I was just asking about where our family came from. What are we? -Kevin That scene of the Pfeiffer family eating dinner the night before Paul’s bar mitzvah is probably my favorite scene of the series yet. I was misting up by the end of it. Paul’s family is so well-casted and persuasive in their…

I spent a good fifteen minutes after Fate ended trying to decide which episodes of the 18 I’ve seen that I’d recommend for newbies of the show. I ultimately settled on Steady as She Goes and Coda, the former featuring the show at its funniest and the latter at its most thematically rich. But Fate…

Holy continuity, Batman! Where did all these callbacks come from? One of my biggest disappointments in the show before this episode is that it hadn’t really allowed its characters to organically build histories. Not that the characters have been inconsistent, but most character development has been modular to that episode. Nemesis tackles this head on,…

With only 22 minutes to use each week, half-hour network shows have to be very selective about how they tell their stories. Walk Out chooses to be a meditation on the general concept of protest by youth. It considers why political protest by youth is at once hypocritical — how can a 12-year-old have proper…

More than anything, though, it’s hard to imagine being twelve years old — and not having a best-friend like Paul Pfeiffer. -Kevin Now that’s more like it. After an episode that felt a bit lacking in its exploration of a secondary character, Loosiers sticks the landing. It’s not a perfect episode — in particular, Coach…

I had been looking forward to the inevitable Wayne-centric episode, eager to see what the writers would do with a character who has been entertaining but largely a source of comic relief. While I really liked a few of the ways the this episode fleshed out Wayne and his relationship to Kevin, I still thought…

Fan. Freaking. Tastic. The Wonder Years is most fundamentally about loss, and Coda explores the bittersweet nature of losing those childhood activities. Here, the piano isn’t just an afterschool activity for Kevin, but a symbol of youthful passion and potential, something largely shed by grown-ups. Norma has her pottery and Jack has his stargazing, but…

After a couple of plot-heavy (and exhausting) episodes focused on Kevin’s romantic life, Pottery Will Get You Nowhere is a welcome change-of-pace that reminded me of My Dad’s Office or The Phone Call from the first season: Centered on a single small conflict, deeply mining it for great character growth. What I most loved about…

Just Between Me And You… was at moments as tiring as its absurd title (cited in its entirety above). The whole Kirk-Winnie drama was overplayed going into this episode, so I was completely bored of it by the end of the episode. I honestly would have preferred a few episodes of Kevin and Becky going…

Highs and lows. -Kevin A handful of The Wonder Years episodes so far have probed deep into the political and cultural currents of the late 1960s. Our Miss White and Angel come to mind. Steady as She Goes is not one of those episodes. It’s the most fun, raucous episode of the series yet, again…