Fan Memories - How/why I started watching TWY



"Thank goodness for Danica" by Brennan Leathers

The first time I saw an episode of The Wonder Years, I was 8 years old. I turned on the TV just as the opening credits rolled. I think I had already heard some of the buzz about the show, and that week I had decided to tune in, I guess. It's the first episode I remember seeing, anyway. The episode was #16, "Walkout", where Kevin helps organize a walkout from school to protest the Vietnam War. At 8, I didn't really understand the concept of walking out from school yet, so the whole episode was very thrilling to watch. My mother sat down in the living room to watch with me, and I remember feeling embarrassed to be watching a show where kids were doing something so bad in my 8 year old eyes. Well, I probably watched an episode or two out of a month over the next few years, as my bedtime came around the time TWY came on. I do remember watching "Square Dance" and a couple of the episodes with Mr. Collins, Kevin's algebra teacher. My only other memories of the show's original run are of Kevin working for Chong's Chinese, "Back to the Lake" episode where he and Paul talk at the gas station, the Homecoming episode where Kevin steals the owl and Wart sits in his underwear, the episode where Kevin is disappointed by Bobby Riddell his basketball hero.

I do remember being interested in seeing the show when I saw a promotional ad for the episode where Kevin gets drunk at Candy's wedding. I didn't see the last episode of the series, though I do remember hearing about the show ending on TV. Well, fast-forward to summer of 1997. I am living temporarily in a hotel room while my family waits to move into our new home. I am watching Lifetime out of boredom one day and I see the last half of "Cradle of Conspiracy", co-starring TWY's Danica McKellar. I didn't recognize Danica directly, I just knew I had seen her pretty face before and wanted to find out more about her. Well, in the next few weeks, I made trips to the University library where I had already started to take classes during Summer quarter to use the Internet, something I had previously only seen through AOL. I looked up Danica on the Internet, visited Neal's site about Danica, and printed out D****'s page on Danica. Well, I got a computer for my birthday that fall and began to chat online with the chat gang the week before the Nick at Nite marathon began. The week of the marathon, I watched and taped every episode, making sure to do all my homework as soon as I got home from school. It was very exciting for me to see all that I had missed when I had to go to bed when I was young.

I could ramble on about why I like TWY so much, and memories I've had since seeing all the eps on N@N, but mostly I would have to say that the life of Kevin Arnold excites me and leaves me in awe of the grand scale of life. And yeah, I still feel like an embarrassed little kid when I watch episodes like "Walkout" or "Heart of Darkness". Thank goodness for Danica, without seeing her I might have never become so interested in the show as I have. :-)



James wrote...
I myself never became a fan until 1989 or 1990. I first heard of the show upon hearing the name from a friend in high school. It was during the third season on October 24, 1989, when Episode 26, "Wayne On Wheels" first aired that I started watching. Over the next few years it became a fixture in my life, something I couldn't miss.

In 1991 TWY had reached "eat, drink, and sleep" status. Therefore I became addicted to it. (Didn't we all?) I paid most attention to Kevin and never knew of Winnie's reduced role in Seasons 5 and 6. Being a fan of oldies music it was definitely my show!

In April 1993 for my 21st birthday I received Norm N. Nite's "Rock On" almanac (second edition) as a gift. Since the years the almanac covered (1954-1992) touched on not just the music but also the news events of the appropriate years (including TWY's 1968-73) I thought it would be the perfect supplement to the show. The music and events became so central to the show IMHO which added to the reason that I had forgotten that Winnie had a reduced role in Seasons 5 and 6. Think of it this way, it changed the way I saw American history, as well as thought of my parents since they lived through these events.

Unfortunately all that was dashed since the show was cancelled in May. I hope I cleared everything up on why I've been so cranky talking about the end of the show (like saying it could have gone on 10 more seasons, which is not impossible especially when I consider that Gunsmoke went 20 seasons from 1955-75 and lasted 633 episodes).

One more thing before I go. To emphasize how vital the events and music were, remember my posting when I said the show could have continued to include how the gang (the Arnolds plus Winnie, Paul, etc.) would deal with the events to come like the Ford, Carter, and Reagan Administrations, as well as some of the music of future artists like Linda Ronstadt, Foreigner, Air Supply, the Oak Ridge Boys, ABBA, and what not. That's how vital IMHO the events and music made the show so great!

