Main cast: Patrick Cassidy (Todd Sorensen), Maxine Bahns (Betty Sorensen), Barry Williams (Dan), Richard Riehle (Gorn), and Maureen Teefy (Chrome)
Director: Russell Mulcahy

It’s the future, and everyone who is anyone has purchased domestic helper robots to do all menial tasks for them. Todd Sorensen is vexed, though, because his wife Betty and daughter Jenna adore their Nanna domestic. This is a bad thing to him because (a) Nanna is at least four generations behind, and his neighbor, whom he detests, has the latest Glenda model, and (b) Nanna is getting on with age, so he is accumulating a considerable amount of repair bills. Unfortunately, his wife and daughter refuse to entertain any notion of getting a newer domestic for their home!

Little does he know that the domestics in the neighborhood hide a dark secret…

The People’s Choice may seem interesting, but it is a bizarre episode with a twist and an ending that have little to do with the set-up of the episode. As a result, every twist and turn in this episode feels half-baked. Todd is built up to be an asshole but his arc is abandoned quickly, and the twist is a last minute introduction pulled out of nowhere. Its take home message predates the “let’s force the customers to buy our newer and more expensive models by deliberately making the older models obsolete” methods practiced by certain major corporations today, which makes for some amusing moments. This is the only reason I give this one an extra oogie, but the execution of the episode is substandard.

Really, the entire episode feels like scenes from very different episodes spliced together. It’s an appropriately half-baked waste of time that embodies the half-baked nature of the entire series.