Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years

     The Wonder Years was aired at the right time for my young tastes.  It started airing around 1987, when I would have been six, and ran for six seasons, meaning that I would have been twelve when it ended.  This is a really good thing for someone who was younger than the main character.  The same way that most high school dramas mostly appeal to middle school students, this would have guided me through my formative years.

     But I never got into the show.  The little bits of exposure that I had to it were awkward.  I don't know if I saw any complete episodes.  I mostly remembered one thing about the show.

     Fred Savage staring kind of blankly as a voiceover talked.  Then a line would be stammered out.

     What bothered me about this was that Kevin - as a character - was just so incredibly awkward, he defied normalcy, which flew in the face of the premise.  As a 6th and 7th grader, I was able to hold conversations with members of the opposite sex.  Kevin was able to have two-sentence exchanges with them, with massive pauses between each line.

     That was the main reason I didn't like the show.  The other reason was Winnie Cooper.

     In the past, my impression of her was that she didn't do anything.  She existed as a long-term love interest for Kevin, but I couldn't recall any personality that she had.


     I've gone back, and I've started watching The Wonder Years on Netflix, from the beginning.  I just finished the first episode of the second season.
      I'll ignore my thoughts on the writing, on the series itself, structure, characters, jokes... this is just about Winnie.

     Winnie is a blank slate for the audience.  She simultaneously exudes braininess, cuteness, beauty, attainability, and in-attainability.  She remains passive throughout most of these episodes, except for the end of this one I just watched, which also marks the first time that she and Kevin had a non-awkward exchange.
      Winnie has a habit of not actually doing much of anything.  She often has a blank expression (pictured above).  The only time she doesn't is when she's interacting with people in the background.

     When I say that Winnie is a blank slate, I mean that she seems to exist as a reflection whatever traits the audience wants to see.  I don't know how I feel about this.  She doesn't have a distinct personality in the show.  She rarely expresses any emotion at all.  I'm wondering how much this changes later on.

Wonder Woman

    I’ve never read a single Wonder Woman comic.  That said, I had no expectations going in.  I knew she had super strength, a lasso, and some bullet-deflecting bracelets.
    This is TERRIBLE TV.
    There are technical issues, and I actually liked seeing those.  The fight sequence at the end doesn’t have all of the effects work done on the lasso, and most of the wirework is still visible.  I actually found that much more endearing, and I felt like that made me appreciate the effort much more.
    Where the episode fails is in making a hero.  Let’s start at the beginning.
    We open the episode on a kid getting an acceptance letter from a college.  He and his family are happy.  Then the kid’s eyes start bleeding.  They call an ambulance.
    Then we go to a city.  Wonder Woman is chasing some guy through the streets.  We hear police reports that suggest that the guy is running at superhuman speeds.  Wonder Woman catches him.  While he’s on the ground, she injects him with something.  Police show up, ask that she hand him over.  She sneers, and complains that if she hands him over, he’ll just lawyer up.  She reluctantly hands him over, pushing the guy across the ground to the police.

    So our introduction to the character indicates that she doesn’t believe in the justice system, she believes in administering justice on her own, and that she’s unfriendly.  (At least, that’s what the sneer communicated to me.)

    Over the course of the story, Wonder Woman goes to a hospital to question the guy that she caught at the beginning of the episode.  She TORTURES HIM.  She actually causes pain for a guy who is already incapacitated in the hospital.  Afterwards, a cop reiterates that she JUST TORTURED INFORMATION OUT OF THE GUY.  Wonder Woman doesn’t see anything wrong with this.
    At the end of the episode, there’s the big finish battle.  She defeats a bunch of musclebound goons.  The action is okay, but not anything too special.  Toward the end of the fight, she reaches a hallway.  She fights one goon as a security guard is firing shots at her.  She deflects bullets with her bracelets.  She defeats the goon, then throws a metal pipe at the security guard… IMPALING HIM AGAINST THE DOOR BEHIND HIM… THROUGH THE NECK!
    She actually throws the metal pipe through his neck!

    There are lesser problems.  There’s an effort made to put a feminist edge on the character, which makes sense.  She spends some time during a meeting complaining about how busty they made an action figure of her.  She acknowledges that she is well-endowed, but complains about it regardless.
    This would be okay… except that there are two issues.  First, her subordinate points out that she approved the design.  She denies this.  This is sloppy writing.  It’s a he-said she-said argument, but I’m inclined to believe that she would have approved the design before it went into production.  It’s her company.  The other problem is that they establish earlier in the episode that Wonder Woman exists to be merchandised.  She funds her crime fighting through her merchandising.  Come on.

    These are complaints I have about male heroes as well.  I don’t think a show that focused on Rorschach could work, since he’s too brutal, and I can’t agree with his actions.