In this world, nothing can said to be certain, except death and taxes.

-Benjamin Franklin

Faith isn’t an episode about anything important, except marriage, and uncertainty, and family, and faith (its title topic), and death, and the meaning of life. But nothing really important.

It’s one of those episodes like Whose Woods Are These? that reminds us that the show isn’t just damn entertaining and sweet, like Night Out, but also tremendously thoughtful and illuminating at its peak. It plunges deep into the fears of growing up (while still maintaining an excellent sense of humor) and emerges as a resounding testament to the power of family and faith against the daunting dark side of life.

I’ve described Jack’s and Norma’s marriage as “passionless” in the past. Faith doesn’t really attempt to refute that, but it does prove that passionless doesn’t mean unhealthy. That final revelation of Jack and Norma “closer than ever,” inadvertently reliving the past twelve months of their lifelong project that is maintaining a family, is weirdly poignant — honestly one of the series’ best moments yet.

Faith parallels three plots at once — the Arnolds’ impending tax day, the Apollo 13 space mission, and Kevin’s writing assignment. Through the lens of the the latter plot and Kevin’s narration, the episode considers the contrast of the former two plots. What do a failed space mission and tax day have in common? On the surface, nothing. One stretches as far as humans have ever gone; the other takes place under every American roof. But for the Arnolds, both are symbols of uncontrollable catastrophe; astronauts are lost in space, receipts are lost somewhere in the house or around town.

Kevin worries that only heavenly forces will be able to save either controversy, but both the astronauts and Norma handle their disasters with aplomb. We never learn the astronauts’ fate in the episode, but we know they’re saved through the astronaut’s ingenuity and communication with home base. Norma, similarly, communicates openly with her family and uses her own ingenuity to re-create the receipts.

Kevin worries that Jack’s brutish stubbornness will supersede his love of family, which often isn’t demonstrative. Jack defines himself, in the heartbreaking moment of the episode, as someone who has to wake up, fight traffic, bust his hump, fight traffic, come home — day in day out. And pay taxes.

But the true meaning behind that grind — the reason he puts up with it — is family. His marriage with Norma is at the heart of everything he does. So Jack doesn’t let something like Norma’s loss of the receipts break him down. Instead, he lifts her up. It brings them closer together than Kevin had ever seen them. This allows Kevin to come to the realization that what matters — what he really wants to write about in his mock obituary — is family and faith. Sure, there’s catastrophes and uncertainties (he calls his uplifting draft “a lie” or at best “a wild guess”) — but faith and family prevail.

For all its literary ambition, Faith also manages to be really funny. The best bits were everyone’s response to the obituary assignment. Paul’s thrill that he can both marry Marcia Brady and work at his dad’s practice is priceless, as were most of the other eighth graders’. I also thought Wayne’s version of Kevin’s obituary (“…died a butthead”) was hilariously played.

I had only a few minor complaints: The one bit of humor that didn’t work for me was Paul’s fear of not being able to contain everything in a school assignment. The cartoonish execution of Paul’s encyclopedic obituary stuck out in an episode that was otherwise very buttoned down. I also know the episode could have benefited from bringing up Brian Cooper’s death; there are only twenty two minutes per episode, but if ever an episode should have brought up the climactic twist of the pilot, it should have been Faith.

Nonetheless, Faith is one of the strongest episodes of the series yet in the series.

A few thoughts:

• Faith shows Jack and Norma as a couple that has figured out how to communicate with each other comfortably in a private setting only two episodes removed from an episode that focused on Winnie and Kevin’s attempt to figure out how to do that very thing.
• I was ready to call out the show for showing Kevin and Norma arriving at the church at the same time when Norma left first and drove while Kevin biked, but the episode actually explained the plot hole away — she went to the store first.
• This answers the question about whether the Arnolds are religious or not. They don’t go to chruch every week. For a family that adheres to the traditional, WASP structure and values, I was surprised to learn that they don’t go to Sunday service.
• It was a nice bit of subtlety that the episode never quoted Franklin’s line that I opened this recap with, even though it is clearly alluded to it numerous times.
• I’ve said it over and over. Dan Lauria and Alley Mills do incredible work in this show. They also get some of the best writing in the series. That makes episodes that focus on the Arnold parents nearly always a success.

