Odd Man Out makes a few crucial mistakes: For one, it never really gives a good reason for Kevin to break off his friendship with Paul. Second, it never adequately shows us Paul’s perspective. Lastly, it paints Kevin to be a pretty big asshole the entire time. Those three flaws prevented an episode with a compelling…

I’m of two minds about On the Spot. On the one hand, it gives us our richest Winnie story to date. There are some really beautiful moments and shots. The episode also gives us a substantial amount of time to actually observe the play unfold. The impact of Winnie’s performance is more moving because of…

If we get an Alley Mills-centric episode every season, I will not object. I rarely remember to cite her excellence in these recaps, but she’s just as consistently impressive as Dan Lauria, Fred Savage, or Josh Saviano. Here, she does a gerat job capturing a mother’s unease about her youngest son getting to that point…

My least favorite episode of the previous season, Hiroshima, Mon Frere, was a Wayne-centric episode, just like Wayne on Wheels. But where that episode struggled to make me care about Wayne, this one depicted him in a way that made him more interesting and human without betraying his garish, bullying, slightly crazy ways. Kevin pursues…

I’m actually kind of surprised The Wonder Years didn’t do a bad grades episode before now. It seems like one of the default plots for a coming of age show. I really liked the way The Wonder Years tackled it. They essentially took the plot from Loosiers and reversed the roles of Kevin and Paul.…

“A lot happened on the beach in Ocean City that summer night in 1969. But, of course, none of it was permanent.” -Kevin Think of everything that happened to Kevin Arnold in the past year — Brian Cooper getting killed in Vietnam, his up-and-down relationship with Winnie, getting beat up by Eddie, etc. — and…

It seems like the writers of The Wonder Years wanted to have two season finales. Last episode, Whose Woods Are These?, served as a thematic capper of the series thus far, stretching the show to its literary and symbolic limits. How I’m Spending My Summer Vacation, on the other hand, is a more traditional finale.…

There we have it, folks: every important theme in The Wonder Years bundled up in 22 minutes. Growing up is loss: Of innocence, of old friendships, of cherished memories — sometimes, of hope. The destruction of their childhood hangout feels like a perversion, but everyone’s in on it. Their parents knew it was coming. The…

I thought you were different. -Margaret After watching Square Dance, I looked up the writer of the episode. I was not surprised to find that the only other episode Todd W. Langen had written in the run so far was Coda. While Coda is a better episode than Square Dance, the two have a lot…

In 1969, people tried so hard to find themselves. Sometimes they got lost. Sometimes they found their way home again. -Kevin The other Karen-centric episode up to this point is Angel, the fourth episode of the series. Both episodes do a great job exploring the complex moral nuances and contradictions of the emerging social liberalism…