"Don't You Know Anything About Women?" [34] and " The Powers That Be" [35]

I’ve been waiting to see this again for years. Not just because it’s a great episode—which it is (this would probably be one of my favorite episodes no matter what). But in this case I was especially waiting to see Linda, or rather the actress who played Linda. She’s a friend of mine and a former member of my theatre company. We acted together in two plays in 2002 and I worked behind the scenes on a couple more that she was in. When she joined our ensemble and it came out she’d been a child actor, I was captivated by her Wonder Years appearance. All else was dross, even her Adventures in Babysitting role (which many people recall fondly but I’ve never seen).

She’s a wonderful performer and it comes across in this role. In all honesty, the quality of the acting from young thespians throughout the entire series is uneven. But we forgive that because the circumstances ring so true and sometimes the awkwardness works considering its Jr. High. But she definitely stands out in this one as that person you like, but don’t LIKE-like (she also stands out for being shorter than Kevin, no mean feat). Everyone has been on that one-way street with a friend who wants to be more while we’d like to keep on trucking. And most of us have been on the other side as well, hoping in vain that something develops with someone who’s just not having it. Linda plays it perfectly. She’s helpful with Kevin’s pursuit of Southern Belle Lisa Fisher. She’s complimentary of Kevin, but not fawning. She makes it clear that while other offers are on the table, she’d prefer Kevin. But as Skye Masterson sings, “Mine I leave to chance and chemistry.” I’ve been there, we’ve all been there. She’s a great girl, perfect in almost every way, but you’re just not attracted to her. Even though she’s attractive. What can you do?

It’s a situation that still makes me uncomfortable today, and at times watching this episode I got a little anxious. I never know what to do with people who want something like this that I can’t give them and my inclination is usually to try and nip it in the bud, which often comes across as somewhat assholish. But I guess I’d rather be a dick like that that be a dick by feeling I was leading someone on. Clearly there is a third way here and I just need to work not being a dick at all in these situations. Further proof that I, like everyone else, am a work in progress.

In addition to the slight anxiety, I was also a little frustrated with Kevin because five or six years ago I had a crush on the same girl (all growed up of course) that went no where (the destination most of my crushes share) and the Linda in this episode is a lot like the girl is in real life: funny, smart, down to earth, easy to talk to, and cleans up real good. Kind of ideal. This as opposed to the Lisa Fisher trophy girl you can’t stop thinking about but have nothing to say to when she’s standing right in front of you. If women like bad boys who treat them poorly, men always get hung up on pretty girls they’ve got nothing in common with. Hey Nineteen, anyone?

“The Powers that Be” is the first time we meet Jack Arnold’s dad. They don’t get along. There’s a bunch of fights and a big one near the end. Kevin loves them both and he’s confused and angry.

One other thing that struck me here is that I’d forgotten how long the series kept doing those 16mm cut scenes with Jack and Norma looking basically the same but little kids playing Kevin, Wayne, and Karen. In my memory that was a device that had been abandoned early on, but here we are halfway through the 3^rd season and here’s another one of grandpa, mom, and dad opening presents with the tykes.

My guess is that I sort of forgot about them because they mainly show up in family-centered episodes, and to my adolescent self the episodes that meant to most were the ones with The Girls. These family episodes just didn’t interest me as much and I vaguely remember thinking they were filler between the good episodes with Winnie or whichever girl was distracting Kevin and making him feel excited and nervous they way I was feeling excited and nervous about girls. And still do most of the time.

But this time around with the series I’m seeing these family episodes in a different light entirely. I don’t have a family of my own yet, but I’m older now (and I’d like to think at least a little wiser), and I feel these stories much more deeply than I did 20 years ago. I think that’s because it’s a matter immediacy versus perspective. The Girl episodes take us that time in life when romantic feelings are new and feel like life or death in a way they generally never do again. But the Family episodes speak to themes that require time and reflection to fully understand.

