Number 3300: Kevin Arnold Navigates Adolescence and the Vietnam Era in The Wonder Years

Several years ago, my brother Nathan informed me that he dislikes Joe Cocker's cover of the Beatles' With a Little Help From My Friends. He wasn't accusing him of singing out of tune; he merely objected to the morose tone of what was originally a very peppy song. For me, however, Cocker's was the first version I heard, and it's Ringo Starr's bouncy delivery that feels a bit foreign. His soulful take on this tribute to friendship serves as the theme song of The Wonder Years, in which the bonds forged in childhood are looked on with reverence and regret. I watched the show enough as a kid to understand its expert mix of mirth and melancholy and regard the characters with affection, but it wasn't until this year that I saw it from beginning to end and truly appreciated its brilliance.

The Wonder Years, created by Carol Black and Neal Marlens and starring an irresistibly cute Fred Savage as lovable but snarky and sometimes downright stupid Kevin Arnold, is set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a turbulent era of great social and political change. It also happens to be my favorite period of music, which the show exploits generously, incorporating the hits of yesteryear to great effect in each episode. As today is the 71st birthday of Art Garfunkel, half of the iconic duo Simon and Garfunkel - whose music accompanies, among other moments, the bar mitzvah of Kevin's best friend, Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano) - I thought it a fitting day to reflect upon this series and celebrate it with my 3300th review.

There are many television series I regard with great fondness but few I have watched from beginning to end, not missing an episode. Perhaps the first to fit this category was Freaks and Geeks, Paul Feig's tender, wickedly funny tribute to his childhood. That was pretty easily accomplished since the entire series sadly consists of only 18 episodes. Despite this limited number, I consider it a truly sterling series and have watched most of those episodes several times over. Watching The Wonder Years, it was easy to draw parallels and see how the later show drew inspiration from it.

Both are set in a very particular time and use pop music to help keep us rooted there. While I don't particularly care for the screechy hard rock that largely forms the soundtrack of Freaks and Geeks, I'll readily agree it's brilliantly incorporated, and the use of Styx's Come Sail Away in the pilot episode remains one of my absolute favorite applications of music in a television series. With The Wonder Years, I watched every episode eager to hear which hits would be pulled out of the generous catalog of that time.

More often than not, they were songs I already loved and that gained power in the context Kevin provided. Along with the aforementioned use of Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends, particularly potent examples include Bob Seger's Why Don't You Stay?, which accompanies Kevin's vigil over his beloved Winnie Cooper (Danica McKellar) after she is injured in a car accident, and Paul Stookey's The Wedding Song (There Is Love), which serves as the backdrop to the unconventional but beautiful nuptials of Kevin's hippie-ish sister Karen (Olivia d'Abo).

Both shows center on one family and a few close-knit friends. The Arnolds and the Weirs are similar in many ways, both salt-of-the-earth families with a cantankerous, hard-working father and a sweet-as-honey stay-at-home mom. Sam is like Kevin in many ways - sweet, dorky, very loyal to his best friends. For Kevin, that's just Paul, who, like the later Bill, is tall and awkward with glasses and a boatload of allergies. Sam also has Neil, who is like the smart-alecky side of Kevin separated out into a different person and who, like Paul, is Jewish. Meanwhile, Sam's sister Lindsay is a non-conformist like Kevin's sister Karen, albeit a much more likable and fully-realized character.

Freaks and Geeks also tackles many of the same subjects as The Wonder Years, from athletic aspirations and romantic yearnings to academic crises and domestic disasters. As I watched The Wonder Years, I saw many moments from which the later show seemed to borrow. For instance, in the second episode of the series, Kevin and Paul become curious about the birds and the bees and sneak a peek in a detailed how-to book before deciding to stick to more innocent activities for the foreseeable future. In Freaks and Geeks, James Dean-esque rebel Daniel hooks the naïve Sam, Neil and Bill up with a pornographic movie, which sickens them. The first couple seasons in particular offer enough parallels with Freaks and Geeks that I can't help thinking there was some influence.

