Movies In History: The Wonder Years

I've made a bunch of references to this series, which ran from 1988 to 1993 recently, and so I'm really overdue to review it as a small screen depiction of an historical era in history.  

This series looked back on a period twenty years after the time in which it ran, the late 1960s to the early 1970s, through the eyes of the protagonist, a boy who is 12 years old when the series started, and 17 when it ended. It's exactly 20 years between the airing and the show, as the show started in 1968 and concluded in 1973.

Frankly, it's a rare example of television excellence. The era was accurately depicted, from a child's prospective, which is on the day-to-day nature of daily living, and the concerns of youth, rather than on the big events of the era. The big events do work their way into the series, but it's not about them.  The feel of growing up in the era is exactly correct, although my frame of reference is really from a few years later, more or less, later.  Not that much had changed.

That feel, we'll note, is the subject of two prior blog posts, long ones, here, Growing Up in the 1960s and Growing Up in the 1970s.  They're linked in below, and you'll see reference to this show there.  You'll also get a better feel for the era in those long posts than here, but this series got that feel right.

More than anything else, the focus of kids growing up, in a period in which there had been subtle changes, and there were subtle changes going on, is precisely correct.  This series probably is the most realistic depiction of Middle America in the 1970s that there is.  The gap in culture between younger members of the Baby Boom Generation, Generation Jones, and the older members, the real Boomers, and the gap between the Boomers and their parents is very well and accurately portrayed.  The last big example of the automobile culture and what that meant is also accurately portrayed.  It's not Ozzie and Harriet, and it's not Full Metal Jacket.

A person wanting to understand this era of American culture, and on into the 1970s, really has to watch it.

Related Threads:

Growing up in the 1970s

Growing up in the 1960s