Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?

Robot Jones has it tough. In the retro-1980s future, robots are part of everyday life for humans—mechanical butlers, robo-bartenders, electronic plumbers—but Jones has been designed differently; he is an experimental prototype built to interact with humans. Programmed with basic emotions, Jones is thrown into the battlefield that is junior high—and dealing with the everyday hassles of adolescence from a tin man’s perspective. Showering after gym class is no longer terrifying because of package exposure but because rust might shut down some mechanical systems, and parents are still embarassing, but only because they have out-of-date software. While the show beats the message into the ground at points—the mid-teens are hard to deal with, whether super-intelligent robot or flesh-and-bones human—it’s not a far cry from an animated version of Fred Savage fuddling through his wonder years.