ABC’s The Wonder Years remake fails to capture the magic of the 1980s original
At times, it feels like series creator Saladin K. Patterson and ABC have remade The Cosby Show instead of The Wonder Years.
TV Reviews The Wonder Years
The Wonder Years was like few other sitcoms when it premiered in 1988. It had a cinematic feel with clever humor that recalled some of the better Woody Allen movies of the period (specifically 1987’s Radio Days), but there was a depth and poignancy beyond simple nostalgia. This extended to the now classic theme song, Joe Cocker’s 1969 cover of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Like The Wonder Years itself, the song is bittersweet and almost heartbreaking. It immediately threw down the gauntlet, separating the series from other 1980 family sitcoms with saccharine theme songs and stories.
ABC’s remake of The Wonder Years, which premieres tonight, has little in common with the original other than its name. (Fred Savage, who played Kevin Arnold in the original series, is an executive producer.) For one, there’s no mistaking this series for a movie. Its single-camera format with quick cutaway gags is more reminiscent of recent sitcoms such as How I Met Your Mother and Everybody Hates Chris, which were both narrated by an older version of the lead character.
The new series follows the lives of the Black middle-class Williams family in 1968 Montgomery, Alabama. Elisha “EJ” Williams plays Dean, our 12-year-old protagonist. Dulé Hill (The West Wing, Psych) is his father Bill, a music professor and funk musician. Saycon Sengbloh is his mother Lillian (Respect) and Laura Kariuki (Black Lightning) is older sister, Kim. Dean’s unseen older brother is serving in Vietnam, and if this ends predictably, then it might’ve been a good idea if we’d met him in the pilot. In the original Wonder Years, Winnie Cooper’s (Danica McKellar) cool older brother, Brian (Bentley Mitchum), steals our hearts within the first few minutes of the pilot when he defends Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) from his bullying brother, Wayne (Jason Hervey). It’s a brutal gut punch when Brian later dies in Vietnam.
Milan Ray is Keisa Clemmons, who is apparently the Winnie Cooper character, though the show might’ve benefited if she were its version of Kevin Arnold. Keisa is far more engaging and dynamic than Dean. The pilot sets her up as the center of a triangle with Dean and his best friend, Cory (Amari O’Neil), and I now find that concept tiresome.
Series creator Saladin K. Patterson has said it was important to focus on a Black, middle class perspective, which is admirable, but it feels at times like he’s just remade The Cosby Show (there’s probably a market for The Huxtables without the repulsive Bill Cosby). What set the original The Wonder Years apart was its unflinching look at middle-class life. The Arnolds didn’t live in a Capra-esque small town but the suburbs, which is described as having “all the disadvantages of the city, and none of the advantages of the country. And vice versa.” Kevin’s father, Jack (Dan Lauria), didn’t have the job of his dreams but instead came home each night angry and just a little more broken inside. Both Bill and Lillian are college graduates, fully content in their professions, and the only question for the kids’ future is whether they’ll attend a historically all black college, like their parents, or a newly integrated one.
The show’s pilot also promotes the Cosby-esque myth that a comfortable middle class existence provides a refuge from racism. Middle class white people are presumably kinder and more tolerant than their lower income brethren, which is both classist and fundamentally untrue, as viral cell phone videos from the past few years would demonstrate.
Dean attends a middle school named after Confederate president, white supremacist, and all-around jerk Jefferson Davis, but he’s only seen to experience at most minor micro-aggressions from white students and teachers. One of his best friends is white (Julian Lerner), and his parents have no issue apparently with him socializing with Dean outside of class. This would’ve been aspirational for me growing up in 1980s South Carolina, where white classmates slinging the n-word wasn’t unusual and I wasn’t exactly a welcome guest in their homes.
White and Black students play baseball together, and Lillian’s only concern is that Bill and Dean’s coach (Allen Maldonado) don’t make a scene in front of the white folks. Far from being offended by their raised voices, a nice, visibly moved white couple informs the Williams that Dr. Martin Luther King’s been shot. You’d almost assume that everyone mourned his loss, but Martha Asbury Wilson, who was a freshman at Memphis State in 1968, told the New York Times that other white students laughed about his death and she recalled a “general feeling of celebration around me.”
