BREAKING: ‘The Wonder Years’ Pilot Is Still Perfect

Earlier this month, all six seasons of The Wonder Years were added to Hulu. Airing on ABC from 1988 to 1993, this evocative coming-of-age dramedy memorably starred Fred Savage as everykid USA Kevin Arnold, a wide-eyed adolescent on the brink of experiencing the emotionally turbulent carnival of horrors known as junior high school. Growing up, I watched The Wonder Years, but I didn’t truly absorb The Wonder Years. In my defense, I was six-years-old and DVRing was merely a twinkle in my family VCR’s eye.

Wait, does that track? Eh. Honestly, who cares? My point is that I recently rewatched The Wonder Years pilot and it is pure, unadulterated TV perfection.

Written by series creators Neal Marlens and Carol Black, the painstakingly authentic episode is the most relatable encapsulation of adolescence in TV history. Equal parts funny and emotional, the episode will transport you back to a time in your life where every single day was bursting with possibility, an era in which every day had the potential to be thee day. The pilot doesn’t look or sound like a traditional TV show. The writing is lyrical, poetic even, in the way it captures the indefinable essence of growing up.

“Well, there was no question now. We were entering uncharted territory. Even the familiar was cloaked in the vestments of the Devil. Junior high school was a whole new ball of wax.”

The Wonder Years embraced nostalgia before embracing nostalgia was cool. The pilot packed an absurd amount of coming-of-age staples into a scant 25 minutes. Episode 1 basically covers the greatest hits of your early teens: jerk brothers, nerdy best friends, “she’s not my girlfriend,” scary dads, jockstraps, where to sit at lunch, the thrill of finding a book or magazine with nudity, bullies, gym class, and, most importantly, your first kiss.

The Wonder Years takes place from 1968 to 1973. In the opening scene we meet 19-year-old Brian Cooper, the personification of cool and older brother of Kevin’s love interest, Winnie Cooper. The introduction is brief, however, as we learn that Brian is off to Vietnam. In a move that was considered incredibly bold back in 1988, the episode concludes with the town learning of Brian’s death, a narrative swerve that wasn’t exactly analogous with other primetime sitcoms of the era (Alf, Designing Women, Who’s the Boss, Perfect Strangers, Mr. Belvedere, etc). 

The episode memorably concludes with Kevin and Winnie’s first kiss as Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” scores the seminal coming-of-age moment.

From minute one, The Wonder Years was a series that possessed the requisite savviness to toggle between disarmingly charming and achingly poetic. The pilot is nostalgia at its absolute best. The Wonder Years didn’t invent the coming-of-age genre but it sure did perfect it. The episode’s closing voiceover extolling the stealthy virtues of the traditional suburban experience still resonates thirty years later.

“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 were moments that made us cry with laughter. And there were moments, like that one, of sorrow and wonder.”

Where to stream The Wonder Years