Maybe I was wrong. I was impressed with the pilot. Usually pilots aren't very good but I enjoyed it.
Watching it now, you can see that they're obviously introducing the characters, who they are, their roles, basic personalities, et cetera. Also, the whole narrator-as-adult-Kevin Arnold gimmick is explained.
You can really see that the weak link is Karen. Everyone else is reasonably plausible but she's a 1960s far out groovy hippie stereotype. "Peace, dad. Your bad karma is really mellowing my vibe." I'd like to punch her in the face. Fortunately, they quietly dropped that shitty character.
Something that I don't think was continued in the series was Jew Paul's multiple allergies.
Another thing that didn't carry over was the 8mm camera footage. It's in the intro, of course, but in the pilot there's a long montage of 8mm shit, some of which would become part of the intro.
Then I watched episode 2, Swingers. This is the one where Kevin gets a copy of Everything you Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. Paul steals it from a bookstore. They also have sex education in gym class.
I remember why I had a negative opinion of the early episodes. 12 year old Kevin and his classmates are all horndogs who want to find out what vaginas look like. I can honestly say that I've never wanted to know what a vagina looked like and when I finally did find out, when I was 18 and looking at a copy of Juggs, I was traumatised.
I think that this is a much more typical coming of age story. I was 12. I knew people my age. NOBODY wanted to know what vaginas looked like. Or if they did, they kept that desire well hidden.
And indeed, I think it's common to be traumatised by knowing what vaginas look like. Just look at the culture. Is there any real sexualisation of vaginas? Nobody is saying, "Wow, that's some vagina". Obviously, they're typically covered but I challenge you to go to any porn video and find even ONE comment, pro or con, about the appearance of a woman's vagina. They'll talk about the tits all day long. You'll see some ass comments. You might even see an old timer talking about the woman's gams. But vagina? Never. They all look pretty much the same.
But back to the Wonder Years. One thing I didn't pick up on original viewings is what Kevin's mother meant when she said, "What were you doing going through my dresser drawers anyway?" Here's the context:
Kevin was just found with a copy of this Everything you Wanted to Know about Sex book.
Kevin's mom sends Paul home and asks Wayne to leave.
Mrs Arnold then says, "It's not so much that you had this book but what were you doing going through my dresser drawers anyway?"
Kevin then has a surprised look on his face.
Now, as a kid, I thought that Kevin was caught going through his mother's underwear drawer. But apparently, what happened is the Arnold matriarch thought that Kevin stole her copy of the book.
Anyway, the Wonder Years was created by Jewish couple Neal Marlens and Carol Black. Interestingly, Swingers was the only episode that they directed. And they only wrote five episodes for the entire run of the show (the first four episodes and the first episode of season two). They just delegated the writing and directing to other (no doubt Jewish) people and reaped the profit.
The narrator of the Wonder Years, Daniel Stern, is Jewish.
His Jewish brother David Stern wrote a number of epidoes of the Wonder Years.
You can check out the list below. It reads like a Bar Mitzvah guest list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Wonder_Years_episodes
Is Fred Savage Jewish? Probably with that name. Yeah. Big time. Big time Jew. What a surprise.
The guy who played Paul is, of course, Jewish.
The father apparently isn't Jewish but he was born in New York.
The mother, apparently, isn't Jewish.
That awful Karen isn't Jewish.
No mention on Wikipedia of Jason Hervey (Wayne) being Jewish but he must be with that name.
Winnie, apparently, isn't Jewish.
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