Inside ‘The Wonder Years’ Show’s Legacy After More Than 30 Years: ‘It Captures Everybody’s Youth’

Meet the Arnolds

The series introduced us to the world of 12-year-old Kevin Arnold, and clearly established that the series’ point of view would be through his eyes. We met his family: Jack, the typical 60’s father who broke his back for his family, but didn’t feel any particular need to be overly friendly to them; mother Norma, a traditional American housewife — sort of brighter Edith Bunker, happy to be there for her family, but slowly realizing that there could be more to life; older siblings Karen, a blossoming Flower Child who fights back every value her family has tried to teach her; and Wayne, who obnoxiously refers to Kevin as “butthead” and will go to any means to torture his younger brother (“As we always say, Wayne is Wayne,” laughs Bob Brush). In addition, we get to know his nerdy best friend, Paul Pfeiffer; and Winnie Cooper, the first true love of his life.

BOB BRUSH: “One of the remarkable concepts in the creation of this show that Marlens and Black had, was that they settled on a time of life for their hero where so many primary emotions still exist at the surface. Adolescence is a time when you’re just learning to bury your emotions and put on a false face. I think that this allows the audience to strip away the facades, and remember what it was like to really feel things deeply before we all developed the capability to pretend that it didn’t matter or pretend that we didn’t care, or dismiss what we feel to be childish. Even though we have an older narrator who’s always saying, ‘Gosh, we were just being stupid,’ at the same time he’s saying, ‘Maybe it wasn’t so stupid. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be stupid like that again sometimes?'”

Two Points of View

BOB BRUSH (executive producer): "That dual perspective is a burden, but it's also a wonderful tool in that it allows such resonance to a story. It's not often that you get a chance to kind of put a self-reflecting mirror on an event so that everything has two meanings. It allowed us to do stories which were small stories, and view them with a greater meaning and perspective because of the older narrator. I think it's pretty much the key to why the show works.”

NEAL MARLENS (co-creator): “The format was different. The whole idea of an accurate depiction of kids told in this format was new. We both grew up in that period and in that environment in the suburbs, and it just struck us as a particularly interesting time to write about. Obviously not everybody grew up in the suburbs in the fifties and sixties, but a lot of people did or were parents to people who did. We have the advantage of being of the age and of the sensibility of just writing what is fun and what comes naturally, and having a built-in audience."

CAROL BLACK (co-creator): “We just took what was absolutely dirt ordinary to us and tried to evoke it with some detail. It's surprising how many people responded. They kind of jumped at it, because they never saw that on TV. You never saw houses with bad linoleum in the kitchen and stuff like that …. To give it reality, you take a lot of details from things you actually remember .. and put them together and use them in a story that's actually pretty fictional."

Capturing Our Youth

TODD W. LANGEN (story editor): “The overall appeal seems to be nostalgia, but even without nostalgia it evokes everyone's adolescence. It reaches the audience, and the stories resonate emotionally with that audience, because no matter what era you're in, kids go through the same sort of life experiences, the same sort of traumas, joys, happiness and fears. That's what the show gets to the core of. We recognize ourselves in what happens to Kevin, no matter what particular time period we come from.”

STEVE MINER (supervising producer/director): "It captures everybody's youth. We used to get calls and letters all the time saying, 'How come you're using my junior high school? How did you know my best friend?' Everybody is convinced that it's about their specific life. I think that's from the quality of the scripts. I thought the concept of the show was brilliant, but concepts are concepts and so much of filmmaking is execution. The scripts continued to be so good, and writing like that touches universal feelings and experiences. It's real. We all lived that exact life."

Bittersweet Memories

JILL JORDAN (co-executive producer): "For adults, I think it's really interesting, because it's somebody looking back and remembering different things about their life….There's just something about older Kevin looking back and remembering something with sort of bittersweet fondness, that the nostalgia of it is what I think affects adults. For kids, it's the relatability to what Kevin is going through they identify with. It's a very personal show. I think the shows that touched people the most, the ones that worked most for us, are from things that have happened to us. When we sat around a story session, we didn't pitch situations, we started talking about things that happened to us …. Because the stories are personal, a lot of people relate to them."