I guess that’s when I realized that love was going to be a lot more complicated — and a lot more simple — than I’d ever dreamed.

Kevin

This is exactly the type of Kevin-Winnie story the show should be telling now: slow-paced, depicting the early stages of the relationship, letting the two build chemistry, giving us lots of warm moments —  really, just showing us that the characters (and the show) are going to build this romance into something special, something worthy of the wait and the characters’ history as close friends.

The Wonder Years has fundamentally been about the loss of innocence that comes with growing up, and, here, Kevin and Winnie are socially pressured into going to an event they both know might forcibly remove some of that innocence that they’re barely hanging on to. This unease about going to the party — which they know could be fun and romantic, but also pushes them out of their comfort zone — drives the two of them apart. It’s as if being formally recognized as a couple actually raises a barrier between them.

An interesting dynamic arises from this conflict — neither character really wants to go to the party, but neither wants to say that they don’t. Kevin comes the closest to saying that he’d rather not be pushed into it, but Winnie insists that she’d rather go. I thought this struggle for the two of them to communicate honestly was done very well.

They finally arrive at the party and they’re relieved to find it completely normal and fun — not the creepy makeout-fest they’d imagined. The barrier around them dissolves and they enjoy themselves at the party. This scene may have been my favorite of the episode; I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it as long as it’s true: It’s always fun to watch the characters just having fun and enjoying each other’s company. How could you not like seeing Fred Savage rocking out to “Shout?”

But then the party gets weird and starts to match the vision Kevin and Winnie initially had of the party. The delightfully creepy Robbie Hudson pressures Winnie and Kevin into the makeout room. In an extended moment of discomfort, the two fidget and shuffle for a minute before Winnie bolts. As Kevin realizes that Winnie doesn’t want to make out, he begins to suspect it’s because she doesn’t actually like him.

Kevin returns home humiliated and goes to sleep heartbroken. He wakes up to a beautifully-shot, angelic vision of Winnie outside his window. “Please don’t let this be one of those dreams where you can’t open the window,” he thinks. Winnie wants to walk and have a chat. Kevin assumes it’s to officially dump him, but then she finally breaks that barrier of poor communication from earlier in the episode: She admits that she didn’t want to be in that room with him; she didn’t want to kiss him.

This seems to confirm Kevin’s suspicion that she doesn’t want to be with him, but then she call him her “boyfriend” and everything changes — in fact, she’s the one seeking remorse. She didn’t want to kiss him then, not with all eyes on them and the magic artificially created.

So, when does she want to kiss him? he wonders.

Anyone could’ve guessed Kevin and Winnie would have their first big kiss by the end of the episode, so the ending didn’t exactly take my breath away. But it was so gently and sweetly told (I especially loved the line quoted at the beginning of the post) that I completely enjoyed it.

In all, Night Out proved that the series can tell stories very well centered around the Kevin-Winnie romance. It’s a predictable affair, but it reconfirms the show’s commitment to telling stories from the perspective of lost innocence and strong character development.

Other thoughts:

• Paul has a few great moments here but is largely absent from the second half of the episode
• The episode loses only a small shred of impact because we’ve already seen Kevin make out with a girl (Becky Slater back in Between Me and You…)
• Wayne really relishes those moments he gets to humiliate Kevin. Jason Hervey really nails these moments.
• But speaking of Wayne, where was he when Winnie knocked on the window? Still awake somewhere?
• Props to Greg Davis on oozing the role of the junior high Hugh Hefner with zealous grossness

I think I literally smiled the entire duration of this episode. This was a funny, kind of heartwarming, kind of dark, utter blast of an episode.

Kevin, Paul, and their motley crew of untalented comrades form the black sheep of RFK Junior High’s singing landscape. They’re okay with that, and their teacher is perfectly content not to mold them. That is, until Miss Haycock shows up.

Suddenly, she expects Kevin and the rest to actually try and sing. I did not object to this development, because every moment of this group singing nearly brought me to tears with laughter. Still, it seemed unlikely that this group of gangly, unmotivated teen boys would have any shot at pulling together anything presentable.

