I t says something about me that I would have a favorite television show. It says even more to say that for many years, that show was Gilligan's Island. The show that finally, and with much regret, edged out Gilligan is The Wonder Years. In it, I find what I see to be true about human nature portrayed more faithfully than in any other series. First, I see Kevin experiencing many events eerily similar to ones from my own life. Second, I see in this show an acknowledgement of a fact of the human condition that I have found dealt with satisfactorily in only three sources: this show, Kant's Metaphysic of Morals and Paul's letter to the Romans. The fact? That the human will is a deep, mysterious complex; that, as Paul says, we don't do what we want, and we do what we don't want to. Over and over, we are privileged to hear some of Kevin's inner debate through the narration by a grown-up Kevin twenty years later. And consistently we see that at the moment when motivation finally moves Kevin to action, the most illogical, unproductive move is the result. I know it sounds corny, but I laugh and cry at the same time every time it happens.

S ome of my favorite quotes come from adult Kevin's commentary. Here are two of these favorite passages:

from episode #1:

It was the first kiss for both of us.
We never really talked about it afterward.
But I think about the events of that day
again and again,
and somehow I know that Winnie does too,
whenever some blowhard starts talking about
the anonymity of the suburbs
or the mindlessness of the TV generation,
because we know
that inside each one of those identical boxes,
with its Dodge parked out front
and its white bread on the table
and its TV set glowing blue in the falling dusk,
there were people with stories,
there were families bound together in the pain and
the struggle of love,
there where moments that made us cry with laughter,
and there were moments,
like that one,
of sorrow and
wonder.



And from episode #46:

Thrirteen is a crazy age. You're too young to vote
and too old not to be in love.
You live in a house someone else owns . . .
[Camera shows WINNIE's house through KEVIN's window.]
but your dreams are already somewhere else.


H ere is the human condition itself. We have the desire to be more than we are but not the means. Or rather, the means seem tantalizingly almost clear to us and yet we can never bring ourselves to act on those means. We should be more than we can be. We feel that we are a part of the nature we interact with, and yet we seek to control nature. We make our living here, yet we feel this is not our home. As Pascal says, we are monsters: neither angel nor devil, but a monstrous mixture. We are a wretched, miserable race. And yet we know we are wretched, and that knowledge is a sign of greatness. Pascal's solution? He points us to the solution of Paul and the rest of the writers of the Bible. In Pascal's words, we are fallen princes. In the words of the Bible, we were created in the image of God, but chose, as no other creature has done, to reject our place in the scheme because of a desire to be more like God than we had a right to be. As a result, we have removed ourselves from the Source of meaning and can no longer do what we know we ought. Our only hope is reconciliation with our Creator through Jesus.

O bviously, I have a tendency to dig through several strata in searching
for a foundation for interpretation. While the gap between the soul's
counsel and motivation's response remains as a special aspect of The
Wonder Years, this interpretation of it is something I'll see just about
everywhere I look. So what else about this show in particular makes it a
favorite?


NOSTALIGIA
F irst I must mention the nostalgic aspect. I am amazed almost
every episode at the details about everyday culture that the creators
remembered to include: the kid who forgets to bring white socks for gym
(because we all wore dark socks everyday then), the split-level end tables,
the black-and-white TVs. I was astonished when I first saw the still-life
mosaic Norma has on the wall in the kitchen. My mom bought the same kit, so
we had the same picture on our wall when I was growing up. Then there's the
clothes. Oh, the clothes! Paul's astoundingly ugly striped pants, Winnie's
red and pink checked dress (with a psychadelicly shifting size to the rows),
the T-shirts with no writing or pictures on them, Jack's garish brown and
orange knit pullover shirt, Norma's blue-and-purple-watermelon-print dress,
junior-high miniskirts, and the huge, dangly zippers on the fronts of dresses
and pullover shirts. What possessed us to buy and wear such things? Well,
partly a healthy sense of goofy fun. And it's fun all over again. (Although
it's a lot more fun just seeing those styles again than it would be to wear
them again.)


HISTORY
A nother thing that stands out is the way in which the history of events and
ideas is treated. A friend of mine asked me if I didn't think that all the
business about VietNam and the Cold War and the space program wasn't out of
fashion by now? My answer was that the show is not about those things, and
yet it isn't just about a boy in junior high either. It is about a boy in
junior high in 1969, when VietNam and the Cold War and the space program
were all going on. Adolescence is a time when we become aware of the world
around us and aware that things outside ourselves are important. And yet
our culture doesn't teach us how to deal with these important issues, partly
because it doesn't know how to deal with them itself.

S o in episode 4, "Angel," the VietNam war figures prominently, but only as a
distant, unknown something that has killed the neighborhood's coolest kid
and that makes Dad and big sister argue. Because of the war, Kevin lies
awake at night worrying. But he doesn't worry about the war; he worries
about--well, he doesn't even know. He just knows that things are bad and
that finding a point of stability in life is tough.

I n episode 82, "Kodachrome" (a title I feel sure the producers meant as a
reference to the first line of Paul Simon's song), Kevin's cool English
teacher quits because she and the principal take opposite sides in the
school's culture war about what education means. But while Kevin's class-
mates applaud her for sticking to principles, Kevin realizes that her
resignation means depriving him of the one true educator he has at the
moment. While the event stands out in Kevin's memory as of enough import-
ance to pass on to us, he confesses he doesn't know what to make of our
nation's battles over education twenty years later. Like Tom Joad when he
sees his shanty being bulldozed, he doesn't know who to be mad at.

