The Wonder Days

***The Wonder Years*** is an American television comedy-drama created by Neal Marlens and Carol Black. It ran on ABC . The pilot aired on Octmber 12,2015, following ABC's coverage of Super Bowl XXII. *TV Guide* named the show one of the 20 best of the 1980s. After only six episodes aired, *The Wonder Years* won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1988. In addition, at age 13, Fred Savage became the youngest actor ever nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series. The show was also awarded a [[George Foster Peabody Award

### Conception

The series was conceived by writers Neil Marlens and Carol Black. They set out to create a family show that would appeal to the baby-boomer generation by setting the series in the late 60s, a time of radical change in America's history. They also wanted the series to tie this setting in to life of a normal boy growing up during the period. After writing the script for the pilot episode, Marlens and Black began shopping the series to television networks. None of them were interested, except for ABC, with whom Marlens and Black reached an agreement.

Co-creator Neal Marlens had originally wanted the setting to be in his native Huntington, Long Island, where he grew up. Elements were also taken from Black's childhood from the White Oak section of Silver Spring, Maryland. ABC, however, insisted that the location remain nonspecific (the colloquial "Anywhere, USA").

### Writing

When they started writing the series, Marlens and Black took a script for a future film that they had been toying with that featured an off-screen narrator. Black explained, "We liked the concept that you could play with what people think and what they're saying, or how they would like to see themselves as opposed to how the audience is seeing them." They based the show, in part, on their own childhood growing up in suburbs. Black recalled that "we naturally [took] elements of our experience and [threw] them into the pot. The basic setup, the neighborhood, the era - that's the time and place where we grew up."

## Plot synopsis

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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 fictional year in the series takes place exactly 20 years before airing (1988 to 1993).

The show's 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.

In the pilot episode, Winnie's older brother Brian, whom Kevin admires, is killed in action in Vietnam in 1968. Kevin meets Winnie in a nearby wooded area called Harpers Woods, and they end up sharing their first kiss. This unsaid relationship between Winnie and Kevin remains dormant for a long while, with Winnie starting to date a popular 8th grader named Kirk McCray, and Kevin briefly going steady with Becky Slater. After Kevin breaks up with Becky due to his feelings for Winnie, Becky becomes a recurring nuisance for Kevin. Winnie eventually dumps Kirk as well, and Kevin and Winnie share a second kiss at the start of the 1969 summer vacation. Around Valentine's Day 1970, Winnie temporarily dates Paul, who has broken up with his girlfriend Carla. Winnie and Kevin start dating each other soon after.

Just before the summer break, Winnie and her family move to a house four miles away. Although Winnie attends a new school, Lincoln Junior High, she and Kevin decide to remain together and maintain a successful long distance relationship. A beautiful new student named Madeline Adams joins Kevin's school and quickly catches Kevin's eye, but it is Winnie who breaks up with Kevin after meeting Roger, a typical jock-type at her new school. Neither relationship lasts long, but Winnie and Kevin don't reunite until she is injured in a car accident. After graduating from junior high, Kevin and Winnie both go to McKinley High and Paul attends a prep school. Paul would later transfer to McKinley High and join Kevin and Winnie.

Earlier seasons of the show tended to focus on plots involving events within the Arnold household and Kevin's academic struggles, whereas later seasons focused much more on plots involving dating and Kevin's friends.

Kevin has several brief flings during the summer of 1971 and the 1971/72 academic year. After Kevin's grandfather gets his driver's license revoked, he sells his car to Kevin for a dollar. Paul transfers to McKinley High after his first semester at prep school when his father runs into financial troubles. Winnie and Kevin are reunited when they go on a double date to a school dance and find themselves more attracted to each other than their respective partners. Facing peer pressure in the episode "White Lies", Kevin implies to his friends that he has had sex with Winnie, but the spreading rumor causes Kevin and Winnie to break up for a few episodes. In late 1972, Kevin's older brother Wayne starts working at NORCOM, and dates his co-worker Bonnie, a divorcée with a son, but the relationship does not last. Kevin's dad quits NORCOM, and buys a furniture manufacturing business.

## Cast

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* **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.

* **John "Jack" Arnold** (Dan Lauria): Character born on November 5, 1927, died in 1975. Kevin's father was a gruff, laconic man and a Korean War veteran; he grew up during the Great Depression, served in the US Marine Corps, and 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 series's last episode reveals that he dies in 1975 near the end of Kevin's freshman year of college—that is, two years after the time of the show's finale—although in a previous episode, an adult Kevin says his father would later be the grandfather of Kevin's sons. Mr. Arnold represents the viewpoint of the "Greatest Generation" that grew up during the Depression and came of age during the Second World War; it was confused and angered by the rapid changes taking place in the 1960s.

* **Norma Arnold** (née Gustavson) (Alley Mills): Kevin's housewife mother. Unlike her husband, Norma is friendly and upbeat. She met Jack as a college freshman. When he graduated, she moved across the country with him and did not finish college. She eventually gets her degree late in the series and begins work at a software startup called Micro Electronics. Although she came of age at the same time as her husband, she is less conservative than her husband and increasingly yearns to break out of her homemaker role, reflecting the rise of feminism in the 1960s.

* **Karen Arnold** (Olivia d'Abo): Kevin's older, hippie sister. Her free-spirited ways clash with her overbearing father's conservatism, and she depends upon her mother as a mediator. When Karen moves in with her boyfriend Michael (David Schwimmer) during her freshman year of college, she has a falling out with her father. The pair marry one year later and move to Alaska, where Michael has secured a good job. Karen ultimately accepts some of her parents' viewpoints and has a baby, while her husband learns to support his wife and child.

