The Wonder Years ( TV Series 1988 - 1993 )





 

Plot



The Wonder Years is an American television comedy-drama created by Carol Black and Neal Marlens. It ran for six seasons on ABC from 1988 through 1993. The pilot aired on January 31, 1988 after ABC's coverage of Super Bowl XXII.

 

The show achieved a spot in the Nielsen Top Thirty for four of its six seasons. TV Guide named the show one of the 20 best of the 1980s. After only six episodes aired, The Wonder Years won an Emmy for best comedy series in 1988. Moreover, at the age of 13, Fred Savage gained the honor of being the youngest actor ever nominated Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series. In addition, the show was awarded a Peabody Award in 1989, for achieving two seemingly contradictory effects: evoking a traditional family sitcom while pushing boundaries and using new modes of storytelling. In total, the series won 22 awards, and was nominated for a further 54 more.



The show's theme is Joe Cocker's cover of the Beatles' song "With a Little Help from My Friends".

 

The series depicts the social and family life of a boy in a typical American suburb from 1968 to 1973, covering his ages of 12 through 17. Each year in the series is presented as having taken place 20 years before the original air dates (1988 to 1993).

The plot centers on Kevin Arnold, son of Jack and Norma Arnold. Kevin's dad holds a management job at NORCOM, a defense contractor, while his mother is a homemaker. Kevin also has an older brother, Wayne, and an older sister, Karen. Two of Kevin's age peers and neighbors are prominently featured throughout the series: his best friend, Paul Pfeiffer, and his crush-turned-girlfriend Gwendolyn "Winnie" Cooper. Story lines are told through Kevin's reflections as an adult in his mid-30s, voiced by narrator Daniel Stern.





 

Characters

Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage): Character born March 18, 1956, Kevin grew up in the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s. The voice of Kevin as an adult (and the show's narrator) is supplied by Daniel Stern. (115 episodes)

Jack Arnold (Dan Lauria): Character born on November 5, 1927, Kevin's father, was a laconic man and a Korean War veteran; he mentions having grown up during the Great Depression and having been in the US Marine Corps and he is seen in photographs wearing the uniform of a First Lieutenant. He works at NORCOM, a large electronics corporation in a middle management position he loathes. Later, he starts his own business, building and selling handcrafted furniture. The last episode reveals that he dies in 1975, around the end of Kevin's freshman year of college i.e. two years after the time of the show's finale. (Though this directly contradicts the narrative script of a previous episode where an adult Kevin says his father would later be the grandfather of Kevin's sons.) His character was meant to be a reflection of the older and more conservative generation with the ideology of the Second World War / 1950s era being confused and angered by the changing world and ideologies of the '60s that were becoming mainstream at that point.

Norma Arnold (Alley Mills): Kevin's stay-at-home mother. Unlike her husband Jack, she is friendly and upbeat. She met Jack as a college freshman. When he graduated, she moved across the country with him and didn't finish college. She eventually gets her degree late in the series, and starts working at a software startup called Micro Electronics. She is shown to be more moderate (in contrast with her more conservative husband) and increasingly becoming bored and yearning to break away from her homemaker role hence reflecting the rise of feminism in the 60s. (100 episodes)

Karen Arnold (Olivia d'Abo): Kevin's older, hippie sister. She continually clashes with her overbearing father due to her free-spirited ways and his traditional views while her mother usually acts as the mediator. She has a falling out with her father when she moves in with her boyfriend Michael (David Schwimmer) during her freshman year of college. A year later, the pair get married in an outdoor wedding and move to Alaska, where Michael has secured a good job. Karen ultimately has accepted some of the conservative lifestyle of her parents by having a baby and a husband who realizes the importance of hard work to support his wife and child. (67 episodes)

Wayne Arnold (Jason Hervey): Kevin's older brother, who enjoys physically tormenting Kevin and Paul. He takes over the furniture business when his father dies. Wayne is typically portrayed as a loser when it comes to serious romantic relationships. For a time he did date a girl named Dolores, but that was a more casual relationship than most others. In later seasons, Wayne shows a little more maturity. In the final season, he begins a serious relationship with a divorcee named Bonnie but is left heartbroken when she reconciles with her husband.(102 episodes)
Paul Joshua Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano): Kevin's long time best friend, an intelligent and excellent student. He is allergic to several substances. Paul is Jewish, which is the focus of an episode where he has his Bar Mitzvah. While Kevin and Paul are best friends in the early seasons, their relationship becomes somewhat strained in later seasons. Kevin begins to hang around Chuck and Jeff more and this causes tension with Paul. On one episode, Kevin forces Paul against his will to take a trip with him to a cabin town to reconnect with his summer fling, Cara. On another episode after Paul loses his virginity, Kevin gets jealous and blabs to the guys which causes further tension with Paul. In the final episode it is revealed that he goes to Harvard University. There is an urban myth that the character is played by shock rocker Marilyn Manson, however this is untrue; Saviano is currently an attorney with the firm Morrison Cohen LLP. (94 episodes)

Gwendolyn "Winnie" Cooper (Danica McKellar): Kevin's main love interest. In an episode entitled "The Accident" and in the final episode, it is stated that every important event in Kevin's life somehow involves Winnie. She lives on the same block as Kevin. Their first kiss and her older brother's death while serving as a soldier in the Vietnam War play an important part of the pilot episode. In one episode, her parents separate over their grief of the death of their son. In the epilogue of the final episode, it is revealed that Winnie goes on to study art history in Paris. Kevin and Winnie write a letter to each other every week for eight years until she returns; in the last moments of the finale Kevin states that when Winnie returned to the States Kevin met her along with his wife and first child. This caused much grief amongst Wonder Years fans due to a large following of people wanting a Kevin and Winnie pairing. (88 episodes)

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