When the reboot of The
Wonder Years debuted on ABC in the fall
of 2021, I instantly hailed it as a classic, putting it on my top ten list for
that year. Critics similarly reacted just as happily as I did, with the series being
shortlisted for a Peabody award and getting nominations galore from the Image
Awards. When the first season ended in April of 2022, mirroring the
circumstances that led to the season finale of the original, I was overjoyed it
had been renewed and couldn’t wait for the second season.
Then September came.
2022 ended. The 2022-2023 season ended outright. ABC produced a superb number
of original series. Big Sky and Alaska Daily came and went. So
did The Company You Keep. And
there was no sign at all of The Wonder Years. I knew there had been outside factors
- a harassment scandal that had forced
executive producer Fred Savage to leave the team; the looming writers strike
that came on May 1st and shows no sign of ended – but there was no
logical reason for the delay of this kind.
Why had ABC lost faith in a series that was so brilliant it’s first year,
renew it for a second season and then essentially leave it to air in the
summer, when it is one of the few original series on broadcast television at
all? It is troubling to think of the long-term implications.
It certainly has
nothing to do with the quality of Season 2 which has been no less marvelous
than the first one after five episodes. Dean (EJ Dionne) spent the summer in
New York with his father (Dule Hill, just as exceptional as ever) as he tried
to become a songwriter for Marvin Gaye and basically kept Dean indoors. (It is
a measure of how Dean’s father views the world that he can barely be bothered
to watch the moon landing with any real conviction.) Dean eventually ends up
going out on the street, and as you might expect, gets his ass kicked. But he
also meets his next door neighbor, a
transvestite from Alabama (Titus Burgess) who finds common ground with both
Dean and his father. Meanwhile, Dean’s
mother is dealing with the arrival of her sister into the world, who has always
been the black sheep of the family but seems to be making an effort to reform.
In an amusing side note, they go to a concert together in a stolen car, but it
turns out Dean’s mother also has a police record.
When Dean returns to
New York, he is dealing with his romance with his long-term crush Kasia while
still trying to be friends with her boyfriend Brad. As you can expect this ends
disastrously on multiple levels, especially when Dean joins the football team
and Brad finally finds out. That story
has been on the backburner as Dean proceeds with life as normal, having a
sleepover with his Jewish best friend, Richie (where they fall all over
themselves to show what good allies they are) and developing a crush on Richie’s
mother. This leads to a hysterical argument
and fight when both try to prove how ‘realistic’ their chances are and a truly pathetic
fight.
By now, in case you
had forgotten, I am legally obligated to remind you that the family in The
Wonder Years is African-American. I have little doubt that the internet
trolls were hoping the fact that another one of their precious childhood
memories, tainted by being made woke (because as we all know the 1960s had
nothing to do with race at all) is actually back for a second season. They are no doubt aware, without having to
actually watch the series, that it is just as relevant as ever. The adult Dean
(played by Don Cheadle) has no problem leaning into this whenever possible and
does so right from the start. (It was 1969. Russia was engaged in a war on the
Eastern front, people clashed over drugs and women did not have the right to
choose. Thank God those days are over!”) Dean makes it very clear that as a child he
was completely unaware of so many of the subtleties going on that are going on
below the surface. When his aunt tells him about some of the forbidden romances
she been going through, he reveals that he clearly didn’t get that in the first
case, she was talking about sleeping with a married man, and in the second case
with a white man. Adult Dean is clear very much about the awkwardness, often in
hysterical ways. When Dean’s mother and Richie’s mother awkwardly discuss the
idea of their sons having a sleepover, neither comfortable with the idea but just
as uncomfortable with the idea of being called racist, adult Dean comes to the conclusion of their
argument: “And that exchange led to the formation of the current behavior of
the Democratic party.”
But the relevance of race,
then and now, are shown very clearly in other ways, most prominently in last
week’s episode ‘Block Busting’. In it the Williams parents are tempting by a slick
real estate agent to move in to the first publicly integrated neighborhood in
Alabama. The agent (a wonderful Donald
Faison) is a silver-tongued devil who says the right things and points out that
much of these neighborhoods were the sights of former slave plantations. The 40
acres and a mule metaphor is very clear. The Williams family and their close friends
are publicly invited to this open house and are proud of being there. But when
Mrs. Williams and Richie’s mother have a discussion later on, she tells her
that this a strategy of block busting (the process of white flight forcing real
estate developers to buy and sell it back at a tidy profit). She points out painfully
that a variation of this happened to them – they were among the first Jewish
families to move in. The Williams family turns on the salesman, but adult Dean
has a poignant coda. Bill kept the house in the family until the day he died,
but by then most of his neighbors were white. “Integration didn’t get him out,
but gentrification did.”
The second season of The
Wonder Years is every bit as hysterical and heartwarming as the first. It
features superb acting and incredible guest stars (Patti LaBelle makes an appearance
as Bill’s mother-in-law), has brilliant aspects of fantasy, remembers how
awkward it is to be an adolescent, and just what it was like to grow up the
1960s. You really have to wonder – pun not intended – why ABC decided that we
had to wait a full year between the end of one season and the beginning of the
next. And considering just how willing
they were to scorch the earth of so many series, current and prospective
because of the writer’s strike, we have a reason to be justifiably concerned if
there will be a third season. You’d think the network where Abbott
Elementary which gave the network
sitcom not merely relevance but revolutionized would want to give this series,
which is just as relevant and excellent, more of a future than say The
Connors. But when it comes to how
any network these days, it makes you…well, let’s just say I’ll relish it while
it’s here.
My score: 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment