(The gamer grrls are all taking a much needed break from their “work” so here’s a Wonder Years review that I wrote a couple of months ago.)
I recently watched the entire series of The Wonder Years. This was during a period when I didn’t have the internet so was bored out of my mind.
I HATED the show as a kid. I would literally run and hide when the theme song started and I’d stay hidden until I thought the show was over.
Fred Savage and the actor he played on the show is like two years older than me. And watching the programme with my family was uncomfortable. It just didn’t resonate with me whatsoever. Here you have 11 year old Kevin Arnold and he’s going out with a different girl every episode. The ladies can’t get enough of him. As an 11 year old.
Is this at all realistic? I didn’t know ANYONE who was dating at 11. But in the Wonder Years universe, EVERYONE is. Even fucking Paul has a girlfriend. It’s ridiculous.
And these girls that Kevin was getting were usually taller than him, often older than him, and clearly out of his league. But there he was, week after week, getting all the bitches. And I’d be sitting there at home thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I getting all the bitches? It’s working for Kevin Arnold. This is what 11 year olds do, I guess. Everybody at my school must just not get it.”
An episode that particularly bothered me was the one where the boys are in gym class and they’re doing sexual education. And Kevin and the gang are all huge horndogs who want to learn what a vagina looks like. So they encourage Coach Cutlip to draw one.
So I’m watching this with my family and I just want to die. “Do they think that I’m like this? Do they think that I’m some horny loser like Kevin Arnold who really wants to know what a vagina looks like?”
Because the truth of the matter is, I wasn’t. Fucking nobody I knew was. The episodes aren’t based in reality. I had no interest whatsoever in knowing what a vagina looked like. Indeed, when I did finally see what a vagina looked like, it was traumatising. That’s a normal reaction. That’s relatable. But you have Kevin and the gang looking at CRUDE INTERNAL DIAGRAMS of a vagina and getting boners.
Here’s something else that’s crazy about the Wonder Years. The show started in 1989 and was set in 1969. I didn’t relate whatsoever to this time period. It might as well have been 100 years ago. I never saw a hippie. It was totally foreign to me.
But it was only 20 years earlier. It would be like doing a show now around *nostalgia* for the year 2000.
Anyway, watching the show now, back to back, episode after episode, I realised some things.
First of all, there’s not really a running narrative from episode to episode. It’s all very episodic. One episode, Kevin is on the baseball team, then in the next episode he’s in a rock band, then in the next episode he’s a golf caddy. Then you never hear about these things again. He doesn’t stick with anything. He played soccer for one episode. He was a wrestler for one episode. He played football for one episode. They pretty much covered the major sports. One episode each. And then you never hear about it again.
I guess that this is common for sitcoms of the era. It makes it so you can jump in at any time and know what’s going on. If you missed an episode, it’s not a problem. But it’s still disappointing.
The second big thing I noticed is that the show became a straight comedy starting in season four. It was sort of a comedy drama in the first three seasons. But starting with season four, first episode, it just becomes a comedy. You have fucking Jack Arnold, the surly patriarch of the family, bugging his eyes out and some comedy sound effect plays and shit like this. It’s totally out of step with the earlier seasons. I don’t know if they got different writers or different producers or what but it’s a massive change and it continues for the rest of the series.
I could do without the slapstick shit. They actually have a comedy Rube Goldbergesque scene in the final season which results in their tent burning down. It was much better in the earlier seasons where they played it more straight. But yeah, starting in season four, the show became a parody of itself.
I also realised that I never saw the last three episodes. As the years went on, I stopped hiding when the show started and just watched it. It was also maybe on in syndicated reruns at this time. So I had seen probably every episode to date.
By the time the sixth and final season came out, I was in the 9th grade. And I remember people in school talking about the finale. But I must have stopped watching.
It’s all a bit of rush as they try to tie things up. I think that the show was cancelled sort of last minute so that would explain the rushed ending. It was supposed to end with Kevin graduating from high school but it ended with him still in the 11th grade. There was a new…whatever…guy in charge of programming at the network and he didn’t like the show. Or something.
So suddenly the mother is working at Microsoft (it’s implied) and the father bought a furniture factory for some reason and Wayne is working at the factory. Karen, mercifully, was written out of the show years earlier.
That’s another thing. What an awful character Karen is. Completely one dimensional. “You look like a capitalist pig”, “this restaurant is fascist”, whatever. She’s awful. It’s an awful character played by an awful actress.
Fortunately, they shipped her to Alaska in the show.
So we get to the finale. Everybody is making their hasty goodbyes and then suddenly Kevin goes to some country club in another town to be close to Winnie. Winnie is working there for the summer. Somehow, Kevin gets a job there.
Now we’re introduced to new characters. Now Kevin is best friends with some weird Jewish guy who’s also a busboy at this country club. And they’re living together, like four guys in a tiny room.
I don’t care about any of this. I suspect that this new character is related to somebody with a prominent position on the show. Why else would they force this new character in for the final episode?
Then Winnie and Kevin break up for like the 20th time. And Kevin punches out the big, muscular lifeguard who’s currently dating Winnie. It’s totally out of character. Kevin has been a giant pussy up until now. He’s lost every fight. But now he’s knocking guys out who are twice his size.
Then he loses his car in a poker game with some Mexican guys who aren’t really Mexican. That’s another weird part of this episode. Why didn’t they just hire Mexican actors to portray members of this mariachi or whatever band? I think it was done for comedy purposes. Like they’re supposed to be fake Mexicans. But it’s weird.
So Kevin storms out and decides to walk home. How far away is it? I don’t know. But apparently he’s going to walk. With no map. I assume that he knows the way and it’s not too far.
But then he decides to hitchhike. And a kindly old couple pick him up. And wouldn’t you know it? Winnie is in the back seat. She was fired because Kevin punched that guy out. So she was also hitchhiking? It doesn’t make sense. How does this all happen so quickly? And then what are the odds that he’d be in the same car as Winnie? It’s just bad writing. Really bad writing.
So they have a fight and the old couple kicks them out of the car in another zany, comedic, sound effect laden way.
Winnie throws Kevin’s bag into the road. Why? Then Kevin does the same to Winnie’s suitcase. Again, no reason. Nobody would ever do this. But they had to do it to advance the lame as fuck plot. A truck then runs over both bags in a slapstick fashion. You hear some “zip, whoop pow” sound effects as it rolls over the bags.
Then it suddenly rains like it only does in bad comedies. So they go hide in a barn and some more deeply improbable shit happens and he ends up fucking her in the ass.
It’s just awful. It’s an awful finale. Clearly rushed. But the entire last three seasons were bad.
I mean, some of my favourite episodes are from the last three seasons. I prefer Kevin when he’s older and has those different friends. Chuck has always been my favourite character. I saw him in a commercial or something and liked him for that reason. I just thought it was cool that I saw him in a commercial. And watching it now, he’s a good character and good actor.
But the change to this Three Stooges bullshit with the sound effects and the kooky fantasy sequences and whatnot was a bad move. Not that the show was ever realistic by any means but I prefer the tone of the first three seasons.
So that’s the Wonder Years. I’m so *nostalgic* for it. As a series, it’s not in the league of such greats as MASH or Cheers or Seinfeld or even Golden Girls. But it’s definitely better than Home Improvement or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air or Full House or any of this complete dreck.
I’d say it’s on par with maybe Roseanne (especially considering the terrible final few seasons of that show). Maybe Friends (although I didn’t like Friends, I can appreciate the quality). Going back a bit, maybe The Cosby Show or even something as unremarkable as Family Ties.