Is this show running in syndication anywhere right now? I know it's been on ABC Family and Nickelodeon at times, but I haven't seen it lately, and the use of the song In My Life on American Dreams last night reminded me of it (the song was used in the finale).

I also absolutely loved this show. I pretty much consider it my favorite television show EVER, which is a huge title considering how bleebleeblahblahboo I watch. I was like 9-14 (very approximately) when it was on, and I totally related to the characters, even though I was living twenty years later. The historical aspect of it was just like an added bonus.

Oh man, I hated Winnie. She was such a little princess. I could sort of understand why Kevin idealized her so much, but it still bugged me. I always appreciated that even though we saw her mostly through Kevin's rose-colored glasses, we could still see what a bitch she was.

Perhaps it is a gender thing, but I thought Kevin was far more the little princess than Winnie. In a few short years she endured the death of her brother, the breakup of her parents' marriage, moving and changing schools yet she maintained good grades, many friendships, and a social life with no more than average adolescent angst. Kevin, beyond the ghastly brother and the father you yelled, coped with exactly what?
No doubt Kevin loved Winnie but even he did not know her well. Remember how dumbfounded he was to learn of her excellent SAT scores and her interest in Ivy League colleges? Usually good friends have some sense of the intellectual capabilities of one another.

Yeah, I was no fan of Kevin either, but he usually didn't bug me as much as Winnie did. By the way, I'm a girl, if that makes any difference.

Ultimately they both bugged me. By the end, I was really interested in Kevin's family, as opposed to Kevin himself and his friends.

Thank you for validating my feelings for Winnie. I once posted on The Wonder Years Usenet group and the psychos there wanted to hang me for calling Winnie a bitch, and saying that they were perfect together, etc. Gimme a break.

Oh, whatever. Winnie was the biggest tease in the world. I hated Kevin for being so hung up on her. I'm just surprised more people don't feel that way.

At the same time (guy's point of view here), I eventually ended up hating Winnie for being so into Kevin for a while, as he was no picnic either. Like I said, they both bugged me.

I was in love with Fred Savage, so I hated Winnie purely out of 11-year-old jealousy. ;)

Winnie was a tease, but Kevin had his issues as well, as evidenced by his rather cruel treatment of the dorky girl with the pigtails.

I loved this show. It started running out of steam at the end, around the time Kevin's dad started his own business and Wayne was dating the older woman, but when it was great, it was great.

My favorite episode was the one where the math teacher died. "It's an A." The one where Winnie plays in "Our Town" springs to mind as well.

Worst episode? Well, until the last season where Kevin got those dorky new friends and the show really ran out of gas, I'd have to say the episode where Julie Condra had the hots for Kevin. Can't remember what her character's name was, but she was sexy as hell, and clearly older than Fred Savage, who was about the same age as his character. I think she was in a couple of episodes, but the one that sticks in my mind is the one where they had to cook a souffle or something for class, and she's wearing a shirt tied up under her chest and trying to get him to lick frosting off her finger or something. I thought it was pretty silly that a girl that looking and plainly older than him (although I think they were supposed to be in the same class) was after him. That might be because I was the same age as Fred Savage and there damn sure weren't any hot babes after me in the 8th grade.

I love the one where the math teacher died. It rang so true for me, what it said about the student/teacher relationship anyway. I remember the older woman episode too, it squicked me out to no end. I sure as hell didn't act like that when I was 8th grade, but maybe I was just naive.

I liked Kevin well enough, but then he got all freaky looking in the teen years and started freaking out about everything. Winnie was just annoying and too damn...proper or something. Pretty bad actress too.

Winnie was rather fickle. She kept Kevin at arms length for awhile and he was clearly going nuts over her. She acted like she liked him, than she would lie and said she didn't. This happened throughout junior high. When they were back together in high school, she teased him. I was never a huge Winnie fan and I can't really see why Kevin was so in love with her. He looked better with Becky Slater and their short romance. They just looked cute together. Too bad Becky was a psycho.

I absolutely loved this show. Just so funny.

Remember Kevin's summer romance with this slacker girl named Cara? I thought that was actually pretty cool, esp. how he conned Paul to take him up to see her during a school day. And I would have certainly preferred her to Winnie any day.

I too very much liked this show, finding it both sweet and funny. The teenage trials and tribulations of Kevin and his friends were generally well handled. I just found it surprising that more wasn't made of the difficulties that Winnie dealt with. One might have expected an occasional comment from the kindly and sensitive Mrs. Arnold to either Kevin or Winnie.