MARK B. PERRY (story editor): "There is almost always some resonating moment that people can identify with and respond to, whether it's kids who are watching the show now and are the age of the characters and who aren't even taking in its historical context. I think there's that universal aspect of just being a human being and trying to get through your adolescence. I think that's what people respond to."

Perfect Combination of Humor and Drama

MICHAEL DINNER (supervising producer/director): "The material was usually very strong and emotionally kind of ran the gamut, mixing both humor and pathos. The bottom line is that there are characters on screen that you care about, and that makes it appealing. Somehow we know every week that those characters are going to live and breathe, and we care about them."

BOB BRUSH: "At the very beginning, when they were in seventh grade, there was very much a sense of a wide-eyed kind of terror at the workings of the universe. Things were very fragmented and shattered. How do you piece together a series of experiences? I thought in the pilot, which is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen in television, it was interesting that what clothes to wear, or having a teacher say something to you, had almost an equal impact as a man dying in Vietnam. There was a kind of 'how do you sort it out? How do you know?' Every experience is big, and in the end, which had been the most important experience, seeing Winnie Cooper in her Go-Go boots or finding out that her brother, Brian, had died in Vietnam?”

The Wonder Years originally ran on ABC from 1988 to 1993. What follows is a look at the individual cast members as well as a key highlight of the show.

Josh Saviano as Paul Pfeiffer

Best friends Kevin Arnold and Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano). Of the two, early on Kevin was definitely the cooler with Paul being nerdier. Interestingly, as the show went on the scales shifted, with Paul coming into his own and Kevin somehow feeling less. Very tough for Kevin to deal with, but easily identifiable for much of the audience.

Dan Lauria as Jack Arnold

The relationship between Kevin and his dad, Jack (Dan Lauria), was never easy, summed up each night the man came home from working, exhaustingly commenting, "Work's work" as he walked by everyone. A wonderful episode called "The Office" had Kevin accompanying Jack to work one day, and for the first time gaining a fuller understanding of why the man was the way he was.

Alley Mills as Norma Arnold

Alley Mills as Kevin's mom, Norma began the show as a typical TV housewife, where it seemed as though her entire existence was centered around her family. But over time she developed the self-awareness to recognize she could do so much more, and began working in that direction, despite Jack's protests. Things could be gruff between the couple, but then, as Kevin observed, there would be the occasional moments of genuine tenderness.

Olivia d'Abo as Karen Arnold

You couldn't find a better example of the conflicting ideals of the 1960s than in the form of Olivia d'Abo as Kevin's sister, Karen. As she fought back against the ideals instilled in her by her parents, there were those moments where you could tell she was fighting back against them simply because she felt it was something she had to do, whether or not she always believed it.

Jason Hervey as Wayne Arnold

If there was one character that seemed to have zero depth to him, it was Jason Hervey's Wayne, who was just a nasty human being that delighted in torturing his younger brother. An important episode regarding the relationship between Wayne and Kevin was "Hiroshima, Mon Frere", in which Kevin for the first time fights back, cutting his brother down with words.

TODD W. LANGEN: "It was a great idea and great execution. The entire script had originally been presented as a 'March of Time' old newsreel where the narrator is sot of in and out, doing this whole thing, so the entire metaphor of the episode was about war. It was really clever and well done, but for some reason they backed away from that a little bit. You still have the metaphor of war, but it's interesting to see how things evolve sometimes. What is interesting in the metaphoric message is that Kevin, who is beleaguered by his older brother and set upon all the time, gains a weapon in his arsenal that he can use to hurt Wayne — 'Nobody likes you, Wayne!' Yet what happens is that he learns that having that weapon can be an awesome and dangerous thing, and it alters the relationship. I like that metaphoric relationship. In fact, some of the episodes that worked best were when there was a metaphoric relationship between what is happening on the surface in the episode and what's really happening beneath."

Danica McKellar as Winnie Cooper

And then there is the relationship between Danica McKellar's Winnie Cooper and Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold. The show ran for six seasons and we were witness to this relationship going from cute, to touching, to occasionally heartbreaking.

