‘Twilight Zone’ Recap: “The Wunderkind”

Man, kid are creepy, aren’t they? There is something so innately unsettling about their unpredictability—the unwieldy power that comes with a child’s candor and lack of social propriety. That’s the fear that The Twilight Zone episode “The Wunderkind” attempts to draw on, unfortunately without every fully committing to the limitless horrors of an unhinged child.

Jacob Tremblay as Oliver gives glimpses that there might be something truly Machiavellian dwelling inside this 11-year-old, but as it’s written on the page, Oliver mostly seems like a spoiled kid, lifted up to even higher heights of unearned precociousness by the adults who wish to exist up there with him. More than horror or thriller though, “The Wunderkind” unexpectedly reminded me of a (slightly less sincere) version of The Other Two, a hilarious and sometimes lovely half-hour Comedy Central show about a fairly mediocre tween who happens to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right iPhone to record a viral music video and skyrocket to fame and adoration, while his equally mediocre family tries to keep up.

It’s a funny premise; this one is too. A kid just up and decides he’ll run for President of the United States—bada bing bada boom, now there are penguins on the White House lawn! One would assume that the actual terror comes in with that kid also having the power to start wars and mandate laws…and given the current state of our White House, it would take quite a level of envelope-pushing to make a fictional immature, power-hungry president seem more frightening than the current reality.

But the episode just…doesn’t go there at all; it barely brushes up against the cynical contemporary satire that it personally sets up from the beginning. Instead, we only know for certain that Oliver gets one guy intentionally hurt, who yeah, kind of deserved it for selfishly elevating an 11-year-old into that kind of power in the first place. The obvious homage of this reboot episode is to original TZ episode, “It’s a Good Life,” wherein six-year-old Anthony Fremont possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the potential to wreak havoc on the world around him—a potential he very much cashes in on, banishing townsperson after townsperson out to that favorite locale of creepy children everywhere: the cornfields.

There is something to be said for “The Wunderkind” not taking the simpler road of following a frighteningly powerful kid, and instead choosing to focus on the man who put him in that position of power in the first place: his campaign manager, Raff Hanks, played by the ever-dreamy John Cho. But the thing about “It’s a Good Life” is that, even if it wasn’t saying signaling some message about the state of the current world in 1961, it was and still is really creepy.Perhaps the real fear of “The Wunderkind” is supposed to be that people like Raff have already gotten a president like Oliver elected, but there is nothing particularly ambitious about setting up a frightening premise, and then asking the audience to do the work of actually conceptualize it into something smart and scary.

What we’re left with is less of a savvy social satire, and more of an amusing platform for some engaging performances. The titular wunderkind at hand is not actually Tremblay’s Oliver, but Cho’s Raff, who opens the episode as a young campaign manager at the top of his game, until his high-tech data fails him, and he loses the re-election for the notably unlikable President he was sure had it in the bag.

But when we first meet Raff, it’s five years after all that, as he lays in an ominous operating room, not quite sure how he ended up there. From the other side of an observation window, someone asks Raff if he know what year it is, who did this to him. “It all started out so well,” he only mutters in response, eventually asking the mysterious voice who he is. “I’m here by the order of the President of the United States,” the voice tells him. “Then I’m fucked,” Raff says, crying out in pain as his mysterious, untended wound oozes…

It seems that after losing the Presidential election, Raff turned to boozing in a nondescript bar, where his biography, The Wunderkind is being used as a coaster, and the news announces all the terrible things the now sitting President who beat Raff’s candidate has down. If this episode drives anything home, it’s that all Presidents are bad Presidents…which might be part of what undermines any particular terror of a bad President who also happens to have not gone through puberty yet.

And right on cue, there’s 11-year-old Oliver Foley on the news, featuring his YouTube video that’s gotten over eight million views: “Oh hey, hi—I’m Oliver Foley and I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Here’s why: I want people to be nice to each other, I really do. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth, and it’s a good enough reason to run for President as any.” Raff laughs the video off at first, but after a few mutterings of “that kid gets it,” from other bar patrons, he sees a new angle—a winning angle.

When Raff arrives at the Foley’s suburban home, he finds a very normal family with a very normal 11-year-old son. Does Oliver really want to be President? “Yep! I’m sick of all the war stuff and the environment stuff, and the fact that everybody lies all the time, and that we only get two weeks off at Christmas break,” Oliver confirms. As for his path to candidacy, it’s as typical as any other: he started a YouTube channel to vlog about Minecraft because his friend Charlie had one, and when that got boring he switched to vlogging about Fortnite, and then he decided to run for president. “I got 12 million views!” he says excitedly. And a little less excitedly: “And then you showed up.”

After Oliver and his sister retire to make a video, Raff explains to Oliver’s skeptical parents that being 11 is a technicality: his mother’s name can be on the ballot, and he can be the one in charge. Plus, Andrew Johnson was a tailor, Teddy Rooselvelt was a rancher, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer—Oliver wouldn’t’ be the first U.S. President without a political background. (He would be the first U.S. President who was a literal child.) Oliver’s dad calls Raff out on being an opportunist for using Oliver trying to reform his image, to which Raff says, “Of course I am.” But he also things that Oliver connects with people, a very rare thing in politics—and that he could make Oliver president.