I’m not demanding self-conscious “wokeness” from The Wonder Years, but I’d appreciate it if the series accurately reflected its time and place. What resonated with me about the original Wonder Years was its harsh reality balanced with genuine emotion. I didn’t know much about Vietnam in 1988, but I nonetheless felt Kevin’s shock and pain when Winnie’s brother dies senselessly in the war. King’s death feels like a mere topical reference than a life-changing event for Dean.
Patterson chose to stick with the original series timeline because he argues that the world hasn’t changed as drastically from 2001 to 2021 as it did between 1968 to 1988. As someone who still had a landline in 2001, I’m not sure I agree. Patterson also deliberately rejects all the compelling story possibilities for a show that, if it had been set in 2021, began the same year as 9/11, when the country changed irrevocably. The world seemed less safe, especially for a child. Existing prejudices were exacerbated and perhaps excused under the guise of patriotism. Instead, the new Wonder Years returns to the dried-out well that’s the 1960s.
There’s also the issue that the adult Kevin Arnold (Daniel Stern) was 32 when he started narrating The Wonder Years. Childhood nostalgia has a different flavor when someone still has a full life ahead of them. The adult Dean (Don Cheadle) in 2021 is 65 and should have a far more somber outlook. The pilot’s climax centers on King’s assassination, which along with Bobby Kennedy’s the same year, is arguably the end of a more optimistic period for human rights. Looking back on April 4, 1968 when you’ve lived through January 6, 2021 should make you wanna holler like Marvin Gaye. Maddeningly, adult Dean is more inclined to comment on how overly PC the world has become since 1968, which is a more common lament from white Boomers.
The original Wonder Years was a clear reflection of the 1960s that could’ve never aired during the 1960s. The new Wonder Years might’ve aired comfortably in 1968, alongside Julia. That’s not progress, either politically or creatively.
Stray observations
- The adult Dean references a flu epidemic in 1968, as part of a “more things change…” setup. The 1968 flu pandemic killed at least a million people worldwide and 100,000 people in America. It spread without any economic restrictions and people still saw movies in theaters. Four months into the pandemic, there was a vaccine, which most people took without protest.
- Kim alludes to Black Panthers founder Huey Newton, but so far, she’s not presented as the rebellious source of tension that her counterpart Karen Arnold (Olivia D’Abo) was in the original series. Hippie Karen was the perfect foil to her more conservative father, and if Patterson wants to lean into the 1968 middle-class Black family conceit, the differing views within the community about the best path to racial equality has great story potential.
- I keep banging this drum, but The Middle depicted a genuinely middle-class family that worried about paying bills and ate their takeout meals at a table with mismatched chairs. I think it’s possible to present a similarly grounded Black middle class family.
- Alabama was a pivotal setting during the Civil Rights Movement. There was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 to 1956, Bloody Sunday in Selma, and the murder of four Black girls at a Birmingham church … and that’s just a start. It’s unclear as yet how these events have informed the characters in the new series, and that’s unfortunate.
136 Comments
I haven’t seen any of the OG Wonder Years, but was there as much narration as there was in this? It felt like every other sentence was Don Chedle’s voice.
You don’t hire Don Cheadle and not use Don Cheadle.
I never kept track, but in the OG show it felt like narration was pretty constant. It tended to be appropriately funny and/or poignant when need be, though. Stern was really good.
I think The Simpsons nailed the narration thing pretty well.
More like Blunder Years.Eh? EH?
Paul Pfeiffer was like the Steve Urkel of the show.
Steve Pfurkel?
I’ll allow it–quick, punctual, timely, rolls off the tongue; good job, kid.
Yeah, this didn’t quite work for me. It felt too divorced from reality, too optimistic and saccharine and fake. I would’ve actually liked something set in the 90s/early 2000s, because that was a different time from now—the technology truly made it a different time. And the racial stuff…it just didn’t seem right. Maybe this’ll get better, but the premiere feels weird.
In their defense, the Wonder Years as a series mostly failed to capture the magic of the Wonder Years pilot.
The last few seasons of the original series were lame as hell.
Did a rewatch recently. Shocking how little Winnie Copper is actually a part of the show and how much of an asshole Kevin Arnold is.
I’m glad Becky Slater beat Kevin up fairly early on in the series.
Team Becky, all day, every day!
