Small Wonder: remembering the worst sitcom of the 1980s

She's fantastic! Made of plastic!

Didn't the boy end up living under a bridge?

Little gay me fucking LOVED it.

Harriett and her mother were my favorites and Eddie McClurg will always be Bonnie from next door..

You're being generous OP. Small Wonder was the worst sitcom of ALL TIME!!

Why did Vicky talk in a monotone? If they could create a robot that could do all kinds of stuff, why not give her a pleasant speaking tone? It just made the show rather far fetched.

^^THAT'S what made the show farfetched?!

I think I spent the 80s watching these non network shows on the only local channels I could get pre-cable.

Poor Vicki fell on hard times after the show.

I was kidding R6. You can't be very serious on a Small Wonder thread. Now a Facts of Life or One Day at a Time thread, those are deadly serious. 😉

Cute show but yes-far fetched like Sister Bertrille-‘’when lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag-anything can fly’’

I can’t believe it ran for 4 seasons. How many fucking plotlines could they come up with for that stupid premise?

"Small Wonder" is probably one of the most famous American sitcoms worldwide.

It was very popular in Latin America and Asia in the '80s and '90s.

The show had a good ran of 4 seasons, (96 episodes).

It hated how they kept her in the same outfit. That shit only ever makes sense in cartoons.

I preferred Out of This World.

Did the same people write the theme songs for all these syndicated sitcoms? And why was Doug McClure so broke that he did this?

The most unappealing set of child actors ever assembled.

Years ago I read that the small wonder is now a dentist or something in Colorado.

Bring it to Broadway!

Keep I'm mind that this was long before streaming. We had three networks and some trashy syndicated shows to watch.

Small Wonder, Out Of This World and Punky Brewster: a humanoid robot, an alien half-caste and an orphaned squatter on the cusp of menarche who wins the affection of a man old enough to be her grandfather.

FUN FACT: In the opening credits when Ted sits down outside his work building to eat his lunch...

Well I worked at that same building in Warner Center in the late 90s....as a phone sex operator!

I was forced to watch it as a kid

Harriet is ultra ugly

[quote]an orphaned squatter on the cusp of menarche who wins the affection of a man old enough to be her grandfather

I think I love you, r19.

I liked the one with Donna Pestcow. What was that one?

Vickie pulled Harriett’s tampon string

[quote] Small Wonder, Out Of This World and Punky Brewster

ALF was superior to all of these shows.

I remember liking the show when I was very young. I would probably hate it now.

This was definitely one of those shows that appealed just enough to kids to make it a pop culture reference to those now adult kids years later.

I absolutely loved this show as a kid.

And like R26, I'd probably hate it now too.

[quote]It hated how they kept her in the same outfit. That shit only ever makes sense in cartoons.

IIRC, they did let her start to wear other clothes by the time the show reached its final season. But someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

R28, I think they gave her an evil alter-ego (Vanessa, maybe) and she might have worn different clothes. The children cast on this show were some of the least appealing children to ever be shown on tv or film. Edie McClurg was on it for a hot minute before she moved on full time to the Hogan Family.

I had a crush on the "brother" .

[quote]

Small Wonder, Out Of This World and Punky Brewster

ALF was superior to all of these shows.

Once again, I wonder what I was watching instead, since Alf is the only one of these I remember seeing.

R12 On what fucking planet is "Small Wonder" one of the most successful shows of all time? It's barely even DL famous.

Tiffany Brissette was friends with one of my college classmates. According to Tiffany, the girl that played Harriet was a real bitch. She was jealous.

Love it.

I wouldn't know about this show without DL

Is Marla the sister of Janice Pennington from the Price is Right?

Marla was on SOAP playing a horny high school teacher screwing Scott Baio's brother.

R33 The Small Wonder robot actress appeared on The 700 Club multiple times

kissing Pat Robertson butt & trying to take away LGBT rights so who's the bitch now?

The infamous drug episode =

R36 Your childhood ruined!

R38 I can't believe you found that.