I feel better now!



Kyle wrote...
I watched the premier right after the Superbowl (the other people I watched the game with went into the kitchen to play cards)...I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen on TV.

I had some type of brain fade, and didn't watch again till like Ep 22 or something. That was prompted by seeing a promo for the show, which as I recall showed Winnie walking in a red dress - I remember thinking "hey, I'm missing something, here". I started recording them all. As James said, it was eat, drink, and TWY. My evening schedule was based around the "record button" at 8PM (later at 8:30PM). If I was gonna work late, I went home to set the timer first...

I eventually had every ep, not getting them all until last year (1999), when I had someone record about 12 eps off NaN, which I don't get, and some nice girl copied the last 4 for me.

Unfortunately, one TWY tape was in the VCR which got stolen some months back, so I have a gap again - Ep's 47 "Growing Up" to Ep 61 "Buster". Luckily, I had transcribed my favorites from that stretch...:-) (Note: Feb 2004 - Isaac Lew let me copy his tapes:-)



"CraigHobson" wrote...
I am, I guess, a "late-bloomer" since I was only 5 or 6 when the show first came on in '88 I never really watched it, but I recall my parents watching it quite often, they didn't make it a point to watch it but you know whenever they saw it on TV they'd keep it on and watch it all as opposed to flipping the channels. I do remember seeing a few episodes though when I was young, I remember watching ep. 88 "Carnal Knowledge" with my older brother who was about 14/15 at the time and I also remember watching "Poker". He was a big fan of the show as he was also beginning high school (like Kevin) and I can remember him talking to his friends about the show.

I also remember the night of the last episode. My parents and both of my brothers watched it while I was upstairs sorting through my hockey and basketball cards...I also remember my older brother coming upstairs and telling me what happened at the end of the show (not that I really cared at the time). I guess I became a diehard fan one afternoon I stayed home from school (I was sick) and some network was showing syndicated reruns of the show at 12 oclock, I remember they showed ep. 36 "She, My Friend, and I" which of course is to be continued...I was so anxious to see what would happen in the next episode that I came home for lunch from school that next day and watched the episode, and so for the rest of my elementary school career I would go home for lunch tune into TWY while I ate my peanut butter and banana sandwich and go back to school...until the network stopped showing it, after they stopped showing it I never saw it again.

Then, about a year and a half ago, my father bought a satelite dish from his brother and one of the channels was Nick at Nite and of course I happened to be flipping through channels on one Friday night and there it was again and the rest is history...I taped every episode I saw and then I found the newsgroup and someone posted that TWY was coming back to Canada on another network and so I was lucky enough to get a big collection in a little time.

That's my lengthy story of my Wonder Years career.



Lyle wrote...
I caught the second half of the Pilot episode after the Super Bowl in Jan '88; I'd seen the writeup in TV GUIDE indicating it was about someone who was 12 years old in 1968, just as I was, but unfortunately I wasn't watching the Super Bowl and didn't know when it ended; I came in just as Wayne started teasing Kevin in the cafeteria and Kevin threw the apple. Even though I'd missed the beginning, I quickly surmised that Brian Cooper was killed in Vietnam and that Winnie was his sister. My thoughts at the final kissing scene was that, given the emotional intensity of the situation, "These are two people who are going to love each other for the rest of their lives."

My feelings about the series were mixed for the first couple of shows; on the one hand I was put off by the historical inaccuracy in "The Phone Call" showing Apollo 8 orbiting the moon while school was in session while in real life it happened on Christmas Eve 1968. On the other hand, the next episode, "Dance With Me", hooked me because I could actually remember dancing to "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells at a Junior High dance.

I was a casual viewer for the first few seasons. I didn't become a hard-core fan until Episode 66 "The Accident", because what happened to Winnie (not the actual accident but her erratic behavior and alienating herself from her old friends) actually happened to a girl I liked at just about that time in my life, but without the poignant happy ending, so that episode was a tremendous catharsis for me. Also, to tell the truth, I actually identified with the character of Paul more than with Kevin (I wear glasses and was the prototypical computer geek in high school), up until Kevin ended up owning a beat-up 4-door light metallic blue mid-1960s Olds Cutlass, just like my own first car!

I actually started writing what would end up becoming my proposed TWY reunion scripts shortly after seeing "The Accident".