So they start recording his campaign promises video right then and there, which eventually leads to campaigning in Iowa on a platform of less war, more jobs, longer weekends, and free video games for every American. It’s adorable; it’s also disconcerting how seriously people are taking it. Oliver wants to make a music video, so Raff gets right on putting it together for him.

And let me tell you, watching John Cho intently watch a monitor as Jacob Tremblay dances in a silver jacket singing, “We the people all across the nation, it’s about time for a celebration / Bright future is the new sensation, time to break free like summer vacation,” is a delight. I almost wish this episode had just been an all-out comedic satire, because when it’s on, it is funny. But frequent visits to Raff in that operating room remind us that this is supposed to be scary and foreboding. As Raff watches Oliver come offstage and throw a tantrum about not wanting to go to the doctor, present day oozing Raff says, “I saw what I wanted to see.”

Raff’s former campaign partner, Moira, played by the criminally underused Alison Tollman, comes onto Oliver’s campaign as a reality check of sorts. Oliver is a child, and that fact becomes unavoidable when he has to do an actual Presidential debate, and ends up crying and getting carried offstage by his mom. It’s really sad! I just want to make adorable Jacob Tremblay feel better, and I dunno…maybe I’m the kind of pushover who would be like, Screw it, let’s just put a kid in there, it couldn’t be any worse!

That’s exactly the kind of ambivalent sympathy Raff is counting on after the failed debate briefly tanks the campaign—but then Moira tells Raff (back to news-boozin’ in the bar), that Oliver’s dog has cancer. And opportunist that he is, he sees it as a chance to get back in the race, immediately getting Oliver back on the YouTube screen to do what he does best: be a child, recording a YouTube video. Upon Raff’s insistence that somewhere along the way he really did start believing in Oliver, they record a campaign video about “Homer, the bestest dog in the whole wide world,” and folks, I lost it when the camera zoomed in on Homer’s face, as “INCURABLE DOG CANCER” scrolled in text across the screen.

Not because incurable dog cancer is funny! But because Oliver is about to win an election for the President of the United States using said incurable dog cancer as an inspiration for his election, while also promising to surround himself with “the nicest and smartest people.” And it works…

This kid comes hustling into the Oval Office, hops right onto the Resolute desk and yells, “This is so cool, I’m the President, bomb Russia—just kidding!” And he is kidding. Oliver doesn’t try to bomb Russia, he just wants to fulfill his campaign promise to give every American free video games. The adults around him try to explain that’s not very reasonable, but did they or did they not let him run on a platform of free video games? And did he, or did he not promise the American people free video games? It’s later revealed, after Oliver demands that his team make the free video games happen, that his constituents love them! They elected the kid, and they’re getting exactly what they want out of him…

The problem seems to be, Raff is getting what he wants. And the problem with that, from a narrative stance, is that we also don’t know what Raff wants. What about Oliver making new laws about “no old doctors” does he find so offensive? To this point, Raff has made no statements on what he hoped an elected President would be like, except “connects with the people,” which Oliver… does.

“I tried to do the right thing for once,” Raff mutters in the operating room, but who exactly was he doing the right thing for? Moira tells him when he asks her what to do about the spoiled child President who no one else seems worried about, “Just enjoy the moment … you’re one of the most famous campaign managers in history. You’re the man who got Oliver Foley elected President.”

And maybe it’s that legacy, and the understanding that his actions have consequence beyond just winning and losing that finally makes Raff confront Oliver in the White House putting room. Raff is prepared to treat Oliver with the kid gloves like he did during the campaign, telling him he’s a little worried about how things are going. But here at the end, is our very first hint that there might be a deeper well of darkness in Oliver: “So am I, actually,” Oliver says, ominously dimming the lights in the room. “I mean, this treason thing is pretty serious.”

Oliver expresses his disappointment that Raff no longer backs him, and Raff says that he does, he just thinks—”NO!” Oliver screams. “You don’t get to think! You just back me. Unconditionally.” Raff asks whatever happened to the idea of surrounding himself with people who could help him make informed decisions. “That was your idea,” Oliver spits, finally turning into the sort of threat Raff has been making him out to be since they entered the White House. “Your line in the commercial about my dying dog … I’m such a good actor.”

Oliver dumps all of the golf balls on the putting green and when one goes in the hole, he calls it a hole-in-one. He asks Raff if he agrees that it was a hole-in-one, but Raff refuses to comply: “No, it wasn’t—it was not a hole-in-one, Oliver.”

Oliver briefly looks hurt by the betrayal, but then…

He cries out that Raff has a gun, the Secret Service agents fire, and now we know why Raff is in that operating room waiting on a doctor who has still yet to come.

What we don’t know, and get no hints at, is why the President would be sending “his own doctor” to see to Raff, who he considers a treasonous traitor. Is Oliver keeping him alive and part of his team a a punishment? Does he still like Raff, because he’s just a kid? But those kind of questions aren’t why the Twilight Zone has brought us here. They’ve brought us here for the twist, which is that Oliver’s doctor law has apparently gone into effect, and when the surgeon arrives, he is an 11-year-old child who’s in a hurry because he just wants to get back to his video games.

“Raff Hanks made a living selling the American dream,” Jordan Peele tells us. “But once sold, he created a true nightmare that he couldn’t buy back, especially not here, in the Twilight Zone.”

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Stream The Twilight Zone "The Wunderkind" on CBS All Access