Most celebs on The 700 Club have their clips scrubbed of the internet it seems.

Good luck finding any of Kim Fields or Lisa W. 's appearances on that thing.

The boy who played the son Jamie had a pretty bad life. I wonder if he’s even still alive.

[quote] As an adult, Supiran worked in a variety of Henderson, Nevada restaurants.[1][2] In 2012 it was reported that Supiran was destitute, working as a full-time volunteer at a California homeless shelter.[1][2] Supiran claimed that a former adviser and girlfriend stole from a large trust fund that held the savings from his acting career.[1]

[quote][R12] On what fucking planet is "Small Wonder" one of the most successful shows of all time? It's barely even DL famous.

Reading comprehension skills!

I said "famous" because many people in Latin America and Asia grew up with the show in the '80s and '90s and remember it fondly.

And so do many Americans (except for the ever cynical, pessimistic, iconoclastic liberals who love to shit on everything).

Out of This World sometimes brought me to tears with her heart-to-hearts with her crystalline dad who lived on her nightstand.

[quote]R14 I hated how they kept her in the same outfit.

I thought this said, “It’s [italic]hateful [/italic]how they kept her in the same outfit,” and I was nodding my head solemnly, thinking, “Cruel and unusual punishment!”

Didn't Emily Schulman have a small role on Golden Girls in the first or second season? It's not listed on her IMDB. Am I confusing her with someone else?

R42 - I thought Laverne & Shirley was a stupid show — but Laverne’s heart-to-hearts with Frank, the two of them sitting on her twin bed, and usually including the phrase “before Ma died,” always choked me up.

r40 Can you do some searching and provide us an update?

I find Vicki the Robot to be inspiring! I act just like her.

R45 is a fag!

REBOOT!!

Oh god, please no r49

They need the work and are all still alive (though McClurg has very serious dementia).

Geez, r51. How sad. I didn't know.

Per Wiki:

[quote]In August 2022, the lawyer for the conservatorship filed court documents alleging that McClurg had been abused by a man who had befriended her, moved into her home, and become a court-approved caregiver. The documents allege the man sexually assaulted her and a police report had been filed with the LAPD. They further allege that the man tried to remove her from the state to marry her. The judge for the conservatorship granted an order of protection at hearings in September 2022.

So chances are good she won’t realize how bad the show was and would be willing to come back…!

r48 Unfunny

Harriet really left an impression, she lives in my head to this day as a reference for every annoying person in my life

For you, R55.

R46, he hasn’t posted to Twitter in a longtime and I don’t have Facebook which he posted to last week.

He’s still alive, seems to be off the streets with a fiancée, lives in L.A.. likes horse racing and hockey, and might be in a band.

The chubby little boy 👦 looked and sounded gay from outer space.

R44, I think you’re thinking of Jenny Lewis, the redheaded child actor, who played the Girl Scout who held Rose’s teddy bear for ransom.

I prefered Mr Bellbivdevoe

R15 I can't find any mention of Doug McClure on Small Wonder. He wasn't the dad. Was he in an episode?

R36- I like your description of her- The Small Wonder ROBOT 🤖 actress.

The heart to hearts on Hart to Hart touched my heart.

R61, I think he’s confusing him with Dick Christie who played the dad.

Edie McClurg was so good that the network yanked her out of this show and upgraded her to the neighbor on The Hogan Family.

I remember watching reruns of this as a kid in the mid 90s. It couldn't have been that bad of they were able to run it in syndication. Although, I thought a show needed 100 episodes at least for that.

Anyway, if I recall correctly, they tried to rework the show in the second season. Not that it helped much

[quote]Edie McClurg was so good that the network yanked her out of this show and upgraded her to the neighbor on The Hogan Family"

"Small Wonder" was not a network show. It was always in first-run syndication only.

[quote][R15] I can't find any mention of Doug McClure on Small Wonder. He wasn't the dad. Was he in an episode?

Doug McClure was on "Out of This World, " another '80s first-run syndicated show which was also being discussed here.