Recently found out Becky Slater was played by Danica McKellar’s sister Crystal. I never knew!!!
My number one memory of that show was what an asshole Kevin was. I was exactly the age of his character at the time, and pretty much despised him. Still watched the show though.
In fairness, Kevin was an adolescent and they are frequently assholes.
His older brother, Wayne, was also an asshole. His older sister Karen was also an asshole with whom I would’ve had freaky hippie sex.
Guys, I think Jack & Norma raised a brood full of assholes. They all grew up to serve in the Spaceballs navy.
And really overused In a Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly and Happy Together by The Turtles. That was something that stood out to me when I watched the whole series on Nick and Night when I was 14. I was sitting there alone in my parents’ basement eating Cheez-Its thinking, “These fucks should have used Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock!”
Limited budget for music licensing?
After they paid The Beatles AND Joe Cocker there wasn’t much left.
I’m not sure that’s the original soundtrack; music rights issues have plagued reissues of this show in all media. It was a big deal when they recently restored the correct Cocker version of the theme.
Best as I can tell from looking at the list of music licensed for the original run, the early syndication deals didn’t seem to have the same licensing issues that prevented the DVD release for so long and lead to sound alike cues being used on streaming services. When it aired on Nick at Nite in the late 90s it definitely had the full theme song and a lot of pretty expensive stuff like Cream.
Yeah, after Kevin Arnold found the dead body by the railroad tracks and pulled a gun on Kiefer Sutherland everything in the rest of the show seemed kind of anticlimactic.
I never watched The Wonder Years, but what the hell
It’s a joke referring to the movie Stand By Me. Fred Savage isn’t in the movie so I don’t think the joke landed.
It’s a joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_by_Me_(film)
It was actually Wesley Crusher who pulled the gun on Kiefer Sutherland, but River Phoenix was there and also Mouth from Goonies and I think it was a Sliders episode where Quinn Mallory was teleported into his fat tween body? I may have been on some kind of drugs.
There y’ go, buddy! That’s the moxie!
There is a street in Australia’s Blue Mountains called Winnicoopa Road. And I never wondered about this, assuming it was an Aboriginal name of some kind, but I can’t seem to find a definition and the estate it’s part of is from the 80s and now I’m suspicious…
Pardon the scalding nature of this hot take, but I think we might possibly have entered into a point of diminishing returns in regards to mining the nostalgia people have for many of the previous decades.
Ah, this is nothing another reboot couldn’t fix.
Especially this specific time period. It would be more genuine for the creators of this reboot to mine the nostalgic terrain of their own upbringing to incorporate into the show. I mean, that way it would feel more authentic and knowledgeable rather than pandering to the Boomer crowd yet again (so to speak).
Despite not remembering the 60s at all, I found the original show very relatable, nostalgic and affecting. It doesn’t need to take place EXACTLY when your childhood was to work. It just needs to be done well.
This idea that you can’t do a period piece unless it’s exactly 20 or 30 years from the current time is both asinine and chilling. I don’t want the 90s as a setting to someday vanish from TV because it’s “too old.”
Even Don Cheadle was in real life only 3 years old. Daniel Stern was essentially born in the same year as Kevin Arnold. Patterson was born in the early 70s – but I’m guessing he didn’t want to make [Not So] Stranger Things II which would reflect his own wonder years.
A 2020’s reboot of a 1980’s show about the 1960’sNostalgia-ception
BWAAAAAAAAAAH
I thought “Nostalgia-cepticon” was how we felt in between when we heard there was going to be a Transformers movie and when we saw it?
I mean the original was Boomer nostalgia porn , I would have assumed that a remake would be set in the 80s or 90s and been Generation X nostalgia porn. Although maybe its something to do with the fact that the over 60s are the only ones left watching regular network TV rather than streaming?
Boomer nostalgia porn- you mean all the women have giant out-of-control bushes?
I pine for the days when nostalgia was more powerful.
Naw – we’re just in an era where the big networks in movies and TV don’t want to take any risks. The late 80s and early 90s had their own charm as kind of a liminal phase between The Great Malaise and the ongoing Cold War to the more optimistic Clinton Years.