When it comes to The Girls, young Kevin knows exactly what he’s feeling most of the time. The Older Kevin is generally there to comment humorously (often at his younger self’s expense) and extract a lesson. But in the family episodes Older Kevin provides understanding that Younger Kevin just didn’t have, and won’t for awhile yet. Instead he’s usually a little lost and he doesn’t see or necessarily understand what’s really going on between the grown-ups. He’s caught up in the strong emotional currents and he feels them intensely, but he can’t pull himself free of these strong psychological tides and look at them with any kind of objectivity or intellectual understanding. Almost no one can when you’re that young still right in the middle of it all. It takes years (and for some people mucho therapy) to start looking at it from the outside.

Many people never really escape those currents and consistently revert to the patterns of their childhood with their parents or siblings or anyone else who strikes similar relationship chords. And even when you do have some awareness, those old patterns can be comfortable as an old sweater, even if they’re about as healthy as the fried chicken families used to eat every Sunday at supper. That’s why nostalgia (which The Wonder Years is built on) can be both seductive and dangerous: it is a constant struggle to live like an adult, and it is a challenge for anyone who bothers to take backward glances to respect and honor the past without being beholden to it.

"Pottery Will Get You Nowhere" [12] and "Coda" [13]

“Pottery Will Get You Nowhere” is a great episode for Norma. She is stretching her wings and trying something different. In this case, a pottery class. Jack is at first perplexed, as are the kids. Then he begins to see it as a threat to domestic tranquility, and despite an attempt at casually disinterested disdain, his hostility can’t be contained. As the tension grows, Kevin finds himself alone in an unfamiliar no-man’s-land between his parents. As usual, Wayne is oblivious and Karen is too wrapped up in herself to be any kind of ally or sounding board. In the end, Norma and Jack have a huge blow-out and then come together a day later in a tearful, raw, emotional embrace. The whole thing leaves Kevin a little shaken.

Sometimes it takes something jarring to wake up to the fact that your parents are people, the same as you are. Except they’re older and have more responsibilities, and up to a certain point in life you are absolutely dependent on them for everything. I think people whose folks divorce generally learn this earlier because the emotional extremes attendant on the dissolution of a marriage make it hard to keep up any kind of pretenses, and a lot of the façade that parents maintain depends on the mutual reinforcement, support, and cover they provide each other. My folks met in freshman English class and have been married for 38 years, but I remember well when my mom spent weeks walking around the house practicing a cackling laugh in 1983 in anticipation of auditioning for the part of Gertie Cummings in a community theater production of Oklahoma! I didn’t know it then, but this was her return to performing after 15 years or so off to be married and start raising my brother and me. In contrast to Jack, my father sat his two boys down and explained that she was auditioning for a play and if she didn’t get in she’d be really disappointed and it would be up to us all to be kind and understanding. In the end, she was ecstatic to nab a part in the chorus. Which launched the family (sans my athlete brother) into a small-town community theatre scene that, in turn, set me on a course leading eventually to my current semi-professional life in the theatre.

At the time of all this, my mom would have been 35, just two years older than I am now. That’s a little sobering.

"Coda" resonates deeply with me as well… Ahem… It works on two levels – in the first place it is about piano lessons. Now, piano lessons are not strictly universal, even in America. But at the same time, though not everybody had to take piano, lots of people know somebody who had to take piano, so some other instrument and every kid can identify with those weekly obligations imposed from on high. One friend of mine had to take piano from 1^st to 5^th grade. It was always understood that at the end of that time he could choose to continue or not. He chose the not option, but to this day, any time I see him sit down at a piano he tickles the pearlies to produce a credible Hill Street Blues theme. I was more in the Kevin camp. My mother tried at two different junctures to get me to learn how to play the piano she’d bought to fill a spot on the wall in the living room. The first time must have been around 3^rd grade and it just didn’t take. A few years later she tried again, but after about six month the teacher told my parents the same thing Mrs. Carples says – there’s no sense coming every week if there’s no practice in between. There was none by me, so the lessons stopped.

