All The Following Is From Memory
She’ll enchant you at first sight
She’s a small wonder and she’ll make your heart take flight
Out Of This World had a mayor character who was proud to have starred in the television show Mosquito Man.
Vici=Voice Input Child Identicate
A later model (Vera?) was supposed to have improved emotions or something but was instead an evil twin.
At the time, I also couldn’t understand why Jamie wasn’t either having sex with Vicki or using her to commity petty crimes.
Didn’t she have a control a panel on her torso that was accessed by lifting up her blouse? And didn’t her “brother” basically order her around like a slave?
Methinks the writers should sue Aqua for “Barbie Girl.” After all, it had a similar line.
I’ll tell you what was wrong with that show: How many girls that age, at that time, were actually named Vicki? That alone would have made me suspicious, were I these people’s neighbor. I was in my late teens when this show was on, and every Vicki I ever knew was at least ten years older than me. The name was completely generation-inappropriate for the character.
Interestingly, one reviewer of the show felt that the reason she was so good as the robot was because she was a lousy actress.
Jamie actually spent a lot of time teaching her things ranging from basic human concepts to teenage culture and slang.
He never took her to the kwik e mart and had her use her superspeed to steal junkfood and then back to the treehouse for sexual favors as a real boy would have done.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed it’s that what I consider good acting doesn’t seem to jibe with a lot of other people.
Anyhoo, those were my thoughts from 20 years ago, and I may have a different view if seen again today.
It was corny. It was silly. It was contrived. Like a lot of sitcoms. Never felt any need to single any one out.
Heck, at least it wasn’t utterly obnoxious, which puts it way ahead of the likes of Men Behaving Badly.
Never remembered all these sexual subtexts, but I wasn’t looking for them.
True. There are actually some people who like Pauly Shore.
I have never seen Small Wonder - only a clip or two, but it sounds pretty bad.
I am amazed that I have never seen a single episode of this show. I’ve been a lifelong TV junkie, and I was of the right age to possibly want to tune in. What was its time slot? Perhaps it was up against something I liked better.
Incidentally, here’s a website which, uh, talks about the show’s lesbian subtext: http://www.dyxploitation.nu/issue5/SmallW.html
For those who were wondering, yes that article is a parody. The cited plots never happened, and Small Wonder included neither cutting edge satire nor state of the art special effects.
But if you do want a show that almost did have that kind of curtting edge satire, check out Marmalade Atkins, starring the late and sadly missed Charlotte Coleman. It was an amazingly edgy show in the guise of harmless childrens’ fare.
Well, there is one bright spot. The show inspired this song by The Vandals.
“She’s not human, no Vicky
no Vicky noooooo”