Especially Boomer nostalgia. I guess there’s The Goldbergs for GenX nostalgia but that is very light. I grew up with Boomers always waxing nostalgic about how great the 50’s were and how crazy the 60’s were and that they changed the world and all that. It seemed awesome as a kid but it now seems so hollow as I learn what really happened beyond their romanticized notions of their childhood. However, you could portray that the Boomers were just as idealistic at the time as the Millennials they mock today. Yes, Vietnam and the anti-war protests, racial riots as a backdrop in a Coming of Age story is quite powerful, but GenX and Millennials have their own notable events they grew up with. Just a few: The Challenger Explosion, Rodney King and they subsequent riots, 9/11. A coming of age story could fit into more recent times just as easily and more people would have been alive to remember them.
Just a few: The Challenger Explosion, Rodney King and they subsequent riots, 9/11.Unlike Vietnam, none of these hung over their heads as a personal potential death sentence for 10 years (or was it 11?). You were either one of the (relatively) small number of people directly involved, or you knew someone involved, or most likely of all, you saw it on the news.2.2 million Americans were conscripted for Vietnam.So the idea of an average family having an older brother involved in any of the Gen X (and onward) events, would require positioning the family in a particular place and context. With Vietnam, they can just be an “average family”.I’d like to see more “and brother Bobby signed up for a second tour in Afghanistan” type situations because then the story would have to grapple with the way Bobby is a repeat volunteer serving his country… in a pointless war.
No need to insult the Growing Pains theme song. Both Growing Pains and Wonder Years were co-created by Neal Marlens.
Alan Thicke wrote the theme for Different Strokes.
and Facts of Life
The idea that the adult version of the main character is lamenting things being too PC just sounds like they’re taking a show that is explicitly about a race-switched character and softening any aspect of racial experiences to comfort potential white viewers. I’m excited for anything with Cheadle in it but this sounds disappointing. On the upside, they did a fine job casting a kid who looks like a young Cheadle.
Except we’ll presumably never see Cheadle on screen.
“Everyone knows The Wonder Years are WHITE!”— A drunk Megyn Kelly, still struggling to understand why she was shitcanned
Kim alludes to Black Panthers founder Huey Newton, but so far, she’s not presented as the rebellious source of tension that her counterpart Karen Arnold (Olivia D’Abo) was in the original series.Was that Kim in the photo that fell out of her book? If that was her, I think ol’ Shotgun Kim trumps Hippie Karen in the rebellion challenge.
Every African-American tv show needs to be set in the south during the 60s for now on, to be able to pull the race card on everything, apparently.
Really really disappointed to hear this about this show. I barely remember comedy in the Wonder Years, to me it was all drama. Although that was probably because I was Kevin’s age and everything he was experience felt so real and filled with danger. First kiss! Bullies at school! Sex ed! Drama!!!!I was thinking this would be a mostly dramatic take, focused on the struggles of a middle-class black family, both the well-publicized struggles of the civil rights and the hidden ones invisible to and/or ignored by white folks like me.Plus with its own set of nostalgia for the era, with some overlap with white-folks stuff that’s gotten a lot of play but also surfacing things undiscovered by many like me, like Questlove’s Summer of Soul just did. A little comedy never hurts, but I was thinking this show would be something very different from what it is. Bummer.
Can’t tell from the post whether or not you watched it, but if you haven’t, give it a shot. I laughed at parts.The original was funny, too, but not strictly a comedy for sure. I thought this pilot had a similar mix of funny and serious.
It’s probably hard to do a sincere show that takes ‘60s progressivism seriously after Mad Men underscored how much of a failure the optimism ultimately was. Audiences don’t buy into that particular flavor of Boomer nostalgia anymore.
I always thought The Wonder Years was like Mad Men with less smoking.
“Wah wah this show isn’t anti-white enough.”
-The AV Club.
Danica McKellar, like Gillian Anderson. Was a major crush for everyone, male, female, short, tall, gay straight… she was a game changer
Did you know they initially didn’t want to cast Gillian Anderson because she “wasn’t pretty enough”? That floored me when I read it at the time. She was an 11!
I seem to remember reading that Fox initially wanted a Pamela Anderson type actress to play Scully…..
Proving once again the old adage “Fuxxake! Someone get a fucking clue. And fire that guy!,
I would rather watch the syfy original movie where Danica McKellar fought an outbreak of Tasmanian Devils than this
Well obviously. Get me that movie Stat!
