Pilot Episode
Episode 1
Later on in the life of the series, when ABC replayed the pilot episode, Fred Savage introduced The Wonder Years as "the only show with a conscience." This is a very true remark, especially as it pertains to television over the last decade. I do not remember any specific details about my first viewing of the episode, other than the fact that I immediately knew that this was "my show." When this episode was shown for the second time, I have strong memories because I was able to watch the show alongside two friends of mine, one of whom was, in fact, my "Winnie" (and most likely this association in my mind is what made this new television show so important to me right from the start). The pilot was very good; every time I watch it now, no matter how many times I have seen it, I get chills at the end. Most good things seem to fly by, but this episode is unusual in that more than thirty minutes seem to pass by when I play it; there is definitely something magical about The Wonder Years.
I watched this show again, as I will be watching all the shows again, with an attention to detail at the forefront of my mind. I had never realized that the very first words spoken on the show (following the adult narrator’s introduction) were spoken by Winnie Cooper ("It was a pretty hard pass."). It is a little strange to look back at a Winnie with glasses and pigtails, but even here, in her first moment of the show, she is Winnie—at least to me. Kevin says that he and Winnie had not really hung out since he was nine, yet he is constantly declaring that "she is not my girlfriend" throughout the episode; I guess I just have to wonder about those prior three years in their lives. Wayne, of course, is Wayne; I am an only child, and I certainly hope that most big brothers are not like Wayne—of course, being men, they probably are that mean. We are introduced to Paul Pfeiffer in all his tragic glory here; the boy is allergic to just about everything (including his own snot, if you ask Wayne). Paul was even more pitiful than I was at that age, and I hate that this kinship I felt to Paul was ruined by the show’s last couple of seasons. Norma and Jack are pretty much the people they will always be, although Jack Arnold is a little stiff in this first episode—still, though, he possessed his pithy psychological observations of life ("Traffic’s traffic."). I am very happy with the continuity between this pilot episode and the shows to come—the house did not change significantly, and there is no "disappearing Chuck" to be found here. The show held firmly on to its roots.
The episode starts with Kevin, Paul, Wayne, and some other boys playing football in the street. Wayne teases Kevin about Winnie, then commences to beat him up. Bryan Cooper, Winnie’s brother, puts a quick halt to this. Bryan’s appearance is a brief one; he ends up being killed in Vietnam that fall of 1968. Moving on, the focus of this episode is Kevin’s first day of junior high school. Watching him and Paul worry so much about what they will wear does bring back that old feeling of nervousness I felt upon my own entrance to junior high school. I was not as worried about girls as they were, however (I guess you could say I did not discover girls until my first week of junior high school, and I’ve been waiting for girls to discover me ever since then). They prepare for their new world by reading through a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves because they had decided that "the best way to prepare for junior high school girls was to look at them naked." The first day of school, of course, is pure hell for Kevin; he gets stuck in between two lovebirds in homeroom, and then the fact that he is Wayne Arnold’s brother starts him off in bad standing with his teacher. He cannot even enjoy his acquisition of the "first major accessory of adulthood," his locker, because an older kid makes him give him the combination so as to store his knife and drugs there. We meet Coach Cutlip at this point; Kevin’s first class is gym—no, make that "physical education." You’ve just got to love Kevin’s explanation of what a jock strap is. The real-life details of The Wonder Years really helped it find a place in viewers’ hearts—here we hear the travails of having to get up and shower and change clothes, only to have to put on gym clothes, shower, and change clothes again first thing in the morning.
At lunch, Winnie sits with Kevin and Paul, and Kevin is wondering if his little group might just turn into the "cool" kids group. Wayne, of course, disrupts these thoughts by once again teasing Kevin about Winnie. Kevin jumps up and storms out of the lunchroom, carrying an apple. He runs right into the principal, Mr. Diperna, who tells him that no food can leave the lunchroom; in a move fuelled by the morning’s frustrations, Kevin throws the apple across the room, winning a trip to the principal’s office. Jack and Norma come pick him up from school, and he is headed for a good whipping at home. When they get home, though, all this is forgotten when they find out that Bryan Cooper was killed in Vietnam. Kevin ends up taking a walk that evening, finding his way to Harper’s Woods (at least partly because he thinks Winnie might be there). He does find Winnie there, sitting on a big rock underneath the big climbing tree, with her knees curled up to her chest. I love the image of Winnie there in the dusk of afternoon; she looks so vulnerable and alone. Kevin sits down beside her and tells her he is sorry about her brother and about some of the things he said in the cafeteria about her; when he tells her that what he said was not true, she tells him that she knows this. This made me think the last time I watched this episode because the two main things he said that day were that she was not his girlfriend and that he did not even like her. In this scene in Harper’s Woods, is he really acknowledging the fact that he likes her, and is she acknowledging the fact that she knows that he likes her? I’m not sure, really. Anyway, Kevin takes off his Jets coat to put around Winnie’s shoulders, and then they kiss for the first time, while we listen to "When A Man Loves A Woman." It is a wonderful, touching scene.
Notes and questions for later consideration: