Main cast: William Sadler (Frank Hellner), Sofia Shinas (Valerie 23), Tom Butler (Charlie Rogers), and Nancy Allen (Rachel Rose)
Director: Timothy Bond
Engineer Frank Hellner is a paraplegic, so he doesn’t have much luck with women. Well, this year he gets a nice bonus when his boss presents to him the first “inorganic human companion” from Innobotics Corporation – Valerie 23. That’s right, she’s basically a robot that is programmed to cater to the every whim of the man that fits her profile. Frank is going to be the guinea pig, er, lucky bastard to try out the prototype. However, Frank isn’t so keen on being a charity case – at least, until Valerie 23 lets him cop a feel of her breasts and then he’s all for it. When he decides to hook up with his physical therapist, however, Valerie 23 reveals that she knows how to get rid of the competition too.
Valerie 23 is probably what happens when someone decided it’d be cool to remake Fatal Attraction with a fembot instead of Glenn Close, because my goodness, Frank is an equally unlikable and unsympathetic as that asshole protagonist of that movie. Somehow I’m supposed to root for him because the wronged woman is a psycho. In this case, it’s hard to argue that Valerie 23 is a psycho since she’s just being what she is programmed to be. In fact, the episode seems conflicted at times as to whom I should root for, as there are scenes in which Valerie 23 can clearly feel and is hurt by how callous and even cruel Frank is being towards her, and yet, as it progresses, Valerie 23 becomes another one-note killer fembot. If anything, while Fatal Attraction tells me not to sleep with crazy, this episode tells me instead that it has no clue what it wants to say.
This one brings nothing new to the killer fembot trope, only with a protagonist that is a complete trash can material, who in the end gets off scot-free anyway, without even having to be accountable even a little for how he treats Valerie 23 and every other woman that had the misfortune to be in any semblance of relationship with him in the past. It’s not exactly a fun episode to watch, and is best recommended only to kids who want to see boobies but somehow are not able to sneak a peek at porn.
