Five episodes in, and The Wonder Years is batting a thousand. The Phone Call is not the best episode of the series yet — that’s either Swingers or Angel — but it again takes a small issue, packs it with significance and stakes, and brings it home with a poignant ending. If this is The…
Angel starts slowly, and, during the first two thirds of the episode, I found myself bothered by the voiceover for the first time. But by the time the credits rolled, Angel had evolved into a truly great episode of television, perhaps the best of the series yet. The episode reminds us that, while The Wonder…
Taking a diversion from the Kevin-Winnie romance, “My Father’s Office” instead explores a character who had been marginalized during the first two episodes: Kevin’s dad, Jack. All we had known from the first two episodes of The Wonder Years is that Jack is hard man. He’s impatient and assertive and comes home tired after every…
Wow, that was fantastic. Even better than the pilot. In just two episodes, The Wonder Years has already started crafting a portrait of the complex, often paradoxical nature of growing up. The closing monologue hit the nail on the head where so many other coming of age tales stumble; growing up is not a linear…
I just watched the pilot for The Wonder Years on Netflix, and I thought it was fantastic, so I felt inspired to write a response to it here. This may be the only episode I write about, or I may do the entire series. You’ve been warned. What I loved most about this pilot was…
Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) If you were to watch this based on the show’s premise as advertised by MTV — “a high school nerd accidentally reveals he has a long penis, and his social life turns around!” — you’d be disappointed. That one trait of the central character (despite being referenced in the…
The U.S. version of The Office is my favorite show of all time (for a variety of reasons, all of which will be detailed in a post published probably some time around when this season’s finale airs). Yet, until this past week, I had never seen the British original. In the past five days, I’ve…
I have a confession to make, and that is — despite my love of movies and music and television and books and video games and the like — I tend not to be very up to date on my media consumption. There’s simply too much for me to pay attention to, and it usually costs…
Today, The Social Network—aka “The Facebook Movie”—comes out to widespread anticipation and Oscar buzz. Upon first glance, I was barely interested in this project, but then I learned that Aaron Sorkin wrote it. And yes, the trailer was promising, the subject matter naturally relevant, and the hype and advance buzz have been so deafening that…
Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of 4) Though it’s easily the weakest season (or “book”) of the show’s three, the excellent first season of the Avatar: The Last Airbender is firmly in the category of superior children-oriented entertainment that’s deep and exciting enough to be appealing to all viewers. The show’s opening sequence explains that…