Kevin wins over Miss Haycock from the beginning by having “passion” in his audition, so he’s the only one who has the power to talk her down from her grand ambition of having the gorup perform. But, his new girlfriend Winnie Cooper pushes him to act more responsibly and support his teacher, even if this would end up being unwise.

With some persistence, the rest of the choir boys (minus the ever-enthusiastic Paul) are able to talk Kevin down from his support of the singing performance. So Kevin tells Miss Haycock that none of them really want to perform. I didn’t buy that she would get so upset; she seemed so unflappable that I had trouble believing this would be the thing that would break her.

Still, it resulted the absolutely fantastic reveal of Warren Butcher’s angelic voice. Tough guys tapping into their feminine side is always a funny brand of humor, and I was practically on the floor when I saw Warren belting out that beautiful note.

With this ray of hope, the group decides not to let down Miss Haycock. And this is where The Wonder Years’ defiance of the underdog story came in — much like at the end of Loosiers, the group stayed bad but gained something: a bit of self confidence, some sense of unity, and the pleasure of helping a young teacher come closer to achieving her life goal.

And everything goes worse than expected (though, I will admit, far better than expected from a comedy standpoint). Warren’s voice drops at the worst time, Paul relapses into the nervous sneezes that plagued him when Carla first courted him, and Doug Porter falls off the stage. It makes for brilliant, hysterical laughs — some of my favorite of the season. But Miss Haycock, who actually cares about the singing, is distraught that she wasn’t able to mold the kids at the rate that she did.

As someone who had to put up with lots of idealistic teacher types in the education department, I’m glad the episode both honored and mocked the passion and confidence of young teachers. Miss Haycock was an enjoyable character for me to watch. She reminded me of a dozen or so people I know personally.

There’s a hint of darkness in the way Miss Haycock completely implodes, but the way the episode defied the formula that any sports fan (including myself) knows by heart made up for it.

A few recaps ago, I talked about an episode of The Wonder Years can still work if it’s silly and shallow as long as its funny; this is a perfect example. Glee Club doesn’t really teach us much of anything about any of our characters. Still, it’s a fun romp full of hysterical scenes.

Other thoughts:

• We’re supposed to believe that Kevin has been going to this club twice a week, and the show never thought to mention it before now?
• I loved this use of Winnie. It showed us how their young relationship is beginning to affect the way he acts.
• Paul’s singing was great, but that curly haired guy (what’s his name?) had the funniest voice.

After a couple of episodes of The Wonder Years at its worst, the show rebounds with an excellent outing. The Tree House works for a few reasons. One is that it focuses on Dan Lauria (third time this season!), who is maybe the show’s most reliable presence (aww, who am I kidding, Josh Saviano is my favorite). Another is that the episode tackles a topic the show hasn’t visited in awhile — sex – and tells a unique story with it that really builds off of well-established characters. A third reason the episode works is that it’s very funny.

We start the episode with Doug Porter traumatized after receiving the talk from his dad (“I actually had to listen to my dad say ‘genitals’” — hilariously repeated at the end of the episode). Sexual awareness is slowly rising around school; that little imp Hobson in particular thinks he has it all figured out. (It’s all about the magazines as far as he concerned — women as curiosities to be admired.)

Meanwhile, Jack has off from work and Norma, tired of his fidgety presence, tasks him to undertake one of Kevin’s childhood dreams of building a treehouse. This leads to one of the best moments of the episode, when Future Kevin, Kevin, and Jack all skeptically retort “A treehouse?”

But Kevin and Jack agree to begin building the treehouse, except it’s Jack who does most of the building. At least until Kevin speaks up and shows he can hold his own with a power-saw. Then, to Kevin’s delight, he manages to enter into his dad’s sacred bubble. Jack’s handiwork seems to be one of the few places he can really be himself, so when Kevin enters that world, he briefly connects with Jack as an equal.

And then… tomatoes lady. The moment when Jack and Kevin spot tomatoes lady for the first time is one of the best unspoken scenes of the series yet. Jack’s amusement and guilty pleasure clash with Kevin’s utter horror at the “tomatoes” below.

