1.07 --- Children's Zoo

Directed by : Robert Downey Sr. Written by : Chris Hubbell & Gerrit Graham Starring : Jaclyn Bernstein, Lorna Luft, Steven Keats First aired : 11th of October, 1985. Debbie (Jaclyn Bernstein) is a four-year old girl with ever-quarreling parents - a witch-like mother (Lorna Luft, Grease 2) who yells at her, and a "Joe Sixpack" father (Steven Keats, Death Wish, The Gambler) with a penchant for womanising. After some playtime with her dolls, Debbie coaxes her parents to take her to "The Children's Zoo", a place for which she has a special invitation. At the zoo, the family is greeted by the zookeeper Melody (Sydney Walsh), who points Debbie to the children's entrance, and then escorts her parents to another, side entrance, which leads to the parental waiting space. Once inside, we learn what kind of a "zoo" this is - it's a place where children bring bad parents, and then later can pick out a new pair which proves itself reformed after imprisonment. After browsing the couples on offer, Debbie picks her new parents and leaves home, leaving her own biological dysfunctional family behind. *** Although Children's Zoo looks and acts like a candy-coloured piece of fluff, with accompanying kiddie music score, this episode deals with a rather serious subject and tackles it admirably. Obviously, locking up bad parents is not a viable solution, but it would be neat if all prospective mothers and fathers could check this one out. Jaclyn Bernstein is just adorable, her eyes and body language making up for the lack of text she is given, and Luft and Keats are convincing as a pair of lowlifes who get their due comeuppance. The seemingly ever-present Wes Craven cameos as one of the locked-up parents, and Robert Downey Sr., who you might remember as the neighbour from Wordplay, is credited as the director of this 8-minute short, which accompanied Healer and Kentucky Rye in the original airing, thus completing the trifecta about three sins which plague the modern world - more about the third one soon.