As an episode that redirects audience sympathy away from humans and toward a robot, “Uncle Simon” is a bit of an outlier in The Twilight Zone canon. Written by creator Rod Serling, the story focuses on Barbara (Constance Ford) as she cares for her wealthy uncle, Simon (Cedric Hardwicke). But lurking beneath this seemingly innocuous portrait of family caregiving is a dark depiction of the tolls abuse takes on a family. The antithesis of the human/robot relationship envisioned by Dr. Julie Carpenter in which robots facilitate “healthy and successful social-emotional models of communication,” this episode leverages the robot as a means of showing the cyclical nature of abuse.[i] Simon and Barbara are engaged in a dynamic where verbal abuse is an ingrained part of their communication model. It’s a pattern that not even Simon’s death can break thanks to a robot he wills to Barbara. Read more