Jack and Kevin become acutely aware that maybe they’d been acting as if Kevin was a little bit more grown up than he was. It’s actually the opposite dilemma as the one in The Powers That Be; there, Jack’s emasculation pushed him to treat Kevin like an irresponsible baby. Here, their bond over building the tree house allowed him to treat Kevin like a grown man.

While the The Powers That Be ended with Jack making a conscious decision to treat Kevin a bit differently, The Tree House doesn’t give Jack the chance; his temporary bond of equals between he and Kevin crashes and burns due to the awkward disconnect in sexuality between a man who’s had three children and a boy who hasn’t even had “the talk” with his own dad.

The episode is only halfway done at that point, but the new stasis is quickly set: The two are equally aware of the terribly uncomfortable situation in front of them, and they silently agree steer clear of that danger zone of awkwardness. They try to avoid it for as long as they can, but ultimately that barrier keeps rising.

The best line of the episode is”Look at the size of those tomatoes, Jack!” when, once and for all, Kevin and Jack are faced with the uncomfortable truth that Kevin will soon be growing up — not just in the sense that he can use a power tool, but he’ll have a sex life. It’s an amusing moment, compounded with other amusing moments (like when Norma gets the wrong idea about exactly why Kevin and Jack enjoy staying up in the tree working on the treehosue), but the biggest success of the episode is its exploration of the tenuous father-son relationship that uncontrollably steers into uncomfortable territory.

In all, a very decent episode to bounce back from a pair of the weakest the show had done.

Other thoughts:

• No mention of the fact that Kevin’s dating Winnie now? Or are they even dating?
• I’m a big fan of both Doug Porter and Hobson. Glad to see them both used to good effect here.This show is not particularly innuendo heavy. I think the “tomatoes” line is about as severe as the innuendo has gotten.
• This is  great soundtrack episode. My favorite music moment of the episode was “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

There are two points of discussion following St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. First is the outcome of the episode and what it means for the show; I’ll get to that at the end of the recap. Second is the quality of the episode itself, to which I say: Meh. Color me disappointed.

I’ve described a few episodes of this show as “farcical” and “plot-heavy.” These descriptors fit this episode more than they ever have before, so let me take a moment to discuss exactly what I mean.

When I say an episode is “farcical,” I mean that it contains a lot of the traits of the theater genre of farce: mistaken identities, miscommunication, improbable coincidences, and otherwise unlikely scenarios. It’s not an inherently negative descriptor; a good farce can be extremely entertaining. But episodes that are too farcical have to be very funny and clever, because zany antics tend to overshadow things like “character stakes” and “motivation” and other aspects of good dramatic storytelling.

Consider St Valentine’s Day Massacre — one of the major subplots of the episode arose from a simple mistake of left or right. When the seventh grader put the note in the wrong locker, the locker ended up to be Becky Slater’s, and she of course misinterpreted it, etc. — that’s a potentially funny plot, but it has to be funny, or it doesn’t work. And, here, it’s not very funny.

And when I call an episode “plot-heavy,” I mean that characters’ motivations and intentions change rapidly through the episode. Over She, My Best Friend, and I and St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Winnie’s favor of Kevin changes maybe a dozen times for different reasons — she’s jealous he’s trying to hook her up with Paul, then she resents Kevin for it and goes on a few dates with Paul, then her feelings for Kevin overcome her spite so she dumps Paul… etc.

These kind of rapid attitude changes can be very funny, particularly in a romantic context. But they can also be tiring; it’s just not as effective to have big changes in relationships over too short a timespan. For whatever reason, the writers of the show have tended to pair plot-heavy episodes back to back, as they do here, when they’d be a lot more effective evenly spaced.

Again, I don’t hate episodes that tend towards farce and rapid romantic plot changes. Steady As She Goes from the second season follows that formula and is one of my favorite episodes of the series. But Steady As She Goes does a few important things correctly that St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

First, Steady As She Goes is very well grounded in believable character motivation even though it’s full of farcical hijinks. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre isn’t particularly grounded — we know Kevin wants Winnie, but a lot of the episode deals with his Becky Slater trouble, which really has very little to do with his desire for Winnie (except to complicate it even further).

