Small Wonder
When genius cybernetics engineer Ted Lawson brings home his top-secret invention, a Voice Input Child Identicant or V.I.C.I., life becomes anything but mechanical for the Lawson Family. With his boss and his nosy family living next door, Ted, his wife Joan and their son Jamie must pass Vicki off as a real child. It is easy for Joan, who cannot help doting on her like a daughter, but harder for precocious Jamie, who uses Vicki to do his homework and to ward off Harriet, the annoying redheaded girl next door.
Prompted by Ted and his class to get his school reading assignment going, Jamie videos a book report based on a 1940s P.I. named Rick Savage.
On their first day in junior high, Vicki becomes a hall monitor and Jamie tries to avoid Harriet for a dance while vying for a class fox. Meanwhile, Ted prepares to host a cybernetics conference.
L.E.S. is back, and despite Ted's assurances that the rogue A.I. program has been rendered harmless, it comes back in a big way by possessing Vicki's body (chassis?) as its own.
The Lawsons enter a game show to get back at the Brindles for trying to kick them off the eligibility list.
Jamie and Vicki are arrested for spray-painting a wall -- and its owner's $60 shirt.
To keep his company's presence in an Arab country, Ted lets its visiting young ruler draft Vicki into his harem.
Joan's doctor father drops by to visit and Ida Mae smells a plump husband. Meanwhile, Vicki vies for school cheerleader.
A digestion feedback problem with Vicki's polynucleotide processor generates nitrous oxide gas that brings laughs to anyone near her, but not to Vicki herself -- just as Ted's boss is about to visit about lay-offs.
While playing with Jamie's chemistry set, Vicki creates a potent laundry detergent that Ted -- and Brandon -- leap to market themselves.
Ted, Jamie and Reggie go macho on an all-male fishing trip-- tailed by a slighted and competitive bevy: Joan, Vicki and Harriet.
Fly-shy Brandon bribes the Lawsons' company to fly with him on a company job on a plane that is hijacked for Cuba.
To help a withdrawn and bitter classmate cope with leukemia, Jamie and Joan help set up a play on fighting disease.
Jamie regrets putting Vicki on guard duty for his pricey new bike when her eyes start to malfunction in a schoolyard of prowling thieves.
Jamie winds up handling two dates on the same night, blind to the fact that one of them is Harriet in disguise.
Benny, an old college chum of Ted and Joan's is up to his same trashy school paper tricks in a big city rag now, fabricating a tabloid feature which by sheer chance ""exposes"" Vicki as a robot just as she's about to join a fashionable clique of girls.
A new language translation device (Random Access Multiple Concurrent Linquistic Analytical Sequencer) installed in Vicki enables her to understand any language...even animals, like the bosses' dog. Mrs. Jennings forces Mr. Jennings to fire Ted when Joan balks at doing uncredited work for an affair.
Ted prepares for a robotics interview on a local radio talk show while Jamie looks for an idea for a class play.
To land a new promotion with the boss, Ted invites him over for dinner and a playful game of pool -- until Jennings starts betting the shirt off his back and a lot more playing against Vicki.
Ted's singing telegram birthday greeting makes him pine back to his ""youthful years"" with a surfboard and prompts Jamie to start a singing telegram for schoolmates -- and competing with Reggie.
While on a company vacation at a health resort, Jamie, Vicki, Brandon and Harriet see a burglar hitting their residence -- each with a different eyewitness account.
While Jamie tests out Ted's new laser projection system in Vicki's eyes, unwary Brandon glimpses her projection of a movie's flying saucer and calls the Air Force to investigate.
Ted brings back ""Bad Seed"" Vanessa, who again takes Vicki's place, locks Vicki in her/its cabinet and joins the family to Hollywood, where Ted must repair a movie's robot while Vanessa mugs into a screen test on the sly.
When a schoolyard pusher tries to hook Vicki on drugs, the Lawsons help the police on a undercover sting.
A United Robotronics strike pits shop steward Ted against management rep Brandon; Joan has her students use the strike as a social studies exercise, which also goes awry.
While saving Harriet in the Lawsons' new pool, Vicki ""drowns"" and lands in the hospital under X-rays with a bewildered doctor.
Jamie stumbles into the membership of a junior high gang whose vandalism tests his sense of belonging with right and wrong -- and inducts Vicki as its moll.
Jamie, Reggie, Harriet and Vicki try to start a rock group to play to Ida Mae's visiting agent friend.
To help Brandon get promoted to a job in Japan, Joan pretends that she's his estranged wife and that Vicki and Jamie are their kids.
When Jamie befriends a deaf boy to score scout points, he learns a lesson in sensitivity and exploitation.
When unseen Vicki is struck by lightning and begins influencing objects around the house, the shook-up and unwary Lawsons call in a pair of hapless ghostbusters.