In the premiere episode we saw their first kiss, and things progressed to the point where, like in the image above, they were having a car date, childish tantrums giving way to real-world arguments that would impact both of them.

In the final episode of the series, we learned from the narration of older Kevin that he and Winnie did not end up together, yet the bond between them remained unbreakable. In fact, we're told that he and his wife and kids are about to pick her up from the airport.

A Classic Episode

Indulge us if you will as we wrap things up by looking at a key episode of The Wonder Years that really does capture what was so special about the series. "Goodbye" marks what was the third and final part of the so-called "Math Arc."

Kevin is starting to have trouble with algebra again, and he tries talking to math teacher Mr. Collins (Steven Gilborn) about the situation. Collins, who has always sensed a special something in Kevin, gives him private tutoring lessons, elevating the boy's opinion of him even more. The lessons for the upcoming big test are going along very well, with Kevin coming to the classroom several days a week after school. Then, one day he shows up and Mr. Collins is nowhere to be seen. Kevin goes out to the teacher's parking lot, where he finds the man getting into his car. Kevin is told that he's going to have to finish the lessons on his own; that Collins has faith that he can do it. Kevin can't believe this, feeling like he's been betrayed.

"I thought you were my friend," says Kevin.

"No, Mr. Arnold," is the response. "I'm your teacher."

And with that, Collins is gone. Kevin, for his part, decides he's got to teach this supposed great man a lesson. On the day of the test, he doesn't answer any of the questions properly. His responses consist of "Who cares?", "So what?" and "What difference does it make?" He hands in the paper, glares at Collins and leaves. That night Kevin's overcome with guilt over his attitude and what he's done. The next day he wants to speak to Collins, but is surprised to see that the assistant principal is teaching the class. As the bell rings, he asks Kevin to remain behind.

After school he goes to speak to Collins and is surprised to find that the man is gone. The assistant principal catches sight of him and Kevin asks if he knows where Mr. Collins is. A beat. Then another. Finally, the man tells Kevin that Collins passed away that morning due to a heart ailment. In addition, he mentions that everyone's mid-terms have been graded, except for Kevin's. Somehow it's missing, and his choice is to take the exam again right then and there or get an "F." Naturally he chooses the former, accepting this final gift and opportunity from Mr. Collins. He sits down, takes the exam and hands it in, noting, "It's an 'A."'

As Kevin starts to walk out of the room, he glances back at the desk and sees the image of Mr. Collins sitting there, the trace of a smile on his lips. "Good job, Mr. Collins," he says softly.

And there is not a dry eye left in the house.

Behind the Scenes

BOB BRUSH: "That was a story I planned to do for a year. When we first came up with the idea of doing the math teacher, there was the premise of a three part arc from the beginning that I wanted to do. I loved the episode, because I thought the whole arc was very poignantly about becoming a man and accepting the keys and responsibility to manhood from the teacher and the master. It was really a rite of manhood, so it was a personal story. The pleasure for me in writing that episode was that I had two really fine actors to write for: Fred Savage and Steven Gilborn, who were both wonderful. The thing that I was probably proudest of about the episode was that, in the long run, it was not specifically a weeper, which I never wanted it to be. I thought there was a strength in it. I thought at the end of the episode, where Kevin Arnold walks down the hallway, there was a manliness to him, which I had wanted to accomplish. I wanted an episode where he accepted being a man."

MICHAEL DINNER: "My favorite show. That was personally important for a lot of reasons. First of all, I think both Fred and Steven Gilborn were fantastic. I think it's a real important episode. It's not just an episode about the effect of a teacher on a student. It goes deeper than that. It's almost a father-son relationship on a subliminal level. To me, what was most interesting is that it was about a boy growing up, because at the end of it there's a lot of dignity in Kevin's character. There's a realization that he's been selfish, unfair and didn't realize what he had been given. He realizes it at the end, and I think that is probably a big leap for that character to make in growing up. It's not just a kid dealing with death, but someone growing up and realizing his own failings."

The wonder years indeed.