[quote]I remember liking the show when I was very young. I would probably hate it now.

I'm also a child of the 80s and watched all the family-friendly sitcoms back then. Different Strokes, Webster, Mr. Belvedere, Growing Pains, etc. In my adult life I can't watch three minutes of any of those shows, they were absolute garbage. Most 80s tv was just awful.

As others have said, we only had a handful of channels to choose from and there was no internet so you watched whatever was on.

Among the many countries this was shown in, it’s well known in Saudi Arabia because it was shown many years in the 80s during Ramadan as family-friendly fare.

Reading this made me think more about the show and the deeper symbolism. It’s a show in which a young girl stand-in is made by the father ostensibly perfect as a slave with no autonomy juxtaposed against a noisy, forceful neighbor. Ostensibly the dream of traditional patriarchy, the whole concept upon which most stories hang is how this perfect situation results in lots of problems and making mostly the men seem foolish.

I don’t know exactly what this means and how it relates to the show’s popularity around the world, even in cultures which don’t normally allow American immorality on broadcast television, but it’s interesting.

Thats it. Thank you r59!

To the bastards who mentioned Out Of This World:

Would you like to swing on a star Carry moonbeams home in a jar And be better off than you are Or would you rather go to earth An earthling's a creature who is plain as can be He's not as unique as you or me His body comes in lots of different shapes They say his relatives were chimps and apes But if you take my advice for what it's worth You could be happy there on earth

Or would you like to swing on a star Carry moonbeams home in a jar And be better off than you are You could be swinging on a star You could be swinging on a star

Out of the World had Mistah Burt Reynolds as the voice of the alien father, so clearly it was a cut above your usual syndicated fare.

Me. Belvedere was quite good. It wasn’t your standard 80s treacly sitcom.

I also liked Just the ten of us which shit all over Growing pains, which I agree is awful.

While my peers were going gaga for Kirk Cameron and Michael J. Fox, I wanted Rob Stone from Mr. Belvedere inside me *quite* deeply

When I was a kid Mork and Mindy was the best. Didn't know anyone who didn't love it. I watched it as an adult and I just wanted to kick Robin Williams in the face. Finger bang Pam Dawber and throw the dad in a grease fire. Grammy was OK.

Can we get back to discussing what a cunt Harriet was?

Mr. Belvedre's AIDS episode. LOL

R75 He really was sexy!

[quote]I wanted Rob Stone from Mr. Belvedere inside me *quite* deeply

So did I.

I always wondered what happens to actors from mediocre syndicated shows like this. Like the cast of MAMAS FAMILY or CHARLES IN CHARGE. I’m glad that Scott Baio is floundering but what about the rest of the cast?

I always wondered why Tracy Wells aka Heather from Mr. Belevedere and Andrea Elson aka Lynn from Alf didn't have bigger careers, they were both electric performers!

To slightly tie things together, Emily Schulman (Harriet on Small Wonder) was on an episode of Mr. Belvedere. It was the one where briefly he left the Owens family for a more dysfunctional bunch. That episode aired during 1987-88, the year of Valerie Harper getting dropped from her own series, and I wonder if somebody at Belvedere was sending a veiled warning to the cast.

I'd like to personally invite Rob Stone to my private chapter of the "Happy Guys of Datalounge."

Harriet should be a DL icon. We love our cunts!

Mr. Belvedere was a subversive little comedy if you went below the surface. That family was such a fucking mess. The daughter a little whore, the oldest son who did anything for pussy, the youngest son was kind of a fruit who had a close relationship with the fruity housekeeper, and the mother who tried to stay as uninvolved as possible, and the father who cared about nobody but himself.

Harriet had a puddin bowl uni-bang.

Small Wonder was NOT better than Friends

Right on, R86! The show was able to survive in its quirky way for several years. What did it in was having to adapt once Fridays became Miller-Boyett night.

Tracy Wells is a successful real estate agent now. My friend bought his home from her a few years back and said she was incredibly nice and very professional.