A s a final example, episode 15, "Loosiers," begins with the Arnold
family watching TV as Soviet tanks roll into Prague. Everyone in the family
shows great concern (well, everyone but Wayne), but no one directs the
concern toward the Czechoslovakians. Karen sees the event as an excuse to
announce that the same kind of repression lies all around her. Jack sees
the event as something requiring more than the usual silence around the
table. Norma sees the event as one that puts more distance between her
husband and daughter. And then there's Kevin. As he says, "We didn't have
to worry about totalitarians taking over the United States. All our totali-
tarians were teaching junior high school." Cut to view of Cutlip, the gym
coach ("Thats physical education, son"), shot from below to emphasize
his at-least-assumed power. The story of basketball that follows is funny.
The scene around the television is interesting and amusing. The basketball
story as set up by the scene around the television is fraught with
deep significance. Cutlip is no mere bad teacher. He is a dictator--a
man of political power who, seeing his position as of absolute significance,
has become absolutely corrupted. His method of teaching basketball makes
about as much sense as a five-year plan of Stalin. His techniques of "moti-
vation" differ little from torture. His downfall (alas, only temporary) at
the end of the episode offers hope to the politically repressed everywhere.


HOME MOVIES
I n the opening credits and then during every sixth or eighth episode, we see
what appear to be home movies. It is never made clear who takes these home
movies, and in fact it is rather clear many times that every character present
in a location is in the home film. My interpretation is that this footage
represent not actual home movies, but memories of a special sort. I know of
moments in my life I consider important only because I remember the picture of
it without having a memory of the moment itself. Of other events in my life,
I suspect that my memory is actually only a memory of a memory, in come cases
because when I imagine the scene I see myself, not the scene as I would have
viewed it through my eyes.

W hat does it mean in The Wonder Years when memories are shown as home movies? Sometimes, it merely means that the events took place before the main historical timeframe of the show: Kevin is often shown about three to six years old. But these films also have a thematic unity: the people in them are almost always happy. A common sequence involves a home movie where everyone is happy, and then a cut to the usual Wonder Years look depicting the "present" (1968-73) with the same characters present, but now complaining and arguing. Kevin often talks about the good old days as an almost mythical golden age. The use of home movies to show this golden age suggests that Kevin has no direct memory of the good times (Karen hugging him, Mom and Dad kissing on the swing in the yard, Dad playing with Kevin in the surf, etc.--of course Wayne is pretty much of a snot always) but only memories of the movies of the good times, or perhaps only memories of the memories. Perhaps the good times were not really all that good (or else the adolescent years aren't so bad; I've often wondered if Kevin doesn't remember Wayne as worse than he "really" was). Or perhaps Kevin feels that he must distance himself from the moments of true goodness and love in his life. Depicting these memories of memories as a film within a film creates some emotional distancing for us that may correspond to Kevin's psychological strategy. In addition, the home movies are silent; as a result, the people in these movies are even more distant since we never hear what they're saying. So, for Kevin, these home movies represent a special type of memory, an especially treasured memory of a time almost too sacred to get close to but too good to forget.

T he classic use of the technique comes in episode 47, "Growing Up." In this
episode, Kevin learns more than ever before that everyone and every
relationship changes. He tells us that we must forgive ourselves for
growing up. At the end of the episode, Jack and Karen get in the car to
drive Karen to her first semester of college. The whole sequence, showing Karen
hugging each member of the family, Norma handing her an important family
heirloom, and Kevin and Wayne holding back tears (almost) is accompanied by
Joan Baez's "Forever Young." As Karen gives her last hug to her mom, the
film changes to silent home movies. Why does Kevin's memory of this good time
for his family change to home movie? Partly I think because he feels he can't
let himself be too attached to the memory of, for instance, Wayne crying.
(Again, can Wayne really have been so bad as Kevin usually depicts him?) But
also partly becuase while everybody has to change--even Jack's goofy colleague
Detweiller, who is described early in the episode as being pretty much
the same as he was in the old days, has to get promoted--we preserve a part of
ourselves through that change as an identity. Even as we grow up, we can,
partly by holding on to memories, stay "forever young." The home film starts
just as the chorus, "Forever young," begins. While Kevin may not be quite able
to believe that these happy times really happened, he now has the film as
proof; this memory has been preserved and can stay forever young.


MUSIC
N o one my age can watch The Wonder Years much without being moved
by the music. Besides Snuffy Walden's beautiful guitar backgrounds
often energized by clever use of the leitmotif technique, there are
all the classic records that come up: the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows,"
the Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together," etc. Often the lyrics of
these songs comment very cleverly on the events depicted on screen. In
the epsiode just discussed, for instance, many interesting connections
arise between the characters' actions and lines of the song, "Forever
Young." Jack says, "Are you ready?" one time and "Let's go" the next
just as the singer says, "And may you stay forever young," providing
a nice juxtaposition of going and staying. Karen tells her mom "I love
you" just as the singer wishes her courage. Then Kevin sucks up a tear
just as the singer says "Stand up and be strong." Norma gives Karen
Jack's kit bag just as the singer "May you always know the truth." In
an earlier episode, "Daddy's Little Girl," Karen has to learn that her
idea that Jack doesn't listen and doesn't love her and doesn't understand
her is not the truth. By taking the kit bag, she is carrying a physical
reminder of the truth.


The Wonder Years can currently be seen on The National Network.