YMMV / The Twilight Zone (1959) S5E6: "Living Doll"

• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: While it is clear that Erich is meant to be seen as the jerkier party to his marriage with Annabelle, our introduction to their dynamic is Annabelle making a frivolous purchase they're implied to be unable to afford, trying to hide it from Erich, attempting to verbally evade his direct request to know what it cost, and resorting to an emotional barb when he isn't thrown off track so easily. A husband pulling that with his wife would be crucified as an emotionally abusive narcissist with a manipulative streak barring her from knowledge of their finances and very possibly trying to poison the child against the stepmother by buying ostentatious presents and urging that they be kept secret.
• Harsher in Hindsight: While not to a murderous extent as with Tina and Chucky, My Friend Cayla was compared unfavourably to Talky Tina due to it being able to connect to the internet and relay information to and from the cloud. Having some third-party snoop into a child's conversation is certainly as disturbing as the idea of a murderous doll. Alarmed by the glaring security flaws and privacy issues with the doll,^note For starters, Cayla lacked pairing security, allowing an attacker to intercept and commandeer the doll, and information gathered from the child could be used for marketing (or even nefarious) purposes, thereby violating COPPA. German authorities banned the doll from sale (or even possession) and advised parents to promptly dispose of them, and one watchdog group complained to the Federal Trade Commission about Cayla, leading to the doll being withdrawn from sale a few years after it was introduced. Such was its notoriety that it would end up being exhibited alongside the likes of N-Gage in the Museum of Failure in Sweden.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A story about a malevolent, sentient doll with a character named Annabelle. One has to imagine James Wan was taking notes.
  • Or the Warrens themselves, since they were notorious pathological liars and first told the story of their doll Annabelle a few years after this episode aired.
• Magnificent Bitch: Talky Tina is a sentient doll who feels protective of her owner Christie, while loathing the girl's abusive stepfather, Erich. She begins gaslighting Erich by taunting him when they're alone together, making him suspect that his family is behind it, while his aggressive response to the doll alienates them further. When Erich tries to throw her away, Tina escapes and evades a number of attempts to destroy her, before she fulfills her threats by tricking Erich into falling to his death. With a playful charm that belies her homicidal nature, Tina cements herself as one of the show's most memorable characters.
• Values Resonance: While it's not stated directly, the episode has a surprisingly progressive view of infertility in men, something not talked about often even now, and portrays Erich fairly sympathetically for how his bitterness over his inability to father children of his own has led him to lash out at Christie and rebuff her attempts at affection even as it also shows him as in the wrong for how he treats her.
• The Woobie: Christie. The poor girl just wants to be loved and really tries to treat Erich like her own father but is coldly rebuffed at every turn and he makes little effort to hide his bitterness at her mere existence and all over something, his own inability to have children, that she likely doesn't even know about.