Fan Mail Keyhole #4:
Why Moms Loved Vicki
Why Moms Loved Vicki
Episode "The Fearless Five" opens with Joan Lawson teaching Vicki to bake
cookies while reminiscing about her own childhood doing the same with her mother,
and when Joan catches herself remembering Vicki's fact, she shrugs it off and
kisses Vicki anyway. This was a perfect portrait of Vicki's mom-fandom.
Of all the underplayed and underrated relationships on Small Wonder, that between Joan and Vicki was potentially the most poignant and powerful. The untouched humor and drama of Joan coping with an only daughter that's a totally inconspicuous machine was a premise utterly unique to Small Wonder and couldn't be transplanted to any other show. The magic of Small Wonder was, unlike most fictional portrayals of robots and androids, that Vicki -- who doesn't pretend to have a conscience or mind or even near human-like intelligence -- is in fact no more than the mobile computer she is, yet she can still evoke amusement, sympathy and affection from viewers, and that the producers missed exploiting this fact is a loss to science fiction until someone resurrects a similar premise.
Mom fans were loyal Vicki "groupies," and were her most sympathetic
viewers and most likely to regard her as a legitimate "being" rather
than merely a machine. Mom (and grandmother) fans often called Vicki a
"creature" in the dearly sense rather than a robot. The main
difference between dads and moms was that most dads regarded Vicki as an
intellectually titillating girl-gadget and moms saw her as a sweet and adorable
oversized tot. Like Joan, mom-fans were willing to, even unconsciously, overlook
or excuse Vicki's mechanical truth just for the pleasure of her effect puttering
around the house. Moms seemed able to separate the role of a bio-daughter from
that of a cyber-daughter far better than daughter mail respondents granted them.
Moms, outside the humor, remarked fondly of scenes of Joan fixing Vicki's
pinafore and showing her to cook, and posing what they'd do with their own Vicki,
talked about the "sly thrill" of posing "her" in pageants and
taking "her" along on shopping trips. Some of this
"mom-daughter" bonding whimsy sounded more like an extension of times
once shared with young daughters or an idealized relation that never occurred in
the first place. A common cord in mom-letters suggests that after protracted
exposure to "their Vicki" that fancy could possibly go much deeper, to
even regarding her as a quasi-daughter. Most moms valued "their Vicki"
over the life of a cat or dog and would spend a sum on clothing for her. In
this, Joan presents a truism and potential problem in future household android
robot situations: Can an android robot escape being eventually regarded as a
member of the family? And in some situations must it? The fact that Vicki
was parked in Jamie's bedroom was considered unwise by many moms, who hotly
wrote to the show to question whether he would always see her as just another
toy or appliance.
Unlike a pet cat or dog, you have the unavoidable sense of a human presence with Vicki circulating a house, and unlike a life-sized doll (which market research cites such robots shouldn't resemble), she is not only physically passable as a human but also possesses faculties to imitate non-robotic basic human behaviors as well for "family-friendly" reasons. Neither does Vicki have to be "intelligent" to pass; in first-season Small Wonder she has the apparent intellectual demeanor of a four-year-old, but just like fathers this "shortcoming" had little effect on her charm or enchantment to moms. As mom-fans described, it'd be impossible to simply regard Vicki as a toaster or vacuum, and in high likelihood the family would treat her more like a helpful but slow-witted live-in cousin than a machine or a pet. There was even cited the ironic possibility that some owners would feel guilt at putting a pricey and capable Vicki to hard labor, as most grandparent and senior fans usually voiced, though moms were generally willing to have Vicki perform arduous and superhuman tasks.
There were mom-letters critical of the "docile-doll" image Vicki posed to very young children, but these were far and few between. There were a surprising fraction of moms that had a peculiar, almost supernatural reservation about Vicki's person, perceiving that somehow Vicki's existence had "stolen" the looks and "reality niche" meant for a real little girl. There was also a kind of "Pinocchio" pine that wished the robot would fade away and the human child Vicki "was supposed to be" would mystically come to life. Some letters rued that Vicki was "frozen" in childhood and intellect and often asked that Ted constantly upgrade her brains, and one of the pet reasons the producers got slack with the SW bible and permitted Vicki to socialize and even attend school was cited by letters like this. There were many fanciful "Oh, I'd take her strolling in the park" whimsies mom-fans had for a Vicki, but a sad one was using android robots like Vicki as surrogates for children lost or killed, up to even having their faces molded in the image of a deceased child as a kind of "living memorial."
One reason to help explain why daughters didn't seem to jump on the backs of mom-fans as they did dad-fans is that they felt Moms saw Vicki as a happy "excuse" to relive playing "dollhouse" with a new helpful "doll" who didn't need a vivid imagination to animate her. Some SW staffers suggested that chauvinism made a better target. That's not to say daughters weren't cool to the implications of their mom-fans liking the show. At age 10, most girls today start abandoning play ovens and sewing kits, so seeing Joan doing "distaff" activities with a nearly 13-year-old Vicki must've felt like a heartfelt fantasy to some moms. There was a curious divide among mom-fans, best described as yuppie "working" moms and homebound moms. Homebound moms were a lot less tolerant of their girls growing up tomboy and were much more wistful of daughters being feminine and dressing like girls. Yuppie moms generally saw Vicki as a cute but amusing fantasy and they tended to watch the show more as sarcasm of the kind of "archaic" female Vicki supposedly represented. The ironic thing about yuppie moms is that some mentioned "dolling up" their day care daughters "frilly as Vicki," and indeed on big city streets in spring and summer you can spot denim-clad yuppie moms in Reeboks towing in hand girl-tots in laces and bows and Mary Janes, as though they too had the romantic femininity bug -- for a while before, like feminists, seeing some poisonous pacification effects from wearing skirts and frills.
While letters from sci-fi fans and techies displayed the most hard core critical interest in the show, it was letters from moms and seniors that most impressed us that there was a genuine lay interest and fascination in android robots designed for the home and family, which, while certainly good news for marketing, also left us wondering how much emotional transference people would end up bestowing on a Vicki. Since real-life V.I.C.I.s would be endowed with family-friendly programs like PIP (see Vicki on Dunahue feature) they would accumulate a unique profile or "diary" of specific family members, adjusting to and serving their particular habits and preferences and needs and demands. In a sense, Vicki would develop a kind of "personality," tailored to each member and just as special to him/her as real human rapport. So when Joan felt that she lost a daughter when Vicki's memory was erased in "Class Comedienne," many mom fans wrote in of how it can be a genuine sense of loss.
Late in season four a script was proposed in which Joan, after seeing a sitcom about a mom taking her daughter out shopping for a training bra, sheepishly mulls about coaxing Ted to give Vicki a silicone "upgrade" to require the garment so she could have the same mother-daughter experience. It was a "gem-grade" script, brimming with humor and pathos and earnest reflections about Vicki's status in the family and Joan's innermost pines about a daughter and her own desires. Pennington would've killed for this brush with weighty issues and Brissette, though perhaps a little abashed at her role in this, would've welcomed a change to "blow-out" the series by doing away with all the drama-smothering restraints, but too many were busy filling résumés to bother taking the chance.