ABC's new comedy series The Wonder Years is a warm, funny, evocative homage to that hazy, long-lost world that was suburban America in the late 1960s.
And ABC (channels 10, 12 and 26) is giving the half-hour premiere a well-deserved boost by scheduling it after Super Bowl XXII on Sunday. It will join the schedule in an as-yet undetermined time period in March.
The Wonder Years is from the husband-and-wife creators and producers of ABC's hit Growing Pains, Neal Marlens, 31, and Carol Black, 30. Both grew up in the suburbs, he in Huntington, N.Y., she in Silver Spring, Md.
"The late '60s in the suburbs for a 12- or 13-year-old kid was just sort of an interesting setting," said Marlens. "You weren't quite old enough to be involved in the counterculture per se, and yet it touched you in certain ways."
"We just feel there's been a lot of attention dedicated to the effect that the '60s had on the generation that was really riding that wave, people in college and in their 20s at that time," said Black. "But . . . we began to realize what a strange time it was to be a kid."
They also wanted to make a point that there were real people in those, as Pete Seeger sang, "little houses made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same."
"There are worse things in life than being lumped into the category of middle-class suburban, but we figure it's our one small gripe, so why not?" said Marlens.
The main character in The Wonder Years is 12-year-old Kevin Arnold, played by a fine young actor, Fred Savage. Kevin is an all-American kid embarking on the adventure of junior high school in 1968. Much of the story is narrated by grown-up Kevin, lending a sense of reminiscence and reflection.
Kevin has a tormenting older brother, Wayne (Jason Hervey): "Apparently he just deeply regretted the fact that I had been born, and he wanted me to feel the same way"; a sister with a raised consciousness, Caren (Olivia Dabo); a typical mom (Alley Mills), and a taciturn dad (Dan Luria): "It was like he had this understanding with the family -- he worked hard for us, he provided for us and he certainly didn't want to have to talk to us."
The neighborhood includes Kevin's nerdy best friend, Paul (Josh Saviano); a 12-year-old budding beauty, Winnie (Danica McKellar), and her older brother, Brian, who "defined cool."
Brian had a 1959 El Camino that was very cool, even though it never actually ran. "Brian got drafted and packed off to Vietnam, but his car stayed there up on blocks. Kind of a reminder of who really ran our street."
In the premiere episode, Kevin goes off nervously to his first day with the big kids. when his brother humiliates him in the cafeteria in front of everybody, Kevin has to defend his shaky image as a cool kid. Cut to principal's office.
His parents come to take him home, but before Kevin can get the licking he's sure he has coming, the family is confronted by tragedy: Brian has been killed in Vietnam.
Kevin goes for a walk: "The days were still long, and back then kids could go for walks at dusk without fear of ending up on milk cartons."
He finds Winnie sitting alone in the coolness of the woods, trying to comprehend war and death. He puts his jacket around her shoulders and they share a kiss.
It was the only kiss, he tells us, that he and Winnie ever had. But he remembers it still, and he's sure she 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 every 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 are people with stories, there were families bound together in the pain and the struggle of love."