Winnie is even more all over the place. I had trouble figuring out exactly why she was mad at Kevin at any point during the episode; at the end, she could have been mad that he kissed Becky, but instead she said that he’d embarrassed her. So I was even more confused.

Worst of all was the bit where she said she lied when she said she liked him, but later admitted that she had lied about lying. There’s nothing clever or character-based in that. It’s just a crappy excuse to keep the characters apart for another ten minutes.

Just Between Me And You… from the second season of the show was similarly exhausting in its copious miscommunications and deceptions. But that episode managed to redeem itself a little bit with an ending that the implied that the point of the episode was to show just how pointless all of that drama is.

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre had a hint of thematic purpose behind it. A few times throughout the episode, Future-Kevin made some remarks about how adolescent romance is made more difficult because so few people are direct, decisive, and honest. The resolution of the episode backs the theme up: Simply, Kevin tells Winnie how she feels, asks her if she feels the same. They apologize and start holding hands.

It could have been redemptive — the writers revealing the thematic point they were trying to make all along — but it mostly came across as empty and frustrating. Kevin and Winnie finally getting together is a MASSIVE plot point, one that I’d expect to be taken seriously and built up to. But this episode had the opposite effect: it bored me with romance and crushes. The moment where Kevin and Winnie get together felt like the non-punchline to an anti-joke.

There was one thing I really appreciated about the episode: the callbacks to plot arcs from previous episodes. Kevin’s crush on Miss White (or whatever he name is now) played a pivotal role in one scene, while Becky Slater was obviously a central figure of the plot. But the use of Becky in particular frustrated me and made me wish they hadn’t brought her up at all. What made her so appealing at the beginning was how the writers treated her as a character with emotions and motivations rather than just a plot device to keep Kevin and Winnie apart for awhile longer.

In short, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre frustrated me as an unfunny, unsatisfying episode that put concluded with the climactic moment of Winnie and Kevin apparently getting together. There are a few more parts of the episode that didn’t work for me — including Paul’s apparently nonexistent memory that he got dumped by Winnie for Kevin — but I think I’ve made my point.

So now, a few thoughts on what a Kevin-Winnie romance might mean for the show. First, I think the writers picked a good point in the series to finally hook the two up. They’d run out of excuses to feasibly keep them apart and explored plenty of courtship stories. I’m ready to see some actual relationship stories.

My biggest concern is that the writers will bail to quickly on the relationship for any number of reasons (the show is on Moonlighting Fallacy watch). I’ve tricked myself into watching this show as if it were currently airing, but I do have the advance knowledge that show runs for six seasons; if it breaks Winnie and Kevin up too early, I might start to dread the inevitable will-they-won’t-they cycle knowing I have to put up with it for another eighty or so episodes.

On the more optimistic side, I’m really excited to see what The Wonder Years has to say about all phases of a romatnic relationship during formative years. A first serious relationship is one of the most meaningful, educational experiences of anyone’s life. There’s a lot of poignant material for the show to deal with. And I won’t even mind an occasional silly, farce episode, as long as they don’t have lasting consequences and manage to actually be funny.

I just really, really hope the writers take their time telling these stories. If they handle this correctly, it could add a powerful dimension to the show. If they botch it, it could seriously hamper the show for seasons to come by wasting a central conflict carefully constructed over two and a half seasons of great television. No pressure or anything, though.

She, My Friend, and I started out pretty excellently, but became steadily less enjoyable as the half hour wore on. It is only the first half of a two-parter (as indicated by the “To be continued”), but, as a standalone, I walked away from She, My Friend, and I feeling… what’s the technical term… icky.

As a general rule, it takes some finesse for viewers to seriously consider shifting sides in a romance. That is — the entire series to date has paved the way for Kevin and Winnie to be together, so it’s hard for viewers to take seriously the idea of Paul being with Winnie. It could have worked if it was a sham the whole time, but the fact that Paul seriously invested himself in the relationship (Winnie, probably less so), made it very jarring and uncomfortable to sit through.

