"The Wunderkind" might very well be the absolute worst Twilight Zone episode ever in the entire history of TV. I feel like I have been psychologically tortured. There is so much that is wrong about the episode that I am struggling to even organize my thoughts.
1) It is a such a blunt metaphor for Trump that it loses all value. The episode literally hits the viewer in the head over and over again with the criticisms of Trump (immature, incompetent, uninformed, etc) but there is zero subtlety and zero intelligence in how the episode does it. Metaphors have to have some intelligence to them in order to work. This episode did not do that.
2) The child was super annoying, it was grating. I just wanted to smack the kid. Why anyone would ever listen to this kid in the first place is beyond ridiculous.
3) The very concept of a kid running for president completely strains credibility. For one, it completely violates the constitution because he fails the age requirement. The episode tries to get around this by saying that the mother's name was on the ballot. What!? No, that does not work! If her name were on the ballot, she would President, not the kid. Plus, it would be obvious election fraud if her name were on the ballot but the kid was going around being the candidate. The Federal Election Committee or whatever would never allow it. The other candidates would never allow it. And where was the vice-president in all this? No mention of the vice-president. And the episode completely skips from the Iowa caucus straight to Inauguration day. So the kid somehow got through all the primaries, and the party still nominated him and he won the general election? Seriously!?! Oh and what party was he running on? Was he running as an independent and he somehow beat both major parties? Or did one of the major parties (Democrats or Republicans) actually nominate a 11 year old kid to be their national candidate? And we are really supposed to believe that one video about his dying dog would save his campaign after literally having him cry for his mommy on national TV. It is utterly preposterous and had so many plot holes, it makes your head spin.
4) Are we really supposed to believe that grown men like the Chief of Staff and the General would take orders from a 11 year old kid? And what about Congress? Impeachment? 25th amendment? Are we really supposed to believe that the entire government and as we see in the episode, the entire nation is so enamored with the kid that they are ok with it? I get the Trump metaphor (Trump acts immature or incompetent or obstructs justice and nobody does anything to remove him from office) but it just strains all credibility.
Basically, when your metaphor is implausible and ridiculous, it fails because the audience can't get pass how ridiculous it is. There has to be some realism for the metaphor to work. The very premise of a 11 year old running for President is so ludicrous that it causes everything else to collapse.
5) The episode was not even well written and it was too long.There were no interesting scenes or thought provoking scenes. Nothing. It was just an episode with a bratty kid running around that dragged on way too long.
6) It was too predictable. They literally show us Ralph in some type of creepy surgery scene right off the bat and tell us it is a flash forward which gave away the ending. And we knew as soon as he decided to represent the kid that the kid was going to be elected somehow. It was utterly predictable.
There are probably other flaws but those are the main ones that I could think of off the top of my head.
Black Mirror actually did this very same topic much better, in the ep "the Waldo moment" where an offensive cartoon character runs for president and wins. That episode was much better because while a cartoon character running for president is absurd, it is a bit more believable than a kid who wants to play video games. And that episode actually had some good scenes in it. And the episode did explore some nice themes of how the population responds to an outsider candidate.
The Outer limits also did a good "President" episode with Babylon 5's Bruce Boxleitner called "Decompression". That episode dealt with a mysterious time traveler from the future who convinces a presidential candidate that he needs to jump from a plane that is going to crash to save himself. The traveler promises to save him when he jumps and tells him that he must do it to live because only he can save America from a horrible dystopian future. The candidate, being a total narcissist, jumps and naturally falls to his death and we learn that the traveler from the future essentially tricked him into committing suicide because he was not going to save the country, he was actually going to be the dictator that destroys America. Now that was a great episode! It had tension. It had great acting. It had an ironic twist. This episode had nothing like that.