That is what was so great about that episode and the show in general. Most show would have Kevin doing the right thing and developing a friendship with the pigtails girl. Instead the episode demonstrates Kevin bowing to the peer pressure. The narration later notes how superficial it all was and the regrets. It was realistic and poignant IMO.

I don’t exactly hate Winnie but agreed that Kevin should have move on after the earliest years. Evicat post also stunned me. Now I am wishing that Josh did become Marilyn Manson. Hee.

There is much love for ‘It’s an A’ episode and I concur. That is one of best episode of any shows I ever saw. Regarding the DVDs I hope if it ever materialized, they will be release with the original music intact. The music is such an integral part of show. I do understand that would be an expensive proposal though.

I'm sure Winnie liked him, but did she like him like him? This show was the first instance I remember of using that phrase. I feel as if it was used during my own childhood (pre-Wonder Years airing), but I can't be sure now.

Word. No way a girl that hot would have gone for Kevin's scrawny ass.

But ALL the girls wanted Kevin. Including Wayne's girlfriend-for-an-episode, which always threw me, because I couldn't see a girl falling for the younger brother like that.

I thought Kevin was cute when he was younger, but when he got older, I was all about his tall, blond friend (Randy? the guy who carried the husky kid after he hurt his leg while they were taking beer to the slumber party).

"Men, men, men, men..."

Ahem. Sorry, Wonder Years reflex. I loved that episode.

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only Winnie-disliker. Or, as my friend called her in December when we got drunk and watched some old Wonder Years tapes, "that whore, Winnie Cooper." I know this is blasphemy in some parts, but I never thought she was that attractive, and everyone I knew thought she was SOOOOO gorgeous. (Jealous? Me?)

Her face always seemed a little too wide. Either that or her head was just too round for my taste. I never got the pretty.

I'd forgotton that Wayne had dated an older woman. Eventually, the actor who played Wayne ended up in an IRL relationship with the woman who played Mrs. Arnold. Not sure of whether Wayne's relationship predated the actor who played him (sorry, I'm forgetting all of my names) or that that particular irony would fly these days.

That "it's an A" episode was selected by Fred Savage as his favorite episode as well.

The first episode with the math teacher, where Kevin cheats his way into advanced math class, was also superb. The math teacher winds up turning the other two kids in but lets Kevin off the hook because he sees something better in him--"Had enough?"

But wait, I thought Alley Mills was married to Orson Bean--are you saying she dated Jason Hervey at some point in the show's run???

Word. Kevin was adorable until 10th grade or so then I didn't find him as attractive, but his friend Randy Mitchell. What a hottie.

Those were both awesome episodes. The Wonder Years is probably the only show that I would buy the DVDs for.

Winnie and Kevin both had flaws, and both annoyed me frequently, but I still really liked them and loved their first love romance thing. I was happy that at the very end Kevin (the older voiceover one) said he didn't marry Winnie. What they had wasn't a perfect romance that ends with a happy marriage, but it was a first love, with problems and annoying personality traits and all of that.

Apparently she did.



And mine. I kinda liked the one where Kevin went to work with his dad, too, as well as the one where Karen got married.

I loved the piano episode where the teacher tricks Kevin into performing 'Canon in D Major" - at least until his rival plays it better. What a sadist.

Deadpan: "It was the piano recital....from hell."

I also liked the one where Kevin and Paul have a fight and start hanging out with other people. And Kevin has a dream that he's having a sleepover with his new "friend" who keeps saying, "I'll give you Twinkies if you'll be my best friend. How about Ring Dings? Ho hos?"

Then Kevin realizes that a true friend is one who won't let you always have your own way.

Also the one where Norma takes Paul on a "date" and tells him that "glasses make the man."

I love the eppie where all the guys find out Paul Ffieffer had sex before any of them. Bwah! Go Nerds!

I also liked the episode where Kevin escorted Paul's little sister to her cotillion, and he dove into the swimming pool to rescue her earring. Awwww.

I seem to remember reading about this, too, but I can't help but wonder if the "dating" actually consisted of one innocent night out. Sort of like when Florence Henderson went out on a "date" with Barry Williams. There was nothing really going on, but it made for a good story.

ROFL

I remember being really pissed when she got an "Ask Dannica" column in Teen Beat or some magazine like that. I was all WTF? Who would ask lame Winne Cooper for fucking advice? IIRC the questions were real winners too like "My friends all have their periods, but I dont. Whats wrong with me?". COME ON. (Maybe we were really jealous of Winnie Cooper, getting all the guys. Fucking Kirk McCray should have been mine.)

That said. I love Becky Slater!

Kirk McCray was hot yo. I'd have dropped lil Kevin Arnold for him if I was Winnie too.

