A very sad episode in more than one way — and made nearly intolerable by the use of a young actor playing a deformed kid.  OK, nothing is off the table in genre fiction; I’m even enjoying American Horror Story this season.  But their “freaks” are at least presented as human and in service of a good story (well, at least in the episodes I’ve seen so far; I’m not hearing good things).

I’m even kind of ticked off at the summary on IMDb:

Howard and Joanne Sharp are pregnant and are considering the possibility of black-market genetic enhancement which will result in a perfect baby or a 1 in 10,000 of creating a monster.

First of all, Howard isn’t pregnant.  Second, later in the episode we see one of the unlucky .01%’ers.  Yes, he has severe problems, but let’s reserve the “m-word” talk for It’s Alive or Basket Case scenarios.

Also, I think they meant to have the word “chance” after “10,000.”  Even with that, the sentence isn’t quite right, but going on would be a waste of good pedantry on a bad episode.

To be fair, my disdain for the execution taints some good aspects of the episode.  The acting was fine with pros like Alan Ruck and Catherine Mary Stewart.  There was some interesting misdirection involving spousal abuse, and I’m always up for a good genetic engineering story i.e. Gattaca, or even previous Outer Limits episodes.  But if you’re going to have a monster, make him a monster.

Post-Post:

• It was nice to see Mary Beth Rubens again, sadly in her 2nd to last IMDb credit ever.
• IMDb is full of strange resumes.  Writer Eric Morris seemed to burn pretty bright, selling a lot of scripts in a 5 year run — then nothing after 2002.  IMDb values writers about as much as Hollywood does, so no idea if he is still alive.  OK, probably the union won’t give up the info.