I wasn't a fan of The Wonder Years as I was growing up. I was aware of the show, but it never seemed that interesting to me. There were two things that bothered me about it. First, Winnie seemed so undesirable that I wondered what the audience saw in her. Second, the extremely long pauses as the voiceover went and Kevin looked weird.
Thanks to Netflix, I've watched the entire series.
The series started off pretty well. The first season and a half is pretty good. Relationships fluctuate, some character is developed for the father, Jack, and a few conflicts are set up. There are a few misses, but the show is generally interesting enough. Then it settles into a groove, and the show gets really boring.
There are still bigger developments, like Winnie moving across town. Kevin moves from Junior High to High School. Kevin's sister graduates and moves away. Kevin gets his license. As big as these events are supposed to be, they wind up feeling small. Storylines are limited in scope, so a single episode is devoted to Kevin getting his license. Then he has it, and there's nothing else to say. As the series wore on, I was much more annoyed at some of the lack of world-building. There's an episode where Kevin plays soccer. Once that episode is done with, there's no mention of it, and the story vanishes into the mist. It was inconsequential.
This leads to one of the other, bigger problems. Character development seems to be missing from most of the series. There was a small amount of it at the beginning, but after that, the characters just fell into a routine of being the exact same people they have always been. The exception to this is that during the last season, there was a surprising amount of character development, allowing them to change and grow, and interact in new ways. Wayne became a good person, at least briefly. Winnie started to behave badly occasionally.
I realized that I don't care about Kevin. The show is not about the development of this character, it's about the audience reconnecting with the experience of being young. But without a character to care about, when he goes through a situation you can't identify with, what reason is there to watch? This really hit me during an episode titled Hero.
The high school basketball team is on a hot streak. Their star player has his locker next to Kevin, and they talk occasionally. Kevin feels like he's a little important to the guy. Kevin gets really caught up in a bit of hero-worship, attending all of the games, praising the guy, etc. Kevin neglects his studies in order to attend a game. Jack decides to go along with him. They enjoy the first half, then Jack offers some observations, which turn out to be correct - the opposing team will pressure the player now that they know he's the key. Kevin flips out at his dad. Afterward, Kevin approaches the star player, and tries to console him. The star player gets angry at Kevin. Then Kevin and Jack go to a diner, where Kevin gives some voiceover narration that indicates that Jack is really a hero.
There is nothing about this episode that I can identify with. The ending of it feels nonsensical. The premise of it seems like an effort at a bromance that I don't understand. When you combine these problems with Kevin's blank slate of a personality, I have no idea what the appeal of the show is.
And even though Kevin seems to have no personality, he also doesn't have much of an arc at any point in the series. Even though he's supposed to learn life lessons all the time, he never adjusts his behavior as a result of it.
Kevin is weirdly amoral most of the time. He has a dedication to Winnie... except when he doesn't. He regularly just leaves to flirt with other girls. He dates many other girls, and he typically treats them badly. The one time he makes an effort to do the right thing (early on, with Becky Slater) he gets punched.
Kevin's bad behavior rarely comes back to him. At one point, he decides to drive off to see the girl he had a summer romance with. He talks with Winnie at the start of the episode, then still decides to go pursue this summer romance girl. During the last episode or two, Winnie makes reference to this, which is the closest he comes to having to take responsibility for his actions.
Maybe the problem is that the whole show is told from Kevin's perspective, so he doesn't seem to learn much about his parents.
If I'm forced to, I can remember general ideas that were covered in the show, but now that I've been done watching it for about a month, the whole thing has faded.
Sadly, it's not a great show, but it was a great transition. It established more storytelling tools that have remained important. It created an elastic reality before that was a popular thing.
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