"1968, I was twelve years old. A lot happened that year. Dennis Mclain won 31 games, The Mod Squad hit the air, and I graduated from Hillcrest Elementary and entered junior high school...but we'll get to that. There's no pretty way to put this: I grew up in the suburbs. I guess most people think of the suburb as a place with all the disadvantages of the city, and none of the advantages of the country, and vice versa. But, in a way, those really were the wonder years for us there in the suburbs. It was kind of a golden age for kids..
— Kevin Arnold
Pilot Is the first episode of season 1 of The Wonder Years.
Includes examples of
- Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: Jack wants to whip Kevin for his role in instigating a food fight at school. Averted when they and Norma are told by a neighbor that Brian Cooper is dead, killed in action in Vietnam; this is the first time Jack is seen to show mercy and human emotion as he tries to make sense of the news.
- Wayne had taken a belt whipping at least once from his father. This is related by the adult Kevin in a voice-over (in the scene where Kevin is brought home from school and ordered into the house to take his punishment but then are told by the neighbor the news relating to Brian Cooper).
- Downer Beginning: It's only the first episode and has a downer ending (see below).
- Downer Ending: Winnie's brother Brian dies in Vietnam.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: During his meeting with the principal, young Kevin's thoughts can be heard, redundant considering the narrator could just do those lines.
- First Appearance: Kevin, Paul, Winnie, Jack, Norma, Wayne, Karen, Ms. Rivko, Coach Cutlip, and Mr. Diperno.
- First Kiss: Kevin and Winnie share their first kiss on the lips in the final scene.
- Random Events Plot: The episode mainly focuses on Kevin's first day of school, which involves a few classroom scenes, a lunch scene where Wayne teases Kevin about Winnie being his girlfriend (which he denies), and Kevin getting in trouble at school... Only to come home to the news that Winnie's brother has died.
- Ripped from the Headlines, a la 1968: The realities of Vietnam and the renaming of a school in honor of a then-current national leader (Robert Kennedy) set the tone for the series right off the bat.
- Shaped Like Itself: "The jockstrap, sir, is a particular type of strap that is constructed of a strap-type material, which is utilized exclusively for the purposes...of jocks."
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Kevin keeps saying this whenever Wayne teases Kevin about Winnie being his girlfriend. The narrator says that they were barely even friends. By the end of the episode, Kevin starts to get feelings for her.
- Wham Shot: During Kevin's visit with the principal, it looks as if Norma is the only parent there. Norma is disappointed in Kevin, but at the end of the scene, Jack starts talking off-screen, cutting to him looking very angry, showing he had been there the whole time and that Kevin is expecting worse than how his mother reacted.
"It was the first kiss for both of us. We never really talked about it afterward. But I think about the events of that day again and again and somehow I know that Winnie does too, whenever some blowhard starts talking about the anonymity of the suburbs or the mindlessness of the TV generation. Because we know that inside each one of those identical boxes, with its Dodge parked out front and its white bread on the table and its TV set glowing blue in the falling dusk, there were people with stories, there were families bound together in the pain and the struggle of love. There where moments that made us cry with laughter, and there were moments, like that one, of sorrow and wonder.
— Kevin Arnold