Becky Slater or GTFO.
The only good thing about the show was Winnie (kid crush right here). Remaking it without the original characters is just lame tbh. It’s just a different show now.
k
Let me tell ya, in 1988, the fallout from the Vietnam War still really HURT. Everyone knew someone who had been over there and got mentally wrecked, including the homeless guy on the corner asking for change. And while kids watching in 1988 might not have remembered the 60s “flower power” stuff, the adults sure as hell did.The reboot, however, is being broadcast to an audience, 90% of whom have no personal memories of the era in which it is taking place. Huge mistake.
Not sure I agree. Something isn’t automatically irrelevant or less impactful just because you weren’t alive at the time the story took place. Knowing the history outside of having lived it is enough to have an impact. The art itself might even educate us about the history.One’s point of view might be different if they were alive at the time a story took place, but other’s point of view might still be similar even if they were born in the next generation or two.I think I still can relate to and understand the gravity of a masterpiece like Band of Brothers without having been alive until the 1970’s.
Would it have been such a bad thing to set this in late 70’s?
Granted I’m speaking from the perspective of someone from the other side of The Pond, but why repeat premise of the original?
Weirdly I can’t think of too many shows that take place in the 70s other than That 70s Show, idk why. All the ones I’m thinking of got canceled. It seems like everything kind of skipped nostalgia-wise from the 60s to the 80s and we just keep going back to those two decades.
“Weirdly I can’t think of too many shows that take place in the 70s other than That 70s Show, idk why” It’s the economy, stupid! Oh, wait, that belongs into a 90’s nostalgia show, never mind.
Seriously, though, the 60’s and 80’s (and 50’s) were period of economic growth (in the US), which leads to more prosperity, which leads to nostalgia to the good old days, while the 70’s were a bad time all around unless you were an Arab prince taking in that sweet oil money.
It’s not like there aren’t major pop culture moments from the 70’s that would appeal to viewers. Also you’ve got funk, disco and the burgeoning rap scene (granted mainly in New York), so the sound of the show would be something instantly recognizable.I dunno maybe that decade is too downbeat because of Watergate and the end of Vietnam war? It’s just a uninspiring to have this mimicking the original series by being set in the same decade.Anyhoo I hope this makes it’s way over to UK. We got to see the original series Sunday nights on Channel 4, back in the days when they’d show US content in their prime time schedules.
Austin Powers is the only thing I can think of at the moment. Maybe one of those prequel X-Men movies.
If you look at the demographics of who watches broadcast TV these days, I would say the presumed primary audience is people who enjoyed the original show when they were younger.
Dead on. My Dad served in Vietnam and while I wasn’t there for flower power, I sure as shit knew about it from my hippie Mom. Plus there was just left overs everywhere and it was a very ‘public persona’ sort of thing about hippies.
There was more than one problematic child of a Vietnam vet with PTSD in my decaying urban neighborhood/factory enclave in the 1970s/early 1980s.
Hey, I resemble that remark! Add in my nuclear family blowing up in 1980 into 1981 to boot, although I’m a suburbia kid from Lawn Eyeland. Which had a lot of decay now that I think about it.
This is so interesting to me. I went to a school that was pretty affluent, filled with kids whose dads had gotten out of serving in Vietnam. My dad is the only dad I know who served (stateside). In my world, the 80s was so filled with parents trying desperately to be yuppies and deny that they were even alive in the 60s, that the years from 1965-1974 were never discussed or even acknowledged. Ever.
If it helps I grew up on Lawn Eyeland, NY? He was also an outlier in that that his Father had gone to college and became an accountant and my Dad said fuck college, became an auto mechanic and got drafted. My Mom, who he married before he went over and was a hippie, offered to get him to Canada but he declined and said he wanted to serve. He was there a week and the first letter my Mom got said “You were right, I should have run”So he was definitely not a yuppie: but I get your point. My Mom until she passed was absolutely a hippie and ‘free spirit’ and man did I hate the 60’s in the 80’s.
I didn’t live through WWI in England… doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot out of Downton Abbey
I keep banging this drum, but The Middle depicted a genuinely middle-class family that worried about paying bills and ate their takeout meals at a table with mismatched chairs.Malcom in the middle did the same thing while actually being funny , plus like the middle it had a middle class family trying to juggle bills and generally having no money, weird blonde youngest kid ,middle in the title ..hey it really ripped them off!