In real life, a situation like this might happen. In a sitcom, where we have the lens of one central character, it really shouldn’t unless the writers are going to flat-out commit to it as a serious character arc. These kinds of serious, potentially dynamic-altering  are a lot like fire. Handled properly, the flame can be pretty impressive, but it’s more likely that the someone’s going to get burned.

Notice the way they show Paul and Winnie together — it’s always for brief snippets, it’s always from far away, and it’s never intimate. This shows to me that the writers could never really invest in the idea themselves, or at least they knew it might put off viewers. It just feels wrong, and everyone knows it.

It’s a shame that most of the episode focused on a conflict that really did not work, because the beginning of the episode was so promising. Kevin’s denial of his feelings for Winnie have been hinted at, but I was ready for an episode to seriously reconsider their status after the very effective conclusion to Don’t You Know Anything About Women? The opening scene here provides a nice set-up for such a plot.

Paul also had an excellent opening to the episode. His post-breakup blues are very funny and very well-played by Josh Saviano. My favorite bit was when he said he couldn’t go watch a movie with Kevin because he and Carla always used to go watch movies together. I could easily watch a whole episode of Saviano playing hilariously miserable.

But then Kevin — and the episode — decided to play with fire. It could have been a really funny affair, Kevin setting up a pretty clearly not-interested Winnie with a desperate Paul. Instead they tried to play the plot semi-seriously, and it felt like a ham-fisted attempt at drama.

Even the resolution was unsatisfying; I suppose Kevin was so excited when he gleaned from Paul that Winnie may in fact be interested in him (the episode never confirms this is what Winnie actually said, but I assume that it’s true). But what on earth was he thinking when he a) immediately approached Winnie, and b) told her that Paul said what he said? How could he have possibly thought that was the right thing to do?

The only answer that I can come up with is that the writers wanted to wedge another conflict between Winnie and Kevin. I could buy everything that kept them apart before, but if the show places an artificial barrier between them based on this episode, I’ll be disappointed.

I was hoping that She, My Friend, and I would end up a humor-driven affair. Instead, it focused on an uncomfortable romantic plot and ended with an unsatisfying cliffhanger. There were some nice moments on the fringes of the episode, but my discomfort with the core of the episode detracted from them.

We lucked out — two Dan Lauria showcases in one season. The Powers That Be gives one of the show’s best actors another chance to show off his impressive chops when his own dad comes to town. Grampa Arnold, played by David Huddleston, throws a wrench in the Arnold family dynamic when he’s around; suddenly, Jack is no longer the patriarch of the household.

Specifically, Gramps gives Kevin his own puppy — without the approval of Jack. Thus, Jack finds himself against the idea of a puppy; even if he might have approved a dog entering the Arnold family on its own, he certainly wasn’t going to approve it with Gramps going over his head.

Kevin thinks of owning a dog as a treat, but Jack sees it as a boatload of responsibility: Kevin will have to train it, take care of it, feed it, spend time with it. In other words, he’ll have to become a parent of his own. Gramps treats owning a puppy as a present for Kevin to love and spoil — much like the way he treats Kevin himself. Jack is all too eager to remind him that there’s another side of the coin.

But the dynamic grows an extra layer of complexity because Gramps was in the role that Jack was in not long before. You can see some similarity in their personalities; both are difficult to impress, both are quietly stubborn and hard; and both have a fondness for The Honeymooners. Jack secretly wants his father’s approval, though he’d never admit it. And Gramps is hesitant to give his approval, much like Jack was to Norma in Pottery Will Get You Nowhere. But instead of pottery, it’s a family and a household Jack is showing off.

The disagreements build to a climax in a dinner argument. Gramps makes a statement about the potatoes — they’d give him gas because of the pepper — and it escalates from there. Jack is sure that Gramps is being intentionally hard to impress, as if to roll his eyes at everything that Jack has accomplished. But this specific instance may be one where Gramps truly has medical concerns; in general, he seems eager to focus his resentment at Jack, not the rest of the Arnold family, so it’s hard to say why he’d criticize Norma’s cooking.