* **Wayne Arnold** (Jason Hervey): Kevin's older brother. Wayne enjoys physically tormenting Kevin and Paul, calling Kevin "butthead" or "scrote". He takes over the family furniture business when his father dies. Wayne is usually portrayed as a loser in romantic relationships. For a time he dated a girl named Dolores, but that was more casual than serious. In later seasons, Wayne matures. In the final season, he begins a serious relationship with a divorcee named Bonnie but is left heartbroken when she reconciles with her husband.

* **Paul Joshua Pfeiffer** (Josh Saviano): Character born March 14, 1956, Paul is Kevin's long time best friend, a bright and excellent student, and an allergy sufferer. He is also Jewish and in one episode celebrates his Bar Mitzvah. Although Kevin and Paul are best friends in the series's early seasons, their relationship becomes somewhat strained later. Kevin begins to spend more time with Chuck and Jeff, causing tension with Paul. Paul also attends a private prep school for one season, leaving Kevin alone to start public high school. In another episode Kevin tattles on Paul after Paul loses his virginity. In the final episode it is revealed that Paul eventually attends Harvard.

* **Gwendolyn "Winnie" Cooper** (Danica McKellar): Winnie is Kevin's main love interest and neighbor. Their first kiss, and her older brother's death in Vietnam, play an important part in the pilot. In another episode, Winnie's parents separate in grief over the death of their son. In the epilogue of the final episode, it is revealed that Winnie travels overseas to study art history in Paris. Kevin and Winnie write to each other every week for these eight years until she returns; in the concluding moments of the finale, Kevin says that when Winnie returned to the States, Kevin met her accompanied by his wife and first child, despite the hope among Wonder Years fans that Kevin and Winnie would themselves marry. "Like I said," says Kevin at the end, "things never turn out exactly the way you plan them." As suggested in an episode entitled "The Accident" and in the final episode of the series, every important event in Kevin's life has somehow involved Winnie.

## Home video releases

For many years, *The Wonder Years* remained unreleased on DVD as official season box sets, allegedly due to music licensing issues. Because of this issue, *The Wonder Years* routinely appeared high on the list of TV shows in-demand for a DVD release. Some episodes of the series were included in two official "best-of" DVD sets (*The Best of The Wonder Years* and *The Christmas Wonder Years*) without the original music. Anchor Bay also released two volumes (four episodes total) on VHS in 1997.

In a blog update on the Netflix website on March 30, 2011, and a press release issued the next day, Netflix stated that they would be adding *The Wonder Years* to their instant streaming service. The other three 20th Century Fox series noted as part of the deal were added to the Watch Instantly service by April 2, while *The Wonder Years* remained unavailable. On October 1, 2011, 114 full-length episodes of the series were added to Netflix streaming. The clip show from the end of Season 4, which was released on DVD, has not been included.

On September 26, 2011, it was announced that Amazon Prime's streaming video service would be adding *The Wonder Years*, describing the series as "available on digital video for the first time", although Netflix added the series ahead of Amazon's release. All 115 episodes (including the clip show) became available to Prime members starting October 6, 2011.

On both digital streaming services, portions of the soundtrack have been replaced. The show's opening theme, Joe Cocker's rendition of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends," has been replaced on Netflix and Amazon with the version of the song that played in the UK and other overseas airings. The majority of the show's soundtrack remains unchanged. Songs such as "Light My Fire" by The Doors and "Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix have been replaced by generic sound-alikes with different lyrics.

On February 11, 2014, StarVista/Time-Life announced the upcoming DVD release of the complete series in the second half of the year, noting that they were "painstakingly securing the rights for virtually every song." On June 11, packaging details for complete set were revealed. The packaging will consist of a miniature school locker featuring a replica yearbook with signatures from cast members, behind-the-scenes photos and classic show memorabilia. Also included are two notebooks similar to those carried by the two lead characters, each featuring detailed episode information, production photos, all 115 episodes plus over 15 hours of bonus features on 26 DVDs. Customized *Wonder Years* magnets will also be included. October 2014 was the given release timeframe.

## Soundtrack

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The official soundtrack was released in 1988 by Atlantic/WEA and contains a total of 13 tracks, featuring Joe Cocker's cover of The Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends", which is the show's theme song.

After the series' original run was over, Laserlight Digital released a 5-disc compilation box set under the title *Music from 'The Wonder Years* in 1994. This is the same company that later released the only two DVDs for the series, *The Best of The Wonder Years* and *The Christmas Wonder Years*. The disc included 40 oldies favorites and 5 original songs (each is repeated twice in the set) written exclusively for the series by W. G. Snuffy Walden.

## Book

In 1990 the book *The Wonder Years - Growing up in the Sixties* by Edward Gross was published by Pioneer Books (ISBN 1-55698-258-5). It contains information about the creation and production of the show, interviews with cast and crew, and an extensive episode guide (up to the middle of the 4th season when the book was published). While long out of print and hard to find, the author gave permission to a fan website to publish the book in its entirety for free online.

## References

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*The Wonder Days*] from the Museum of Broadcast Communications
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4. ↑ The Wonder Years - Documentary
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7. ↑  cbsnews.com:The Wonder Years Celebrates 25 Years, Where are they Now"
8. ↑  LATimes: Interview with Bob Brush
9. ↑  Newsday.com:Dan Lauria Stars in a Christmas Story at Madison Square Garden
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 'Twelvesomething' "The Wonder Years\" Is A New Tv Series That's A Hit With Nostalgic Baby Boomers - And With '80s Children - Philly.com
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