On another level, "Coda" is concerned with talent versus hard work. There are basically two ways to be pretty good at something – work hard or have a knack for it, or some combination thereof. To be great at something, you have to have both. And to make it look effortless requires an incredible talent and a relentless drive to succeed. I once read that the most common characteristic shared by elite athletes is not natural ability, but a willingness to put in the hours in the pool, on the track, on the field, at the gym, or wherever. A lot of people (relatively speaking) might have the raw talent to achieve Olympic glory, but without that willingness, or even eagerness, to put in the hours of training, they’re doomed to be playground legends in their own minds.

Kevin’s interest in piqued when his teacher says he has talent and a feeling for the music that the diligent Ronald Hirschmuller will never have. But in the end he lacks both the commitment and the willingness to fail that will be demanded to develop his talents. No one ever told me I had talent for music, but I’ve always loved it. I’m a passable singer and there’s hardly a moment of the day I’m not singing something under my breath. On the other hand, I’ve got an out of tune guitar on a stand in the corner of bedroom that I can’t play bearing silent witness to the same lack of commitment that kept me from getting out my piano books for more than 30 minutes a week two decades ago.

"Our Miss White" [8] and "Christmas" [9]

These were the first episodes I caught when I began this little trip down memory lane. If I didn't know how the good the show really is, I don't know that that "Our Miss White" would have hooked me. Maybe it's because past the age of about 10 I never really had a crush on a teacher. When I was genuinely little, women's faces could be divided into two camps -- soft and hard. The soft ones were easy to crush on and the hard ones were mean. And it's remarkable how true to reality the stereotype was. Once I got older, say Jr. High, there just weren't any young teachers around. In fact, some of my teachers had been my parents' teachers 25 years before, that's how along the downhill slide they were. Not a lot for a 12 year old to fall for there.

"Our Miss White" doesn't serve up much of the exhilaration of this "on the cusp of everything" time in life. It's more about those moments that leave you cringing, even years later. Kevin has eyes only for young, eager English teacher Miss White. She's written a play about current events (which serves to remind the viewer of the spirit of the age), and Kevin can't resist accepting her offer to play RFK. He becomes angry with his dad for flirting with Miss White and imagines that the ride home he gets from her after rehearsal is pregnant with possibilities. In the final moments, when Kevin has just completed his big monologue and he is moving toward Miss White for... something... reality intrudes in the form of her boyfriend Stephen (presumably the Mr. Heimer she marries that summer). Thus is elation laid low by disappointment.

The larger theme of "Our Miss White" (hammered home with Dylan's "The Times They Are A'Changin" at the end) is a bit heavy-handed (not politically, but rather as a writer's device firmly reminding us that this is a show about The Sixties), but it's nice to see Jack Arnold -- a consummate regular guy, no lefty, and presumably no closet arts patron -- swept away by his paternal pride to lead the standing ovation.

"Christmas" is the first of the series' holiday episodes. Of course it's about the True Spirit of Christmas and is split between the Family Story and the Winnie Story. The Family Story is about Kevin and Wayne's efforts to make a color TV the family's gift to itself. In the end, after the issue has ripped through the family like a hurricane and Dad has held firm against all entreaties, the Arnolds are left laughing in the rain and happy together despite the lack of Glorious Color in their living room.

The Winnie Story concerns Kevin's search for a gift for Winnie, which he only begins after she gives him something and tells him not to open it until Christmas. Being caught off guard, he looks for the thing a boy in junior high thinks a girl should get as a gift: perfume. I remember debating whether to do perfume or jewelry for a girl in middle school, and before that there had been a tremendous hullabaloo when my brother wanted to spend $30 ($30!) on a gold necklace his girlfriend when he was in 7th grade.

In the end he buys her a sno-globe like the one Paul bought for his mom and Daniel Stern makes a reference to James Bond and Pussy Galore (for the record, any cheap reference to Pussy Galore is okay by me). But when Kevin shows up to Winnie's house to present the present, he finds the Coopers are out of town (they're choosing to celebrate the holiday someplace else, where they won't feel brother and Viet Nam casualty Brian's absence so keenly). After getting angry at Winnie for not being there and then himself for getting angry at her, he sheepishly leaves his gift with the housesitter and walks off to the strains of Joni Mitchell's River (one of the best melancholy Christmas songs ever) to find his family for the caroling that ends in a cloud.

