(art by Aireen Arellano - to view larger version, click here)

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SHOW: Small Wonder
EPISODE: “Vicki’s Homecoming”
FIRST AIRED:  Sept. 07, 1985

Delving into the history of syndicated television is like bargain hunting in a shady thrift store that smells like week-old meat, but offers shelves of tchotchkes that hum with novelty and history.   Syndicated programming, which thrives in the off-hours of daytime and late night, has served as company to countless insomniacs, waiting room wanderers, stay-at-home parents, nursing home denizens, kids home with the flu, and dorm room loafers. 

It’s the exact opposite of appointment television because it’s not designed to be talked about or, in some cases, even watched.   While some of these shows, sold to local TV stations on an individual basis as opposed to broadcast networks, have been cultural touchstones – Baywatch, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy! tops among the examples - most are produced just to provide content, to fill the hours, and, simply put, to be there. 

Small Wonder was a gross and freaky syndication mainstay from 1985 to 1989.  Many viewers alive during that time can probably remember watching some Small Wonder episode sometime somewhere, as hazy as the specifics might be.  Revisiting the show in the harsh light of modern day, the best and worst of the show come back into sharp focus.  Vicki the Robot was a cute oddity, the sloppy and weird character dynamics made for some strange implications, and the terrible jokes burned right through the bottom of the sitcom barrel.  The biggest tragedy of the show is that, had the creators assumed that intelligent beings were actually watching and following the show, it could have been much more than the sum of its microchips here and there.

Small Wonder’s pilot, entitled “Vicki’s Homecoming,” introduces us to the Lawson family: Ted, his wife Joan, and their son Jamie, all of whom seem as if their auditions started and ended with being picked out of a Sears catalog.   Joan is a blonde housewife who fixes dinner while wearing a belted polyblend jumpsuit, because that’s how they did things in the 1980s. Jamie comes home from school and declares, “Man cannot live by education alone,” and other things that no 10-year-old human would utter.

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Jamie expresses his desire to have friends.  The nosy girl next door, Harriet, is a cloying busybody, so Jamie hates her.  Joan alludes to the possibility of she and Ted having another child, but Jamie says, “That’s what you keep saying, but I don’t think you’re really working on it,” which is unsettling because he just made a veiled critique on his parents’ sex life.

Ted comes home carrying a case of what looks like human body parts.   “It’s a computerized robot!” he proclaims, for anyone in the audience who might have suspected it was an organically grown robot.   Ted works at “United Robotronics,” which has got to be a front company for offshore money laundering or something because 1.) “Robotronics,” and 2.) Ted was somehow able to build a whole robot without anyone noticing, not even the accounting department.

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Ted has brought the robot home because his boss refused to endorse the project. Maybe it’s because Ted has, for reasons that remain disturbingly unexplained, made the robot resemble a tiny human girl. He calls it a Voice Input Child Identicant  - 3.) “Identicant” – because it can be operated by voice command.  He achieves this by typing “RESPOND TO VOICE COMMAND” into a computer.  (Yep!)

Excitedly, Ted posits about how it could revolutionize the care and education industries by making robots into our servants and teachers.   He asks his wife if he can continue working on it at home, and she responds, “I’d be relieved if you were here at home. I’d know what kind of doll you were working on nights,” putting the Freudian implications of the show’s central concept on red alert.  It’s such a twisted joke that even the compliant studio audience laughs with marked hesitation.  

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Ted places the finishing touches on his little girl robot by placing her in her iconic red and white frock, which looks like an Easter outfit from 1952.  He calls her Vicki and introduces the walking talking thing to his wife and son.  Vicki speaks in monotone and has the dead-eyed stare of a demon wildebeest.  In what can only be considered the fruit of meticulous writers’ research, Ted explains that “its eyes are solar cells, and its brain is a data-flow processor using wafer-scale integration with a data pad soaked into a self-organizing systonic array processor!” The writers also double-down on the ickiness when Ted sprays his wife’s perfume onto his new “daughter.”

