicki is stuck being the world’s smallest maid, with a mother figure who treats her with barely concealed distaste, and a brother looking to cash in on her unique abilities.
Small Wonder immediately poses far more questions than it ever attempts to answer. If the idea of bringing Vicki into their home was so that she would gradually learn to act like a real child, why is she forced into indentured servitude? Why did it take three seasons before she got a change of clothing? Why do the Lawsons treat having a robot child, an invention that could make them billionaires, with the kind of embarrassed secrecy one would treat an illegitimate teenage pregnancy?
Though the plots of Small Wonder grew increasingly absurd over four seasons, involving hypnosis, ghosts, fake earthquakes, rogue computer programs, evil twin robots, and a guest appearance by Jesse “the Body” Ventura, they still resorted to the occasional Very Special Episode, in which Vicki learns about homelessness, missing children, and, of course, the dangers of drugs, even though a robot wouldn’t need to worry about drugs. In season 2’s “Chewed Out,” the ubiquitous “just say no” propaganda is overshadowed by a horrifying B-plot.
Jamie and his friend, Reggie, grumble about how, as seventh graders, they’re treated like babies at school, and decide that the best thing they can do to be seen as more mature is start smoking. That goes about as well as you would expect (even Vicki tries it, blowing smoke out of her ears instead of her mouth), but their efforts are all for naught anyway, when popular ninth grader Peter Watson (special guest star Adam Rich, God rest his soul) informs them that cigarettes are no longer cool, replaced in favor of chewing tobacco. Jamie and Reggie, who seem willing to cut off their thumbs if that’s what it takes to win Peter’s approval, go along with what he says, and immediately take up chaw instead.
The usual stumbling around to keep what they’re doing a secret from the adults is mostly forgotten once you get to the bone-chilling secondary plot. In keeping with the already unsettling premise of the show, during nighttime hours Vicki is stored in a cabinet in Jamie’s bedroom. Jamie, ever the astute observer, complains that Vicki “looks and smells like a girl,” and doesn’t want her in there anymore. When Ted suggests that the cabinet be moved into his and Joan’s room, Joan bafflingly replies “That could be fun!” Later that night, despite Vicki’s presence in their bedroom (and despite her stating that she can see and hear them even from inside the cabinet), Ted tries to get it on with Joan, who is, understandably, perturbed at this abhorrent idea, and suggests that they watch an old movie instead. A puzzled, disappointed, and annoyed Ted shouts “Borrrrrring!” in response.
Let me reiterate: Ted is perfectly willing to have sex while the child robot he created (and occasionally treats like a daughter when he isn’t ordering her to polish the silverware) is standing there watching, and irritated when Joan refuses. This is played for laughs on a family sitcom.
A whole half a day after adopting his disgusting new habit, Jamie is caught and agrees to give it up. The next day, he announces to Ted and Joan that he’s learned his lesson, after finding out that Peter Watson was diagnosed with mouth cancer. The family spends approximately twenty seconds in somber reflection over the tragedy of a young life cut short, before Vicki comes in and announces that she’s moved her cabinet back into Jamie’s room, at Joan’s instruction. “Joanie, you animal!” Ted leers, to which Vicki yells “Borrrrrrrring!” The episode ends with poor doomed Peter Watson forgotten in favor of the news that Ted and Joan can fuck in peace again.
I knew that revisiting Small Wonder wasn’t going to be an easy task. Things you don’t recall as being good the first time around rarely improve upon a second viewing, and certainly not years later. Everything about the show, from its idiotic plot to its saccharine theme song to its 99-cent store special effects makes it seem like a parody of itself, like something you’d see on Adult Swim. The adult actors are useless, and the child actors play their roles with the cheerful desperation that can only come from having overbearing stage parents standing behind the camera staring daggers at them.
I suppose I knew, even watching it as an adolescent, that there was something very weird about the gender politics of designing a little girl android whose primary purpose was to be a maid, while staying young and cute forever. Looking back now as a shrill, middle-aged feminist, I’m pretty sure that Howard Leeds, the creator of Small Wonder, must have been dealing with some dark shit in his head when it came to women. Even if he hadn’t already created a show with a similar premise years earlier (only that time the robot was a sexy adult woman played by Julie Newmar), it would still be apparent. Like Neil Labute2, instead of working out said issues on a therapist’s couch, he got a bag of money to inflict them on an unwitting audience instead.
Not that anyone comes off well in this, but it’s the female characters who fare particularly poorly. First you have Vicki, a technological miracle reduced to being a docile servant (while dressed like a child half her age). Then you have nagging, sarcastic Joan, obnoxious and meddling next-door neighbor Mrs. Brindle (who thankfully doesn’t appear in this episode), and, perhaps the most oogy character in the whole series, Mrs. Brindle’s daughter, Harriet, a disturbingly thirsty 11 year-old who aggressively lies to, manipulates, and bullies Jamie, for the sole purpose of getting him to go out with her. Rather than someone simply sitting down with Harriet and explaining to her what “no” means, she is humiliated, again and again, to the audience’s apparent delight. If these are the people from whom Vicki is supposed to learn what it means to be human, perhaps she’d have been better off being “retired” too.
If you meet anyone who claims they genuinely liked it, they too might be a robot, and you should proceed with caution.
I can’t promise you much with this newsletter, but I can guarantee that it’s the only one that mentions both Neil Labute and Small Wonder in the same paragraph.
Sorry to bump this but it was actually Dick Christie as Ted. Dick Gautier did play Hymie the Robot on Get Smart.
I remember this show and stayed clear. It did not look good to me back in the day. Sounds like I made the right choice...creepy!