In "Christmas", Kevin is struggling to do the grown-up thing and give a reciprocal present, not because it's obligatory, but because he wants Winnie to know she's special to him (although he requires getting something from her first to instill the courage he needs to give her something). His sno-globe is a surrender to convenience and budget and ends up being the quintessential obligatory gift, even though that's not what's in his heart. In the end, Winnie's gift is revealed as something simple and powerfully beautiful, and as much a wish for herself as for Kevin as she and her family continue to grapple with Brian's death in Viet Nam.

This episode is more subtle than "Our Miss White." It illustrates a lesson that some people never fully learn -- the holidays (and birthdays, etc) are about the acts of giving and receiving, not the gifts themselves. It also contains a great line in the closing narration that serves as a kind of defense for a series drenched in nostalgia, "Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you wish to never lose."

"Wayne on Wheels" [26] and "Mom Wars" [27]

I started watching The Wonder Years again a couple weeks ago and just decided to blog it tonight. In a future post I may go a little more into the why. For now let's jump right into tonight's episodes.

These are not the best installments ever. Far from the worst, but not the best. In fact, I began writing this as "Mom Wars" was concluding. Nevertheless, they do illustrate perfectly what this show is all about -- archetypes and universal experiences. On the one hand, it's sort of almost painful bit of Baby Boomer navel-gazing. Set exactly 20 years before it was produced [1988-923], the backdrop is a Baby Boomer's Great Hits: The Summer of Love! Man Walks on the Moon! Viet Nam! In theory, I hate this kind of mythologizing that the Boomer's so excel at.

But at the same time, it's about coming of age and is genuinely wise a lot of the time. Wayne on Wheels features a non-Winnie girl, but she's just the excuse for the conflict -- Kevin wants to go to the mall, but freshly-minted driver Wayne is now his designated wheelman. What are the brothers to do? Of course they fight and fight until some things happen at the end to make them appreciate each other.

My older brother and I were never as bad as Kevin and Wayne, and despite my mom's deep concerns about our fighting as 7 or 8 year olds, we came to our separate peace and mutual respect about this same time (14 and 17 for us, 13 and 16 for Wayne and Kevin). But for all our respect and even celebration of our differing strengths, that didn't stop us from getting into a physical fight over shotgun when we were both in college. That was just silly.

"Mom Wars" is a bit of a mixed bag. A little disappointing because there's no girl at all, and a girl is virtually always key to the best episodes. On the other hand, there is a woman, Mom, and it gives Alley Mills a better amount than usual to do.

Her Norma Arnold is easily one of the best TV moms ever; and I don't mean Carol Brady-style idealized versions of motherhood or wise-cracking foils a la Home Improvement or Everybody Loves Raymond (which I've never watched all the way through). I always love Dan Lauria and remember fondly his stint on Party of Five as a wrestling coach, but there's no getting around the fact that his Jack Arnold sometimes veers from archetype to stereotype. In contrast, behind Norma's broad archetypal facade there always beats the heart of a flesh and blood woman, as tough and as fragile as any human heart. I never had a crush on her, but I always feel with, and for, her deeply.

As far as the universality goes, wipe away the details of these episodes (cars, American tackle football) and you're left with sibling rivalry and oedipal issues.

The Wonder Years (properly just that time at the beginning of adolescence) are brief and as a rule universal experiences having any degree of profundity can only be explored in just so many ways when dealing with the same characters in the same setting. And that's why the show got weaker after the Jr. High years ended. As Kevin got older, thing became less universal and/or more repetitious.

At least that's how I remember it. Watching the show again over the next month or two we'll see if it was I who grew up too fast for the show back then, or if was the show that outlived its raison d'etre, as so many American television programs do.