The Wonder Years: A Two-Point Episode.

‘What would you do if I sang out of tune…’ Those lyrics, accompanied by the visual of a poor quality film reel, cause goose bumps on my arms. The life of Kevin Arnold was not just a piece of light entertainment; it was a way to understand life. Although it was set twenty years before it was written it appealed to and bridged the gap between generations.

I’ve been watching some episodes again recently, and to be honest I remember none of them. I have vague recollections of small events or things that might have happened, and yet I still get goose bumps when I hear the first chords of the opening theme tune. This is because of what The Wonder Years actually means to me. It symbolises the family and all of the typical social and personal trials, problems, and experiences that happen to us all. I was watching events on a screen that were happening to me in reality at the same time. The Wonder Years is a family show, constructed for family viewing and so the family viewed it - all of us. Like a weekly ritual.

The genius of the script lies in its ability to appeal to such an eclectic audience. By setting the episodes twenty years in the past it ensured the interest of the ‘grown ups’ who had actually experienced those things first hand, and could empathise or criticise with every authority. The experiences of Kevin Arnold - friendship, love, school, cliques, unwanted crushes, family problems, family holidays, family in general – were understood by the younger members of the audience, because they were experiencing those same trials and discoveries at the same time. This was life. It was almost like a manual for life, with many little morals, and learning achievements added in. It dealt with themes that people can relate to, that people could understand and this is why it is not dissimilar from The OC.

The decade that lies between the final episodes of The Wonder Years and the first of the OC saw many cultural changes. The west grew richer, and objects became cheaper and in greater abundance. The typical social classes continued to change and reality TV took prominent popularity over fictional TV programmes.

I was never the intended target audience for The OC, I was at University when the characters were still in high school. We had a 4 or 5 year age difference, and we came from completely different worlds. It was with that foundation that I watched The OC knowing that it was all purely fiction. The audience it was targeted at were smitten. They were the 14-16 year olds, who coveted the celebrity lifestyle strewn across magazines and reality television. The OC’s characters were their age and living the celebrity lifestyle without the famousness. The themes of The OC were the equivalent of the trials and experiences of the target audience: high school, friendship, love-triangles, finding an identity, teenage-life in general.

There was however, an element of The OC that runs parallel to The Wonder Years and that is the theme of the family, it was the foundation of the programme. The main characters included the parents, their story-lines were just as important and enthralling and realistic as the teenage characters. The reason that The OC wasn’t viewed by the whole family and The Wonder Years was is the shear fact that the volume of objects, in reality, had increased, and every family had at least two television sets, which meant it was no longer essential for everyone to watch the same programmes. The potential that the OC had to bring family entertainment back was defeated by the abundance of objects and in effect the ‘rich’ lifestyle that the script for the OC was, in fact, telling the story of.

The cancellation of The OC happened because it failed to continue to draw the parallels between reality and fiction. The OC characters were experiencing things that most of its audience were not and so the viewings dropped and I was left alone loving it for what it was: a story, filled with romance, wit and family unity.

The family is fundamental, and whether we did watch The Wonder Years as a family or not, does not matter in the grand scheme of things, just as long as we had the same interactions, experiences, trials, arguments, and togetherness that the families from The Wonder Years and The OC and every TV programme that has ever addressed the family, had.

The second point of this double bill essay leads on from there. There was one episode, in particular, I watched of the Wonder Years, where Kevin’s Dad was torn about selling the family car. He had felt an emotional attachment to it. It held memories of family trips, of life, of the experiences that we had watched the characters go through in previous episodes. The value of an object is two fold, it has a financial value and it has an emotional value, and that emotional value will never and can never be really expressed or understood by anyone except the owner or those who interact with the object. Our relationship with objects do affect who we are because the objects provoke different reactions, memories, and opinions.

When I started to think more about it, I related his story to my own car. My car is called Missy and her naming has good reason, I bought her second hand and she is a very good secret keeper because I know nothing of her past life. But since being in my possession we have travelled forty thousand miles and clocked a lot of time together. I’ve slept in her, I’ve eaten in her, I’ve carried loads of different friends and family in her, I’ve become synonymous with her. The memories will always
be mine, but the car is the vessel, and object that I use to remember. It might appear silly to think the memories will be sold with her, of course not. The memories will always be mine, but the object has become attached to those memories, and to let go of that object is letting go of a small, but significant part of my life.

The importance of objects in our life has brought us to the point that everything has become objectified. Nostalgia, memories, preferences and our personal thoughts and values have all become objects that can be compared in value to another object. Even my experiences of being with my family and friends have become objectified through Television shows. Just as I value the time I spent watching The Wonder Years with my family, I value the time I spent discussing and watching The OC with my friends.

The object that is my car; the object that is the OC; the object that is the Wonder Years, they all hold emotional value, because I have had different experiences and interactions with them all that have become intrinsic to my personality, life,
and opinions - their value can never be measured.