Ted brings home Vanessa, an upgraded twin of Vicki whose revolutionary but quirky quasi-human artificial intelligence runs amok.
A Christmas show wherein Joan borrows a life-sized animated ""doll"" from a store for a charity show -- until Brandon gets his hands on it.
Vicki literally balloons after Ted unwittingly upgrades her energy-supplementing polynucleotide processor with an appetite, which creates excess digestive gases and causes her a date problem for the school dance.
Vicki, Jamie and Harriet are held hostage in an inept bank robbery.
Vicki is discovered by a marketing firm to play in a cereal commercial, but the Lawsons have second thoughts when her taste test reveals that the product isn't all it's crackled up to be.
While Jamie and Reggie search for a story for the school paper, Vicki discovers that a new girl in class is a missing child.
Jamie is picked up by the possessive daughter of Ted's boss who starts pulling his strings the wrong way.
Ted begins remodeling the house, and Joan's new real estate side job gets upstaged when Vicki sells the Lawson homestead to an unscrupulous cowpoke couple.
Due to Vicki's mishandling of terms, Child Services Officer Mrs. Fernwald thinks Ted is an alcoholic and threatens to take Vicki away unless he joins AA.
To win a promotion over Brandon's boss fawning, Ted decides to reveal Vicki's robot secret to his boss at a company picnic -- unaware that Brandon is out to sabatoge Ted's effort.
Tired of the loud and impudent Brindles as neighbors, the Lawsons concoct a fake earthquake to scare them into moving.
Due to Vicki's misinterpreting Ted's quip while doing the family's on-line banking, the Lawsons are re-categorized as deadbeats and Ted just plain dead.
Jamie, competing with Reggie for school radio D.J., uses Vicki's voice mimicry to fake an interview with football star Lyle Alzado -- who happens to be in town listening in.
Vicky imitates Ted's demostration on saving a choking victim's life on Brendle. Brendle arrives the next day faking a broken neck and threatens to sue the Lawson's.
While running an unauthorized answering service for grounded kids which nearly wrecks Ted's respect with his boss, Jamie and Vicki play Cupids to help Reggie nerve up to meeting the girl of his dreams.
Jamie takes the fall in exchange for Jessica's affections after he catches her stealing copies of the seventh grade's test.
Ted brings home a voice activated computer. Vicki finds herself falling for the computer, but trouble begins when the computer becomes obsessed with Vicki.
Still out to flatter the redoubtable Jessica, Jamie takes her out to an expensive restaurant while tightwad Ted puts Vicki in charge of household expenses.
Jamie tries to recover his respect in class when his mother comes in as substitute teacher by trying to humiliate her out of her job.
Playing a judge in a class simulation of a courtroom, Jamie dispenses uneven justice and gets impeached, while parking-ticket-skipping role model Ted tries to get himself arrested.
Joan's civic project with the homeless prompts Jamie to bring home a bum, who virtually takes over the Lawson household.
When Jamie is taken by a slick curbside vendor with a bad mini-TV, Ted goes after him for reparations -- and gets conned himself.
Jamie pushes Harriet aside in an unrequited crush on her 16-year-old cousin, who teaches him a lesson in respect.
When he's punished for thoughtlessly dropping the family's reservations to Mexico, Jamie dreams that the others are robots under his control.
To help Jamie's shy and withdrawn classmate who stutters, Ted programs Vicki to be her speech therapist.
Jamie tries to show Vicki the meaning of compassion by sharing, which she does -- including the dress off her back, while the Brindles move in with their marital dispute.
To get on a community-sponsored Thanksgiving ski trip for disadvantaged kids, Jamie convinces the sponsors that his parents are separated.
To pay for a new bike he bought from the neighborhood bully, Jamie uses Vicki to run a school computerized match-making business.
Jamie learns a sobering lesson in using smoking and chewing tobacco to elevate his freshman status in junior high.
While Vicki learns to spend a day without duties or instructions, Ted's new prestigious job offer in Massachusetts tests the family's taste to social climb vs. its price of morality.
To make his dad's ""button-pusher"" job seem important to his friends, Jamie hints that Ted is head of a top-secret project -- which even Ted's jealous boss, Brandon, believes.
Nagged by classmates that Vicki has a wooden personality, Jamie overdoes it in secretly programming her a livelier one.
The Lawsons take up the Brindles' snobby challenge and enter Vicki in a mall pageant against Harriet.
To help his Little League team's rock-bottom status, Jamie disguises Vicki as a boy to use her robotic abilities to bat for the pennant.
After Vicki watches a TV hypnotist turn volunteers into clowns and animals, she starts practicing her new mesmerizing ""skill"" on the Lawsons with hysterical results.