One thing that the two series do not have in common is the narration. While Freaks and Geeks feels nostalgic, everything is in the moment; we don't see Sam or Lindsay looking back and trying to make sense of it all. On The Wonder Years, however, that is an integral part of the series, and it amplifies the show's melancholy tone. While the futures of the main characters are not explicitly revealed until the final episode, much can be gleaned from the way that the older Kevin discusses certain events and characters. Daniel Stern's pensive monologues, particularly at the end of episodes, feature some of the most poetic writing ever to grace a television show.

While the immediate events themselves would provide ample fodder for discussion on their own, these often philosophical musings sparked many an intense conversation between me and my boyfriend Will, who watched it with me over the course of several months, usually long-distance through the magic of synchronized Instant Netflix, often with my parents joining in on my end. We've watched a lot of things together, but so far, this is the only complete series, and I can hardly imagine a more appropriate choice. It examines the painful journey that turbulent change sparks in all of us, as well as the profound beauty to be found in meaningful relationships and the peace of mind that comes from being able to laugh at our own imperfections, and it does all this through the lens of an era in which Will grew up and which I always embraced as my own despite missing it by a decade or so.

The Wonder Years is a show about love and loss. It is fitting that its magic begins to wear off with the advent of the fifth season; those last two seasons, which find Kevin in senior high school, often distanced from Paul and Winnie, are hit-or-miss, with several episodes detailing exploits involving friends who are neither very memorable nor deeply bonded to him. Even the teachers are something of a disappointment; while we see the same teachers again and again in junior high, particularly irascible Coach Cutlip (Robert Picardo), no one from that last couple of years makes much of an impression. The early seasons are the funniest and the most golden.

Nonetheless, when Will suggested early in the fifth season that we skim the rest, I recoiled, and I'm glad I insisted we stick it out. Otherwise, we might have missed some powerful episodes focusing on such subjects as the effects of the Vietnam War on the best friend of Kevin's older brother Wayne (Jason Hervey), the trauma of Kevin's beloved grandfather (David Huddleston) having to give up his car, the efforts of Kevin's mother (Alley Mills) to distinguish herself in the workforce and how deeply his overworked dad (Dan Lauria) yearns for the tranquility of a fishing cabin in the woods. These are episodes that needed several years of painstaking character development to pack the punch they do.

This is a series with many characters, but only a few are truly key. When someone mentions The Wonder Years, usually what springs to mind first is Kevin and Winnie. The absolute sweetness of that first relationship, even with all its ups and downs, has a halcyon quality to it that makes them one of television's most enduring couples. Composer W. G. Snuffy Walden even has a special guitar riff that accompanies many of Winnie's appearances, reminding audiences just how perfect she is in Kevin's eyes, even after the passage of two decades. Similarly, Kevin enjoys the sort of ironclad friendship with Paul, particularly during the early days of the series, that every kid wishes for. In some ways, the series is very much about Kevin's relationships with these two peers.

However, the show is also about family, and Kevin has just as much to navigate there. We see him dodge the cruel whims of bullish Wayne, whose maturation process is particularly slow, and scratch his head at the changes in Karen, whose enthusiasm for the ideals of the counter-cultural movement yields snippy self-absorption that fades as she finds happiness with a gentle, rumpled fellow college student played by a more-endearing-than-I've-ever-seen-him David Schwimmer. We see him struggle to assert his independence from his mother's smothering affections. Most of all, we witness his attempts to understand his father, a man he sometimes loathes and sometimes admires but always loves more deeply than he is able to comprehend during the confusing rush of adolescence.

The Wonder Years is an exceptional show. You can certainly watch it in dribs and drabs as I did in my childhood, and more likely than not, you will have a thoroughly satisfying viewing experience. However, if you really want to get the full benefit of the series, I highly recommend the immersive route I took this year. Not only is it an exquisitely crafted series in all respects, it is an outstanding catalyst for in-depth conversation, so watch it in the company of those without whom you couldn't get by and walk away from it with a deeper appreciation for the wonder of life and the ways in which they contribute to that.