Regardless, Jack and Gramps come to verbal blows. Both of them want to convince the other that they’re right, and neither is willing to listen to what Kevin has to say. Kevin’s rejection of the puppy has less to do with the puppy itself and more to do with a feeling that he’s just a pawn in their debates. He also knows he’s an important player in a similar dynamic only a few years removed — if responsibility for someone or something else means that he’ll descend into this inferno of resentment, he’ll have nothing to do with it.

In the end, Jack insists that Kevin keep the puppy. He wants to plant the seed in Kevin that paternity is more than that abomination of broken pride and disapproval that he’s witnessed the past few days. That’s not what being a dad’s about. The puppy both gives the chance to Kevin to start down the road of taking care of others and serves as physical promise that the three will act in a more reasonable, healthy manner.

The Powers That Be is a little bit of a tough nut to crack, thematically. There are lots of contradictions and complexities in the cyclical grandfather-father-son dynamic, so it’s hard to figure out who is in the right at which points. But that’s part of the point. The episode works well because it gives a chance for Lauria, Fred Savage, and David Huddleston to show off together.

It’s not a masterpiece, but The Powers That Be enriches the father-son dynamic of the show and once again puts Dan Lauria as Jack front and center, something I’ll never complain about.

Some other thoughts:

• That Gramps calls Jack “John” is a nice touch.
• I wonder how often we’ll see Buster in the future.
• Very nice final shot of the mailboxes in a line, with the Arnolds’ broken from Gramps hitting it.
• There are too many great little scenes between some combination of Savage, Biddlecomb, and Huddleston that I couldn’t list them all here. But one that stands out is the scene where Kevin wants to show off Buster as Jack and Gramps work on the window frame.
• Jack’s Gleason impression is good but probably not legend-worthy. Still, it gave Gramps one of his darkest moments of the episode where he held back his praise for his son.

Damn it, Wonder Years! How could you do that to me? You pulled the fleece over my eyes and hit me in the gut at the last possible moment.

I loved that ending. Loved loved loved it. I had wondered why Winnie was absent and had never been brought up as a potential date for Kevin. I assumed the show simply wanted to tell a different story from the previous school-dance episode (Dance With Me).

Turns out I was both right and wrong: On the one hand, by using two characters who have no history with Kevin, the episode could dissect some broad points about romance and relationships without worrying about how their histories with Kevin would affect the discussion. On the other, the writers were simply distracting us for that one final reveal of Winnie wandering the dance floor, she and Kevin missing each other by mere moments.

And what a reveal it was: Future Kevin’s concludes his narration about how we all hope that “somewhere, somehow there’s someone perfect who might be searching for us,” the Righteous Brothers reach the emotional climax of “Unchained Melody,” and — BAM! — Winnie Cooper. Freaking brilliant.

I’m trying to remember exactly when I realized that the episode was leading us towards the Winnie reveal. It must have been at some point during that final narration. Everything — Kevin’s words and the music and the shots back and forth between Kevin and the crowd of dancers — was building towards something significant. It finally hit me that the show was using its big guns to remind us about Winnie Cooper. Even the lyrics were perfect: “Time goes by so slowly / And time can do so much / Are you still mine / I need your love”.

Anyways, there was also an entire episode leading up to those final moments, and I thought it was a pretty good episode. I was occasionally worried the episode would spin out of control into an one of those uncomfortable farce episodes where Kevin makes one bad decision after another. Instead, the episode was primarily focused on analyzing different types of romance: There’s the “comfortable” friend who has nothing wrong with him/her, but lacks spark and attraction. Then there’s the “dream” who ignites you but who has nothing substantial for you to connect with.

The episode points out the flaws of both types of romance. You can connect with the comfortable friend, but you can’t build a romantic chemistry. But the dream boy or girl, even if you can develop some chemistry with them, can never provide a satisfying relationship.

I must admit that I was rooting for Kevin to hit it off with Linda Sloan. Not only do Fred Savage and Maia Brewton as Linda have excellent chemistry from the outset, but Linda provides a fresh type of character for the show: A girl who is down-to-earth and undramatic and gets along great with guys, particularly Kevin.