There were some similarities between the two shows, and they seemed to kind of give a nod to that when Jane Kaczmarek showed up to play Frankie’s dental assistant teacher.I thought The Middle was funny and more true to life than Malcolm in the Middle, which I also liked.
aha thats pretty cool .I cant find it online but Kaczmarek did a great bit in the show HBO show :Animals about The Middle (ending in “..wait a second , they ripped us off!”)so it was kind of a joke between the shows.
I never saw The Middle, but Malcolm frequently leaned heavily into absurdity in a way that made it fairly unique. Even though it wasn’t overtly stated, a lot of times it seemed to present events as they were perceived in some heightened way by the characters (except Dewey, that is – his perspective always differed from reality), not how they actually happened.
I always assumed The Middle was some kind of Malcolm in the Middle spinoff or reboot… is it actually a wholly independent production?
Yes, no connection as far as I know.
Agreed. Both good shows, but Malcolm in the Middle’s humor was much more cynical, absurdist, and often downright surreal (typically any plotline involving Hal or Dewey). The Middle’s humor is gentler, but can still be pretty biting. And yeah, it feels more authentic to me, at least. In Malcolm in the Middle at least three of the five boys turn out to be savants in some way, Malcolm goes off to Harvard in the last episode, etc. Meanwhile, even The Middle’s “smart” kid is hardly a super genius and is defined much more by his quirks and behavioral issues, the popular football star kid flames out in college, both the older kids go to a regional state university, etc. My only real complaint is that, as a the manager of quarry, Mike would likely be doing very comfortably, particularly for small-town Indiana.
The families in Malcolm In The Middle and The Middle weren’t middle class, they were working class families. Just because they live in a house don’t make them middle class.
That’s because there’s no such thing as a “middle class.” It’s just working class people with better pay.
It real problem in this country that we call working class people middle class, and Mitt Romney also think of self as middle class.
So what I’m hearing from this review is:1. Not enough racism.2. They failed to encapsulate the entirety of the original’s six year run into a single pilot episode.I feel like this review is the result of someone projecting their own expectations on a show (a pilot, no less) and not being able to break away from that when it turned out to be something different.A pilot has a specific purpose, to sell a show. It’s going to be broad. It’s going to be un-controversial. I’d challenge anyone to go back and watch the pilot of any historically popular show (Brady Bunch, Cheers, the original Wonder Years, Friends, Seinfeld, etc.) and notice how crappy and unassuming they all were. It’s unfair to be so harsh on a show based on the pilot. Give it a season to find its footing and if you still hate it, then fine. I’ll accept that, but I think this review is out of line.I like the pilot. It made me laugh. All the acting is excellent. It’s kinda hard to fully flesh out four main characters and the tone of an entire future series in 22 minutes of screen time.
Almost the entire (short) first year of Seinfeld is underwhelming. It barely got renewed.
You’d almost assume that everyone mourned [MLK’s] lossNot really.King was consistently polling at 75% unfavorable ratings nationally for the last couple years of his life once he moved his activities north; his biggest struggles were in Chicago and thereabouts.If you want to watch a fascinating documentary about a part of his life that tends to get glossed over by civil rights biopics, King in the Wilderness really nails his struggles – and why they took place – in both a depressing but realistic way.It’s also hard to argue that 2001 to 2021 had more massive changes than 1968 to 1988. You may have had a landline – as did I – but I had my cable modem too even if it hummed along barely above dialup speed.
Yes, that was the point the review was making about MLK.
This was my favorite part of the review – King being killed would be like if (well, I don’t want to say anyone in particular’s name, but let’s just say a Squad Member) were killed, plenty of people would be snarkily celebrating and plenty of people would be in mourning. In 20 years we’d have forgotten the snark had happened.
…. in the part that you quoted, that was the point. The article is saying that the show assumes everyone mourned King when in fact they didn’t. You just made the exact same point lol
Folks that grew up during that time didn’t feel all the doom and gloom you would have like them to feel.
Kids were often insulated from a lot (not all) of it. The show doesn’t need to have complete wokeness to be believed.
