Defining “Small Wonder”
04 Jul 2016A lot of the articles and posts I’ve read on the web have described “Small Wonder” as a bad show. This seems harsh to me. Instead, I’d like to say that the show was the product of its time, and of circumstances. “Small Wonder” was one of the first sitcoms that had been made specifically for syndication. This means that both its market and its budget were smaller. This also means that as a show it wasn’t sold in the same way as its counterparts on the TV networks.
It was also following a very familiar formula for sitcoms: the “fish out of water” or “family has a secret” plot device. For example, “The Addams Family,” “ALF,” and “Out of this World” were all about families that had secrets or had a quality that made them unique.
Remember “Wizards of Waverly Place?” That show followed some of the same tropes as “Small Wonder,” and it ran for a few years on the Disney Channel. I’ve always felt like the live-action sitcoms that have traditionally ran on the Disney Channel had nearly the same quality as the direct-to-syndication shows that I remember watching back when I was a kid. I think that the constant here is that they are profitable to produce. Back when “Small Wonder” was in production, however, they just didn’t know how things would turn out. They were taking risks.
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