Tom wrote...
I read a number of articles written by television critics before the show premiered, they were so impressed that I was practically a fan before it the show began. Starting with the first episode I taped every show, my interest was heightened by the fact I was born the same year as the fictional Kevin, so I experienced the historical events at the same age as he did. The October following the show's premiere I got to meet and talk with Danica McKellar and her sister at a local charity haunted house (they were there with other celebrities promoting the opening weekend.) I produced the TV Guide with Kevin and Winnie on the cover for her to sign and she seemed impressed (she showed it off to some kid from "Growing Pains".) I felt sorry for her sister as no one was paying any attention to her, so I went out of my way to speak to her and made sure to have a picture taken with her as well as Danica. I must admit that my admiration for the show fell off in the last couple of seasons, I still enjoyed it, but the thrill was gone.



Chesna wrote...
I was born in '77, so when TWY came on and Kevin was about 12(?), so was I. I don't remember how I started watching it, but I just know I started sometime in the first season. I watched up until Paul lost his glasses, and for some reason lost interest. That was about the time Kevin got his car too, so I did as well, so I would go out driving around instead of staying home to watch TV. I caught a couple of the later episodes here and there but watched the finale with my family. I remember holding back the tears when he told about what would happen to him and his family in the future.

I got a satellite a couple years ago and this past January or so, TVLand started showing "A Team" episodes and I started watching them...a month later, I guess I had seen some commercials for TWY and I remembered the old times and wanted to watch them again as I hadn't even seen a good chunk of the last couple seasons...I started taping in Feb when they started at the Pilot again, except they didn't show the pilot, or the next 6 episodes the next week, but a week later I started with episode 8, and now I'm filling in some gaps the second time around.

I'm 22 now, and after watching the show for these past few months, and seeing Kevin doing the things kids do at that age, mainly riding around town on bikes, I went out and bought one and I ride around town around sunset quite often and relive the old days.



Jeff wrote...
I'm pretty much a TWY fan via the Internet community. I mean, I watched the show some when it originally aired, and I liked it, but it was more a show I would watch if I happened to catch it, not one I planned my evening around. I do remember when the Madeline episodes aired (Fall 1990) because I was a senior in high school, and I remember the "buzz" about how all the guys would've hooked up with Madeline, hands down. Hard to argue with that - she was a babe! Once I went to college I hardly ever saw it, but I did tape the final episode, and it was really moving. It made me a little sad I hadn't watched the show more when it was on.

After that I rarely thought much of TWY until October 1997 when I saw that the Marathon was going to air on N@N. I watched it, and loved it, but once again I did not watch TWY regularly once it hit the air - just occasionally.

But in December 1997 I got a new computer, and FINALLY had Internet access, and found myself unsure what to do with it. So, in thinking of things to search for, I came up with TWY, and promptly found D****'s page (now operated by Bren), and was amazed by its content, and links, and I especially liked the transcripts. After that it was only a matter of time before I found myself sucking up all the TWY info off the web, and taping every episode(except Ep. 78, of course), and the rest is history ...

Kyle's Note: With Bren's permission, I'm hosting the archives from D****'s page. Bren may do something with the pix and the rest of it...



Harper wrote...
I did not grow up in the period Wonder Years portrays or in a period much like that. But soon after the series began, I realized that it was my own story - not in the details of episodes, but in the basic situation, characters and emotional tone. Wonder Years is not about the experience of a time period, but about the human experience. Essentially, I think, TWY is the story of Winnie and Kevin (tho' I agree that there are great episodes not involving this theme - the first that come to mind are #49, 70, 72 (Kyle's note - those are "The Journey", "The Lake" and "The Hardware Store"). It is not a story of "unrequited love," which is a cliche and easy to forget. It is the requited kind which can not be made to work for long and can not ever be "gotten over." This is the tough kind.

At first I simply enjoyed watching the early episodes, but with ep. 11 (Kyle - "Just Between You and Me...and Kirk and Paul and Carla and Becky") - I was mesmerized, and with ep. 23 (Kyle - "How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation") I was hooked forever. To me this is incomparably the best episode (I'm not interested in polls except as a curiosity). It has the best of everything that made the series great; humor, tragedy, wonder, superb minor characters at their best (even Winnie's brother comes back for this one) (only Paul gets too small a role). And the episode story is a microcosm of the entire series.



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11/28/14 17:20