I joked with the wife well before this show came on that if it’s black, it won’t be realistic without some racial issues in it. Color me surprised that it has it but it isn’t central to the story nor should it be.
It MUST be in there though.
It’s coming, otherwise there’s exactly zero point to the race switch. I loved the original and will check this out, and go into it with expectations that the pilot will be setting the stage, not telling the whole story in one episode.
Exactly. After reading the article here, I was wondering just how much the author had to have in a pilot in order for it to be satisfactory.
Yeah, I was hoping that this would not have been set in the same period as the original, as doing it correctly would have meant that Kevin’s tribulations in the original might seem trite and inconsequential in comparison. Or maybe that would have been a really good thing.
The Wonder Years: White People Problems
The “let’s remake a popular, classic TV show….but with black people because we’re out of ideas!” trend is insulting, pandering and patronizing. Just stop.
I hate to say I called it, but I called it.
The entire premise of this show is white denial and “simpler times” mythologizing.
I could still be wrong, maybe this is a “pull them in and when their guards are down, hit them with truth bombs” thing. We’ll see.
Hard disagree – whatever “simpler times” perspective the original had was because the story was told from Kevin’s perspective. The times may have seemed simpler to him, but his parents (and the show’s other adults) went through real crises that Kevin didn’t fully understand at his age.
Remember when Dad got all pissed off because Mom was out making crappy-ass pottery instead of getting Pepsi?
Your disagreement is based on a definition of “simpler times” different from what I’m addressing. The “simpler times” of which I speak is the “dog whistle” of the time period for which the original show was set, rather than some sense that there weren’t issues the adults dealt with.
I’m going to just leave this here“clever humor”
FYI Don Cheadle is 56, not 65.
He was talking about the age of Don Cheadle’s character, not Don Cheadle. If he’s 12 in 1968, then he’d be 65 in 2021.
Yeah, but the character is 12 in 1968, so the narrator is 65 in 2021
Another incident of X version of other things. Like Ocean’s 8 is just a girl’s version of the other Ocean movies. Ghostbusters 2016 is just a girl’s version of the original. This is just a black version of the original Wonder Years. Nothing wrong with a black-centric show about that era, I’m all for it (though I think we’ve seen similar and better shows already; Everybody Hates Chris comes to mind), but this is just unoriginal as were the other examples. Can’t believe there aren’t writers/directors out there that don’t have original ideas for any given demographic without resorting to rehashing or blackwashing another property.
Last bullet point in this review is spot-on. Of all places to set a show like this, presenting Montgomery, Alabama as a locale where the white people were pretty cool about integration and spoke in hushed tones about MLK’s death displays a willful lack of historical knowledge. Check out the book Bending Toward Justice (Doug Jones’ memoir on prosecuting the men responsible for the Birmingham bombing) if you want your eyes opened wide to how rampant the KKK was running in that part of the country in the late 1960s.
Yeah I remember seeing commercials for this and thinking it took place up North or in like California, just based on the lead’s interactions with white people. The stuff my parents tell me about being in Georgia even in the 80s and 90s are wild.
Yeah, I mean, I remember a “very special episode” of Family Ties that was all about the whole neighborhood the Keatons lived in getting together to discuss the *gasp* black family who just moved in and what to do about it. It was all, “I’m not racist, but them being here could crash our property values!”
That was in, like, ‘86. Set in Ohio.
What does “WHITS ONLY” mean?
Why the hell are you gray again? Fuckin’ Kinja.
Yeah, I find it deeply annoying that it appears that this is a show about Black people made to make old White people feel good about themselves, and that all that racism stuff is really overblown and wasn’t/isn’t as bad as all those libruls say it was/is.
I’m not sure 2021 would accept a nuanced, grittier and perhaps more realistic depiction of black life in the south in the late 1960s.
or at any other time
I did think the pilot was just…Ok. I’m intrigued to see what it does later in the season, but i think the grade was about right. Remember though, some shows start off with bad/average pilots and get better (30 Rock) and some start off with amazing pilots that get worse. (Glee, Studio 60)
they’re going to have Cory and Dean run a train on Keisa aren’t they smh
Presenting the new Wonder Years more as a modern sitcom rather than affording it the more cinematic, naturalistic style of the original show seems like a massive miscalculation.
