Top 5 Best Wonder Years Moments

By Ned Hepburn on March 27th, 2009

• Tweet
• Link to StumbleUpon
• 2 Comments

Wonder Years was a show on ABC for five years from 1988 to 1993. It’s about time that the show got its dues.

Amazingly, it hasn’t been released on DVD. Why? Why is such a good show not available to purchase? Because of the music rights, people. The artist takes a certain cut every time the song is used, and seeing as the use so many cultural cues from these songs (Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” in the pilot episode during Kevin and Winnie’s first kiss!) they’d have to pay millions upon millions to the already greenback lined pockets of the likes of Crosby Stills Nash & Young to have the episodes shown the way they were intended. So that’s why.

Without further ado, here are Manolith’s Top 5 Wonder Years moments.

1. Kevin and Winnie’s first kiss.

This was the first episode, and it already out the next five years of the show. All you need to know is that Kevin is the 10 year old Horatio Alger doing good and that Winnie is the Zelda to his Fitzgerald. That’s how deep this show will go if you’re willing to gloss over the classic rock / sentimentality exterior. Her brother died in ‘Nam and heres Kevin with the jacket to keep her warm. Oh man. You go, big guy. You make the rest of us proud.

2. The school puts on ‘Our Town’

Maybe its the fact that I’m secretly an ex theater geek, but this was probably the best episode of the series. The school puts on a performance of ‘Our Town‘ and Kevin has to hold the spotlight for Winnie (how fucking fitting is that? Our man gets blueballed yet again). But he holds the light FOR HER, man. That show is DEEP. Then he cries a single tear. And maybe I did too. But then I had to eat a steak and punch someone smaller than me just to feel manly again. This show is so good.

3. The one where the teacher dies.

Kevin has a tough-as-nails teacher who refuses to let him off the hook. The teacher doesn’t let him settle on a ‘B’ and offers him classes after school. He goes to two and then… the teacher dies. And they were just becoming good pals. And Kevin learns a lesson. But get this: ALL THE OTHER TESTS WERE GRADED EXCEPT FOR HIS. So Kevin sits down and ACES THE FUCKING QUIZ. Because THE TEACHER WAS HIS PAL. Oh man. I’m getting sappy typing this. I remember being about 7 and watching this and bawling.

4. Kevin & Winnie In The Barn

This is the one where they allegedly have sex, although I’m pretty sure that Kevin was a man about it and merely spooned her. It’s also in the final episode, too, adding to the suspense. What will happen to our hero? Will he get with Winnie and get married and live in his own suburban palace? Or…

5. The 4th Of July Episode

… will he end up like all of us – a slightly cooler person that is ultimately just like his Dad? Sadly, Kevin and Winnie never got married. This is all told in the voice over, as his friends start to dissapear and fade away via a camera trick, we learn that Winnie got married and that Kevin grew up to have his own kid and family and yard and this was all part of a memoir. It’s the most moving thing that’s been shown on television in a damn long time. To hell with ‘Lost’: this show was the Citizen Kane of prime time television. It’s criminal that it hasn’t been released on DVD yet. Until then, it will be in the minds of all of us who were lucky enough to see it.