Jamie immediately takes Vicki under his wing.   He teachers her how to clean and cook and keeps her locked up in his toy cabinet, ensuring that the show follows in the footsteps of I Dream of Jeannie, in that the mystical female character is somehow the most powerful in terms of physical capabilities, but also the dumbest and most subservient.    Ted instructs his family to keep the existence of Vicki a secret, so when Harriet spots her, Jamie tells her Vicki’s his cousin. 

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Meanwhile, Jamie gets Vicki to prepare breakfast in bed for his parents as a wedding anniversary gift to them, but it backfires when she throws the tray of foodstuffs all over Ted and Joan.  In a bit of false plot complication, this somehow gets Jamie in trouble with his parents, so to redeem himself, he goes to a department store to find a present.  Vicki follows him to the store, and she ends up trapped in a storeroom. Using her brute android strength (and some help from the conspicuous props department), she barrels through the door and Jamie and her flee.  They arrive home and Jamie makes up with his parents. The episode ends with Jamie admonishing Vicki and then apologizing to her (even though she’s a robot).

Adhering to the same storytelling stock and trade as Mork & Mindy, ALF, and other sitcoms in which human normals are beset by a fantasy creature, much of the pratfalls and hijinks come from Vicki’s misunderstanding of human ways, literalizations of human expressions, and the mortals’ determination to keep her existence a secret from outsiders.  Those old comedy workhorses are decent hooks to hang the story on, but Small Wonder didn’t have to be so basic and antiquated in its overall approach of style and tone. The theme song, punctuated with singers vocalizing a trifle-y string of “La la la”s and plagued by schmaltzy lyrics and instrumentation, must have sounded aggressively dated even in 1985.  The actors are dreadfully directed: each line is delivered as if trying to reach an audience seated five acres away.  

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In an irony of ironies, on the show about a robot learning to be human, all of the humans act as if they were robots learning to be human.   As Vicki the Robot, Tiffany Brissette is as guilty of shameless mugging as anyone else on the show, but at least she has a good excuse.  For obvious reasons, her acting approach is the only display of artifice that comes off as charming. Small Wonder, despite its odious nature, has a decent cult following to this day, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to declare that Brissette is solely responsible for the fact that this show is beloved or even remembered at all.

Small Wonder is billed as “sci-fi” on IMDb, something that might cause a virtual aneurysm in anyone who knows what “sci-fi” is short for.  Still, in terms of thought experimentation and philosophizing that the best of sci-fi offers, Small Wonder had a decent starting point. Hell, Ted poses some of the most basic but endlessly compelling questions brought on by the idea of artificial intelligence: “Can it be programmed to have human values and emotions, or even human faults?” he wonders about his creation. 

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The concept also stokes ideas of humankind’s desire to create objects in its own likeness, the role of males in birthing and parenthood, how technology rules the domestic sphere, or the timeless mythological Pinnochio-esque yearning to become “real.”  Needless to say, the show never explored any of these topics with any substantial fortitude.

As a fantasy lark, did it have to? Of course not, but its premise was so tantalizing and memorable that it would have been nice to see it pay off some of that storytelling potential.  It might seem strange to dredge up a forgotten show like Small Wonder from the bowels of the 1980s just to put it on trial, but it’s worth examining how far sitcoms have come in terms of quality, especially in the fantasy genre.  Much has been writ about how sophisticated American television and its audiences have become these days, but sadly Small Wonder has no such grown-up modern counterpart. 

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Previously corny subgenres like the workplace sitcom, the nighttime soap opera, or the police drama now have mature and artistic representatives in the TV canon, but the same can’t be said for the live action sci-fi/fantasy comedy, despite a long line of ancestry that dates back to Mr. Ed.  Though syndicated programming is still a staple of modern TV, media execs can no longer make the assumption that no one is watching.  Viewers who would appreciate a mind-bending mix of smart comedy and smarter sci-fi are still waiting for that small wonder. Until then, they’ll have to make do with Small Wonder. 

~ C.J. Arellano

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About the Art: I had fond memories of this show growing up. The passing of time and the recognition of a creepy premise can really change things! When I think of Vicki, I think of her wide, dead, glassy eyes and blank, plastic stare. I made her pupils smaller than usual to create a more penetrating expression. I added a dramatic gradient in the background to make the piece more menacing. Say hello to Vicki in your nightmares!

~ Aireen Arellano