This is particularly disappointing because when this was first announced I thought it was actually a brilliant idea to do another Wonder Years series focused on a black family very specifically because I thought it would undercut some of the saccharine nostalgia that people have for that era. It feels like such a wasted potential to have this version somehow be even more sanitized than the original series.Granted, I really liked the original series growing up, and it did show some of the conflicts of that era, but by and large the Arnold family was fairly comfortable in their middle class lifestyle. It would have been nice to see a show that demonstrated that for certain people the late ‘60s were not such an idyllic time.
I find myself in the awkward position of having to defend this show- or at least, highlight some positive takeaways:It looks great and the music is lovely. I like the cast, and I thought the baseball scene between the dad and the coach was funny. Though I do agree this is very “Everybody Hates Chris” in style, and lacks a lot of the original show’s more authentic tone. (Of course there’s no title sequence, because opening credits are dead, so that’s a major loss already.) Also one of his friends gushes over his sister calling her “so choice” and that jumped out as anachronistic to me.The Wonder Years was my first “favorite show” when I was a kid. Even on a rewatch I still think its brilliant. (The Math teacher arc in Season 3, “Hero” from S5, the pilot, which is an all-timer) So the announcement of a reboot felt like an affront on my childhood- just like people are always saying, lol. But as I took a breath and decided to “Be cool”, I realized this could be a really neat idea. It may not be political or creative progress, but I haven’t seen a lot of 60s-set Black shows, so it’s still something unique on the market. I just wish it had a different name! Have its own identity, so as to not invite unfavorable comparisons.It’s weird the complaint about Cheadle’s age or wishing this was set in 2001, because at 65, he would have been about 12 in 1968, so it makes sense. As for how “world weary” he would/should be? Eh, everybody’s different. I think the show creators’ intent to thread the racial commentary between then and now is an interesting M.O. that has time to develop better as the series goes on. So far I agree the pilot missed some opportunities, but I wouldn’t expect a kid to be pre-occupied with these matters at all times, so some of what they are brushing over is fine. They’ve only got 22 minutes, and the sheer amount racial reflection that’s already here is almost exhausting as it is. The show can still be more than one thing.
I’m at a B-
Whaaat would ya dooo if I sang outta tune . . .
It don’t matter, opening credits are dead . . .
So far I agree the pilot missed some opportunities, but I wouldn’t expect a kid to be pre-occupied with these matters at all times, so some of what they are brushing over is fine. I think the problem is that in the time and place where the show is set, he wouldn’t need to be preoccupied with racial issues, they’d crash into him many, many times a day.
This is fair. In fact, the scenes I liked the least were at school, which seemed very “off” considering the setting
So, the show is essentially being nostalgic about a nostalgic show?
There’s a big difference between making a show set in the years of your childhood (like the creators of the original did) and setting it in the years of a previous generation (like the creators of this version did). The former is based on personal memories, the latter is based on how well you studied the era. It’s always hard to reboot an old show and not be negatively compared with the original, but I don’t see how this show could be as good with that premise.
You mean like if they made The Goldbergs but set it in Berlin in the 1930’s?
Back when The Cosby Show was airing, I remember reading that every other shot in the sitcom was a shot of Cosby reacting to whatever was happening, and once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it, and very quickly the show became unwatchable.
Eh, it was meh. I’ll probably still watch it tho because I am a sucker for 60s nostalgia shows. The one thing that I really did like was the homage to Kevin and Winnie on the swings in the OG pilot. It was a really nice touch since that was such a memorable episode that I remember it so clearly all these years later…
Does the kid’s friend grow up to be Brian “Marilyn Manson” Warner?
This article is some drivel especially this part,“Childhood nostalgia has a different flavor when someone still has a full life ahead of them. The adult Dean (Don Cheadle) in 2021 is 65 and should have a far more somber outlook.”You sound like you are reaching for a reason to be negative about this re-imagining. The first episode was poignant, relatable and had a great start to telling this family’s story. You may not relate to some of this but rest assure there are plenty that understood completely the situations and characters. You might want to stay in your lane.
His friend is white but it’s also pointed out that he’s Jewish, which is maybe to make a point about the alliances back then
So, are we only getting a review of the pilot episode? AV club is falling off, or perhaps someone else should be reviewing the show.