Well, now that Danica McKellar (sp?) is a very promising mathematical theorist, you could ask her how one proves that a square has four sides.

This seriously cracked me up.

Me too! She had a zillion times the spunk that Winnie did. I can't believe Becky and Winnie were sisters in real life (Crystal and Danica McKellar)--they look about as different from each other as sisters could. Is one of them adopted?

Funny you should bring this up, because I remember Danica having her own section of a "Ask a Celebrity for Homework Advice" type of site (lame, I know, but true!), and her expertise was obviously math.

To me, they sort of look alike, especially in the face, or maybe the cheeks.

Color me shocked that Winnie and Becky are sisters. I had no idea.
I just looked up Winnie for shits and giggles and in her IMDB file says she was a guest star in Kevin's later series "Working for Living". Anyone remember that show, I think she played the boss' daughter and Kevin liked her but she was a real wildcat.

Didn't his character say something about hers like, "She reminds me of a girl I grew up with?" Kind of a cute meta joke.

You know what amused me, in the later years of the show? How when, after Fred Savage had passed puberty, his voice was signifcantly deeper than Daniel Stern's.

I never noticed that myself, but you're absolutely right.

This show used great writing to give insight into early adolescent and adolescent angst and family dynamics. I watched this show as an adult, initially because Kevin and his friends were adolescents in the same span of years that I was, but then because I recognized that the series transcended any one time period. I loved both Kevin and Winnie, but for different reasons. Winnie endured a lot of family grief but still seemed to genuinely care for Kevin. Kevin was essentially a nice kid with some shallowness thrown in, but he never seemed to have the mean streak that Wayne did. Winnie and Kevin together made a credible first-love couple who would eventually go their separate ways.

One of my favorite eps is Square Dance, when Kevin ends up telling the three-pigtail girl that they can be friends but only in secret. From the voice-over, we know the adult Kevin regrets caving in to the peer pressue. IIRC, there was also some voice-over about the people he'd hung out with who he never thinks about any more. This ep just hit home, reminding me of how often as kids we ignore or ridicule truly interesting people to hang out with the more popular clones. This ep always reminds me of an ep of Family (not Family Ties), when the younger sister, played by Kristy McNicholl (sp?) quits hanging out with a quirky artistic friend because of peer pressure. I loved that both shows handled this realistically; watching the pigtail girl realize exactly what's going on with Kevin was just gut-wrenching. I would ten times rather watch this show on DVD (when it's available) than the insipid stuff that is 95% of what's on network tv today.

The buzz around Friends at its beginning (and still now) was that CCA was the most well-known when it started, but I being a fan of TWY recognized David Schwimmer first. What was his character's name?

His name was Michael. Whenever I see him on those old Wonder Years episodes, I keep expecting him to say, "Hi," in his Ross voice.

Didn't Ross go out w/ Kevin's sister?
The episode that sticks out in my mind is when Kevin is in 7th grade and he likes the girl Lisa something and he spells her name out in peas on his dinner plate, cuz my name is Lisa. They should have a Wonder Years reunion show, ala Growing Pains, and not as cheesy. It could take place in the 80's.

That's brilliant! Nobody ever thinks to put a reunion a few years back than the actual year it airs, and I would love to see this some day!

I heard that a big problem of a reunion is that Kevin's father died (on the show, via a voice over from GrownUpKevin) and that he couldn't be there, even though the actor is still alive, and that would just suck for him to be left out of it. But if they used your suggestion, maybe he could still be alive and able to show up. Does anybody remember when exactly his dad died?

One episode I liked was when Kevin and his lab partner Linda went to the dance together, after Linda gave him advice on how to act around girls. It was clear that she liked him, but didn't think he'd ever like her romantically. Then she wound up finding someone she liked to dance with, and Kevin is standing on the sidelines watching.

Others: The one where Kevin inadvertently starts a school walkout to protest the war (I think) when he gets nervous and runs to the bathroom to throw up.

The one where Norma goes to work at Kevin's school, and winds up getting fired - but then the voiceover tells us that she goes back to work after the kids leave home.

The one where Kevin thinks of a mean comment for an overweight unpopular boy for the yearbook, then realizes at the end the boy is more aware of how people think of him than he acts.

Yup, and Jack initially hated Michael because Karen wanted to move in with him. Michael and Karen ended up getting married at the end of the fifth season.



According to the voiceover in the series finale, "Wayne stayed on in furniture. Wood seemed to suit him. In fact he took over the factory two years later, when dad past away."

I think Jack died just a year or two after the final episode.

Hmm, maybe I should read all the way to the end of the thread before answering!