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…

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…