The Mr. Belvedere cast from this summer.

Bryce Beckham is now just one year younger than Bob Uecker was when Mr. Belvedere started!

Looks at R91's photo ... Yup, I still want to do Rob Stone.

^ The mom hasn't changed a bit but the other 3 don't look like their tv themselves in the least.

Rob looks like that cartoon dad from that old Xmas classic (the name escapes me as I haven't seen it in ages) where the little boy mouse admits he messed up something & has to go fix it. Is it a clock? Well anyway if they ever make a live adaption of it he should try out for that role.

^ 1974's "Twas The Night Before Christmas" =

R83 And she was in Troop Beverly Hills along with the redhead who stole the teddy bear from Rose on the GGs, as she was mistaken for the Harriet character upthread.

Wow Ilene Graff from Mr. Belvedere looks fantastic! She looks younger than Tracy Wells. And like r92, I would still let Rob Stone inside of me *quite* deeply

The littlest kid on Mr Belvedere was a true fucking psychopath. I'm surprised they let the character be written that way. I mean really he was blowing shit up.

And in one episode, he used a leafblower to upskirt ladies!

Then in one episode the little psychopath is playing Lincoln in the school play. He goes up to a black kid, grabs his cupcake and says "if you give me a bite I'll free you."

Its concept was based solely on the weird fact that children like to pretend they are robots by speaking in a monotone voice.

By doing that alone, it was kind of brilliant. But I felt so sorry for the poor actors who had to play the parents. How they must have hated their lives.

My first thought during the Great DL Outage of 2024 was: "How will I survive another day with the 'Small Wonder: remembering the worst sitcom of the 1980s' thread in my life?

^^^ withOUT

Doug McClure was sexy hot.

[quote]Bryce Beckham is now just one year younger than Bob Uecker was when Mr. Belvedere started!

I'd prefer Bruce Beckham.

[quote]Doug McClure was sexy hot.

He was no Troy McClure.

Brice Beckham as Wesley was terrific! The character was a total sociopath and hilarious. Mr. Belvedere was a much better, darker sitcom then other similar family sitcoms from the era.

Wesley was hilarious!

Belvidere pissed him off so he called INS on his ass and made him get deported back to the UK.

I'm a "Down to Earth" gay myself. It has Kyle Richardson and her original nose.

Andrea Martin describes Julie Klausner in an episode of Difficult People as looking like “Harriet from Small Wonder, but as an adult” and it’s hard not to see her like that.

I just want to know who green-lighted the character of Wes and approved his weekly scripts. Though he's not as well known as other child characters he's my favorite. As R106 said he was a sociopath. The whole fucking family was damaged. It wasn't a Married With Children schlock it was something else. I wish I did but I can't think of one. Just damaged and it was hysterical. Even my mother enjoyed Wes. Wes might have been damaged from being molested

Didn't every family sitcom back then have a molestation episode where the kid almost gets diddled by some perv?

R110. OMG! Grady Fletcher from sometimes Cabot Cove, ME, touching young boys?!

we watched this in Saturday afternoons as kids. I loved Edie Mclurg even as a kid. Harriet was a bizarre stage school type actress. They kinda made it interesting.

This kitchen totally reminds me of the Golden Girls kitchen.

The mom was the teacher/fuck time partner of Jimmy Baio’s character on Soap.

They should have brought Vicki onto The Big Bang Theory as a love interest for Sheldon instead of Blossom

I always found this show creepy. The father making a doll and putting her in a Holly Hobbie dress, giving her a weird voice, then making the wife and son act like she is human and their daughter/sister-it sounds like something from a Netflix true crime documentary.

Is Jimmy Baio a MAGAT like his vile brother?

Jimmy and Scott Baio are cousins, not brothers.

Wow. Even a Small Wonder thread turns into a Trump thread.

Marla Pennington played an 80s suburban housewife to a tee on Small Wonder. Reminds me of the room moms I had in elementary school.

Harriett was my favorite. Extremely ugly and bitchy.