Kevin has spent so much of this show pursuing drama queens and the complicated Winnie Cooper and girls with strings otherwise attached. Here was a chance at a girl he already had a good rapport with, who surprised him with how good of a date she could be, and who was clearly into him. “Don’t do it!” I said aloud as Kevin agreed to dance with Susan, who is no different from a half dozen other romantic interests Kevin has encountered so far.

But even as Kevin let his vanilla pudding slip away, the ending suggests that the perfect romantic match is someone who is equal parts comfortable friend and dream boy/girl: Or, in Kevin’s case, Winnie Cooper. The hard part is finding that person at the right place and right time. Kevin and Winnie miss each other by moments, just as it’s so easy for anyone to miss out on someone special because of bad timing or bad luck.

A few other thoughts:

• The Wonder Years has a way with ending episodes strongly, but I have to say that this episode takes the cake for my favorite ending yet.
• I spent so much of the recap talking about romance and Winnie that I failed to mention Paul. This was as funny an episode for Paul as we’ve had in awhile. His rant about mini-golfing was so good. It’s hard not to be happy for him when he lights up after Carla calls him back at the dance. Josh Saviano, always the man.
• But seriously, Kevin, why let Linda go? Yeah, I want Kevin and Winnie to eventually end up together, but why not give dating Linda a chance? She’s such a sweetheart and an enjoyable presence on the show. (The correct answer is that it’d probably end up just like Becky Slater, with Kevin eventually breaking up with her after remembering Winnie is the one he really wants.)
• The icing on the cake is another appearance by Ben Stein, who apparently teaches chemistry along with natural disasters. The parallel between romantic chemistry and scientific chemistry is a pretty obvious one, but it worked well here.
• I can only think of a handful of television episode endings that hit me with as much impact as this one. I’ll have to watch it again after I have the whole series for context, but Don’t You Know Anything About Women? definitely has potential as a pantheon entry in my TV episode endings hall of fame.

There are comedy episodes like The Pimple — which strain to milk comedy out of narrow topic — and then episodes like Rock ‘n’ Roll, which take advantage of having such a broad topic to focus on. The writers are firing on all cylinders during Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is aptly named because it takes a stab at all of the defining elements of rock ‘n’ roll music and ends up not only a funny, riveting 22 minutes of television but a compelling portrait of everything that makes rock music important and great.

There isn’t much to the plot: Kevin earns the favor of a new student transferred from San Francisco who offers to teach him a few chords, and before long the two have started a band. The band gets a gig even though it isn’t quite ready for a show. Kevin quits out of fear of embarrassment, but rejoins the band at the last minute. Just as the show is about to start, they get shut down by the neighbors who complain to the cops.

But within that basic structure of a plot, the writers explore a huge variety of topics for comedy — awful band names, groupies, silly outfits, the awfulness of most local bands — and insight into the components that make rock and roll tick — rebellion, fun, getting lost in the music, desire for easy fame and fortune, resistance from the previous generation.

I could go back through the episode and find my favorite moments, but there were so many that it’d actually be a difficult task. (Though I have to say that Paul’s reaction to the name “Electric Shoes” was particularly memorable.) The episode was pretty well paced from beginning to end, with strong writing all around.

I really enjoyed Joshua John Miller as lisping rocker Larry Beaman; he gave off the vibe of someone who wouldn’t be cool for long, but as the new kid with the Frisco zeitgeist managed to come across as cooler than he actually was. It worked well for the episode, giving him a lot of personality in just one episode. I hope we get to see more of him later in the series.

And anything that references The Beatles’ performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on Ed Sullivan is going to earn some points in my book. I’m glad the writers took the time to call out some of the most important rockers — The Beatles, Hendrix, the Stones, Clapton, The Who, and more — along the way. This show makes such unique use of a classic pop and rock soundtrack that this episode was fertile ground for a memorable music episode. And it delivered, particularly in the choice of My Generation as the Kevin bought his guitar.

I’m a sucker for rock and roll music (then again, aren’t most people?) so this episode was a particular joy for me. It’s not a masterpiece of storytelling or character, but it’s a pleasure from front to back and goes on my short list of favorite episodes.