The Dallas Morning News
Tuesday, May 11, 1993

"Wonder" Chronicle comes of age

Written by: KEN PARISH PERKINS

TELEVISION

Standing near the punch bowl during a press foray in Los Angeles, I was surprised to feel a finger taping on my shoulder and find a kid asking if I'd pour him a refill "of that red stuff." It was Fred Savage. He looked taller that I'd imagined. His cheecks seemed thinner, his hair shorter and better-groomed. And that boyish grin that belongs to Kevin Arnold on The Wonder years was more like a grown up smile.

He was wearing a shirt and tie and blazer that could have been called a suit had any of it matched, or even been close to the same texture. The problem with seeing kid actors in person is that they don't look like kids, and they don't necessarily act like them. Fred had just turned 16 like Kevin, had just earned his driver's license like Kevin and was contemplating college like Kevin.

WONDER YEARS WEARS OFF

As he was talking about how complicated his life was becoming, what with all this adult stuff getting in his way, it dawned on me why his television show, once a terrifically written coming-of-age chronicle of the average suburban teenm was coming trite and a bit bland and losing its audience.

In the past season, The Wonder Years had dropped out of the top 20 and was dangling in cancellation land. He knew it. I knew it. It was a matter of time before the network pulled the plug.

Our conversation was months ago, at the beginning of the season, and since then The Wonder Years has indeed bitten the dust. Its final episode, which promices to tie up loose ends by finally matching young Kevin Arnold and that voice of reason, will end Wednesday.

When I talked with Mr. Savage, he wasn't all that worried about the cancellation. They'd had a good run, and he figured that when the end came he would simply move on.

"I think the corner you box yourself into something with coming-of-age type stories is:What do you do when you come of age?," Mr. Savage said, gulping down that red stuff and glancing around the room.

What made Kevin Arnold wonder - looking at life as a confused kid with everything ahead of him - diminished as he approached his senior year in highschool. We may learn things for the rest of our lives, but the wonderment of it all is never more keen than during our preteen and early teen years, when nothing seems to make sense.

LIFE CHANGES

For Kevin - now a Junior and thinking about college and careers, why his relationship with his parents was changing, why he no longer feared his lazy, no-good brother but pitied him, why the word "virginity" seemed to have so much more meaning as he got older - life indeed became more complicated. And less cute. And less funny.

"I can relate to Kevin," Mr. Savage said. "I think one of the things that made The Wonder Years be on for so long and have such, you know, moving episodes and be such a powerful show is that Kevin, I think, everyone could relate to Kevin."

"He's the universal teen-ager, you know, from 10 to 16 years. I can definitely relate to everything he's gone through from his first kiss to getting his driver's license. You know, I've been there with him, and he's been there with me every step of the way."

"And I think a lot of - maybe all - the viewers, whether they are my age or, you know, adults looking back on that time - millions of times I've had adults come up to me and say, 'You know that episode where this happened, you know I went through the exact thing. That was me in that episode.'"

Executive producer Bob Brush saw the ending too, but would have liked to have squeezed in one more year. At least let Kevin graduate from highschool.

"I think that some of the audience erosion had to do with the new time slot and a slightly earlier slot last year," said Mr. Bush. "But, sure, the show had to change as Fred's character changed. He was entering the later phases of adolescence where life gets a little more serious, where actions have consequences."

The Wonder Years had the advantage and disadvantages of the times. Its story lines, centered on the events of the '60s, were poignant and colorful. Then they entered 1970 and '71, regarded as a less colorful time. "We used that time to try and establish a personality for Kevin Arnold, a young-adult personality," said Mr. Bush, which meant less narration from actor Daniel Stern. "And that begins at 16 and 17. You begin to make choices. You begin to have to live up to those choices that you make."

Perhaps we didn't want Kevin to make choices. We didn't want him to grow up. He reached a period when life became more difficult, even painful.

The Wonder Years began as a story of a cute kid with big eyes looking out at the world and not having any understanding of it.

Now he's a young adult who, in character and out, is an adult in shirt and tie and sports coat, with thin cheeks and shorts, neat-looking hair.

The wonder now comes from a different place: inside. He's no longer a 12-year-old kid without the words to express what he feels. He speaks for himself.

Same with Fred Savage. He used Kevin as his personal primer of adolescence, do it this way or that way, show him what's right and wrong.

Now, like his television character, Fred Savage, is moving on and out on his own.
 

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