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Before there were Modern Family, Lucky Louie, or Freaks and Geeks,
there was The Wonder Years — a realistic, single-camera spin on the
traditional family sitcom. When it debuted in 1988, it was unlike
anything else on television: a show set twenty years earlier,
rolling out in real time as Kevin Arnold, a sixth grader, navigated
adolescence for six school years/seasons. Rooted in the trappings
of suburbia (white picket fences, neighborhood football games), all
the classic sitcom character tropes were present: best friend Paul
Pfeifer; girl-next-door Winnie Cooper; older, boorish, noogie-happy
brother Wayne; rebellious older sister Karen; distant workaholic
dad Jack; doting housewife mom Norma. And above all, it was set in
an overcrowded house in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where nothing
spectacular ever happened. Well, besides the time a young Mark-Paul
Gosselaar stole Kevin’s date for the spring dance.
The show’s homespun aesthetic (fake, grainy home movies were
episode staples) and emphasis on sentimentality made The Wonder
Years an unstoppable nostalgia machine. Daniel Stern’s narration as
Future Kevin gave everything that happened DEEP MEANING. You
laughed. You cried. You mostly cried, but also laughed. And the
show was not without its accolades: In its first season — only six
episodes — it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, and made
Fred Savage, then 13, the youngest person ever to be nominated in
the category of Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series.