{"id":1088,"date":"2007-08-02T11:39:29","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T11:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2007-08-02T11:39:29","modified_gmt":"2007-08-02T11:39:29","slug":"tv_title_sequences_the_wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/08\/02\/tv_title_sequences_the_wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"TV Title Sequences: The Wonder Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned The Wonder Years<\/i> yesterday<\/a>, so it seems appropriate to make that show’s opening our TV Title Sequence for this week. My research — okay, the two minutes I spent perusing YouTube — indicates that the 30-second version of the opening I’ve been seeing on those nightly re-runs on the Ion channel<\/a> is actually cut down from the original sequence, which I had forgotten ran much longer when the show first aired. Here’s the full-length, one-minute version as it appeared in the show’s first four seasons, circa 1988-1991:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n


\nThe style of this sequence — the fake 8mm home movies and the unabashed nostalgic flavor — has been copied, parodied, and outright mocked a great deal in the years since the show debuted, but I personally think it’s brilliant. It perfectly captures the tone and setting of the show and introduces pretty much everything you need to know about the character dynamics — e.g., Wayne’s constant, mindless abuse of Kevin, the tentative feelings between Kevin and Winnie, the lovable goofiness of Paul, etc. — all without any dialogue or voice-over whatsoever. The sequence was modified in later seasons, incorporating news photos and archival footage from the period, and using a different sampling of the Joe Cocker tune, but the revision wasn’t nearly as effective, which is probably why it isn’t as well remembered as this simple loop of a late-60s suburban summer afternoon.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I just thought of something somewhat-related that happened to me the summer I lived in Cambridge, England: I was punting<\/a> with my friends along the river Cam<\/a>, when we encountered another boat going the opposite direction. The puntsman in that boat caught sight of my shirt — which sported the show’s logo against a plain black background — and called out, “Pardon me, where does one obtain a Wonder Years<\/i> t-shirt?” I stammered something lame about a mail-order catalog back in the States and we continued along on our merry way, never to see each other again.<\/p>\n

I’ve often thought in the years since then that I should’ve whipped the shirt off my back and offered to trade the guy for his snazzy boater hat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned The Wonder Years yesterday, so it seems appropriate to make that show’s opening our TV Title Sequence for this week. My research — okay, the two minutes I spent perusing YouTube — indicates that the 30-second version of the opening I’ve been seeing on those nightly re-runs on the Ion channel is actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-title-sequences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}