The Wonder Years - Season One

The style of "The Wonder Years" is so distinctive that it is often spoofed. You can still hear the first-person narrated voiceover: "The year was 1968, and I was entering Robert F. Kennedy Junior High School..."

There's also the completely manipulated, corny editing style. Never failing to draw attention to itself, it goes a long way to make the show look hokey. There are freeze frames before the narration begins, unrealistically motivated sound effects and parody reenactments by the tween-aged cast.

Still, with all its hokum, the six episode-long first season really has something to it. You can see the tension between the colloquial and the profound building in the opening credits. We see hyper-saturated, scratched and grainy 8 mm footage of an all-American family. They're having a barbeque and playing around outside of their house. Yet, juxtaposed against this standard of suburbia is Joe Cocker's vulnerable and bluesy rendition of the Beatle's more joyful "With a Little Help from My Friends." The effect is innocence and optimism almost unaware of something fierce and gritty in the background.

In Season One, Kevin falls for his next-door neighbor Winnie Cooper (Danica McKellar), a girl he hardly noticed before, while his best friend, the nerdy Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano), helps our narrator to get his hands on the book "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask."

Politics always flirts at the fringes of these episodes without ever really showing itself. While the plots focus on things like first kisses and Kevin nervously wanting to ask a girl to the school dance, the almost-unnoticed adults have much more sophisticated problems: Dad drinks quite a bit, big sister has a boyfriend who's into open relationships, and the boy next door dies fighting in the Vietnam War.

In particular, the "My Father's Office" episode stands out. The sacrosanct idea of the time period, that father knows best, is brought into question and we begin to see a stock character from a more empathetic and susceptible perspective.

This 2-DVD set includes all six episodes of the first season, plus over two hours of bonus features, including current interviews with the creators (Neal Marlens and Carol Black) and cast members (Fred Savage, Danica McKellar and Josh Saviano) discussing what the series means to them. There's also a featurette, "With a Little Help from My Friend: The Early Days of 'The Wonder Years'" and highlights from "The Wonder Years" cast reunion (May 2014).

"The Wonder Years"
DVD
timelife.com