Monday, December 1, 2008

Syndicated: Small Wonder


If you ever want to end an argument that society as a whole may be getting dumber, just blurt out the sentence "Small Wonder ran for four seasons!". That's it, game over, nobody can come back from that.

What is Small Wonder you ask? You're a lucky person if you don't know. It's a curious throwback to the 1960's and the concept of "My Living Doll" where an inventor builds a robot and then sort of adopts it. In this case, Ted Lawson builds an android that looks like a little girl in order to sell it as a servant (That's not all creepy) and then decides to keep it as the daughter he never had.

The Lawson family always run the risk of being caught mostly because VICI talks and acts just like a robot. The big danger is Ted's next door neighbor and boss, Brandon Brindle, their daughter Harriet is truly the most frightening child ever seen on TV.

The whole show is just surreal, you'd swear it was created recently to be a back story on "Arrested Development" or something but you can't make this shit up. It used to play on Saturday mornings in my area, which probably was wise considering children are the only people that could possibly be placated by this.

The show never explained why the VICI bot was getting taller but then again Star Trek never explained why data suddenly had a gut either....


2 comments:

rob! said...

i always found the show horribly creepy, glad i never bothered to watch more than a few seconds of any given episode.

wee67 said...

I can't believe I missed the Small Wonder entry. It is, IMHO, THE worst sitcom in the history of television!

Like Rob, I always felt there was something really wrie and wrong with this show, but somehow that always brought me back. I'd watch a few minutes, be repulsed and turn it off. However, every time I came across it, I'd sit and watch it for a few more minutes until that disturbing feeling came about.