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…
Christmas-themed episodes for sitcoms usually stand out from other episodes of the series by wrapping up in a warm, sentimental, often treacly way. The Wonder Years, however, consistently wraps its episodes up poignantly. Thus, “Christmas” (I’ll put it in quotes when I mean the episode name, not the holiday) feels very consistent within the series…
Our Miss White somehow manages to parallel Kevin’s crush on his teacher with the civil rights movement. It does so with a straight face and without in any way degrading or mocking the civil rights movement. On the contrary, Our Miss White is a testament to the complex and passionate cultural and political landscape of…
“You know what it is? It’s the contacts. Ever since she got contacts, she thinks she’s so cool. She’s turned into a real snob. You know when my mother took me to get contacts and we found out I’m allergic to them? Well now I’m glad. I’d much rather wear glasses and be a nice…
“Things wouldn’t be the same between us. We were getting older. And whether we wanted it or not, the Lisa Berlinis and the Kirk McCrays were changing us by the minute. All we could do was close our eyes and wish that the slow song would never end.” – Kevin The pilot of The Wonder…
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…