While in a store with Jamie looking for a present for her mock birthday party to convince Child Services that they treat her well, Vicki picks up an expensive watch and is picked up for shoplifting.
After being burglarized (while Vicki's home and they're at a restaurant), the Lawsons join the neighborhood watch.
To train Vicki to be more affectionate, Ted buys her a toy cat that only makes her mimic Jamie's past jealousy and run away.
During Jamie's part-time gas station job, Vicki fine-tunes a car to go 50 miles a gallon, causing oil companies and oil sheiks alike to drop by the Lawsons' door.
Ted and Joan decide to have the ceremonial wedding they never had -- until the Brindles butt in.
Joan invites Wally Crandal, a former 90-pound weakling college classmate, over for dinner to meet his former school tormentor: Ted, who rigs Vicki to play even crueler tricks. Only Ted's unaware that Wally's grown into a top pro wrestler.
Ted brings home his own cyber creation an android in the form of a ten year old girl he nicknames Vicki.
The Brindles, the Lawson's nosy neighbors, come across Vicki and tries to find out their secret.
Jamie has the entire house to himself, not knowing that Vicki is his babysitter!
Warren Enright, the class nerd, falls in love with Vicki.
Because Vicki is getting more attention, Jamie decides to run away to see what his parents might think.
Jamie and his friend Reggie Williams are involved in putting together a sci-fi movie project for school, but the power of directorial duties goes to Jamie's head.
Jamie realizes the value of constant truthfulness when he can't convince his parents that he's not responsible for breaking (and secretly gluing together) a teapot caused by Harriet's smart-aleck cousin.
A bully extorts money from Jamie's neighborhood club, which quickly reconsiders its boys-only policy via Vicki's strong-arm "assistance."
Jamie uses Vicki's new speed-scan reading ability to complete 55 chapters of his homework overnight, which earns him the school honor roll -- along with snowballing guilt.
Tipped off on the sly by busybody Bonnie Brindle, Child Services threatens to take Vicki away unless the Lawsons can produce her past -- and she passes a medical exam.
To circumvent Child Services' orders to send Vicki to school and risk exposure, the Lawsons hire a pompous tutor who mistakes her computer abilities for genius. To remedy the situation, Joan crams to follow-through her marriage-postponed teaching degree to act as Vicki's "tutor," while Ted takes over the kitchen and creates a mess.
A house fire moves Ted's new boss, Brandon Brindle, into the Lawsons' house, scheming for insurance fraud.
When overexposure to Harriet infects heuristically mimicking Vicki with Harriet's personality traits and shrieking tantrums, Ted must purge the brat out of her at his factory -- but not before Harriet and Bonnie Brindle wonder where Vicki suddenly vanished to and summon the police.
Jamie attempts to mass-produce burritos made by Vicki.
The Lawsons and Reggie and Harriet take a wilderness camping trip, and get lost.
To charm prissy and picky Jessica, Jamie throws an expensive party for her, ignoring a surprising school tomboy.
When golf-crazed Ted neglects taking Jamie to a Father-and-Son picnic for a golf tournament, Brandon steps in and incites a "father war" while Joan uses Vicki to voice her disapproval to Ted.
When keen-eyed recruitment officers from a rival robotics firm drop by to interview Ted, they suspect Vicki is a robot and plan to "robotnap" her.
United Robotronics cutbacks have the Lawsons scrambling for odd jobs.
Ted is motivated to get the family into shape when an obese co-worker loses a record amount of weight.
Ted is proud that Jamie's made the Pee Wee Football league, unknowing that Jamie only does it to please his dad.
When a vaudeville actor thinks Vicki is his long-lost daughter, he drafts her into a show and threatens her adoption.
When timid Ted uses the "stork theory" in answering Jamie's questions about sex, Jamie believes Dad's in serious need of sex education and tries to help him out.
Ted has the unenviable task of explaining to his unwary Vicki-doting father, who bitterly lost his job to automation, that his new lovely adopted granddaughter is really a robot.
Winsome Tiffany gets embarrassed after flubbing a line.
Tiffany yawns between takes on the set of "Lights! Camera! Ego!"
Watch lovely and demure Marla Pennington trip her lips with Dick Christie.
The unflappable flubs a tantrum.
Watch as hiccups skips our super-cool heroine's tongue! Well, actors are human...even V.I.C.I.
Need we say more?
See Paul slug it out with an uncooperative prop! Who won?
An unprepared and surprised Tiffany just can't hold it in when she first lip-syncs on the fly a damaged V.I.C.I.'s call for help! Giggle on, girl!
See Vicki do Marilyn in this extended post-cut clip where impromptu coquette Tiffany hams it up with Christie.
| Location | United States of America |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Release | 1985-09-07 |
| Producer | 20th Century Fox Television |