"The Wonder Years" was one of my favorite shows growing up and, watching this episode in syndication yesterday, it isn't hard to figure out why.
Kevin has a crush on his very beautiful English teacher Miss White. Love makes you do crazy things and in this case it results in Kevin volunteering to participate in a play that Ms White has written about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, despite his strong reservations about his acting abilities. How will he deal with his ever increasing crush on Miss White and how will it affect his performance in the play?
I think this episode succeeds because it very beautifully conveys a lot of what many of us have gone through during our formative years and maybe beyond. Many of us have known the futility of unrequited and impossible love and the heartache and pain it can cause and we can relate to Kevin in that situation. The writers of this episode have captured it succinctly with just the right amount of warmth, humor and empathy to make it work
As usual, everyone plays their part to perfection. Dan Lauria, although not a main player in this episode, is outstanding as Jack Arnold even in the brief scenes that he is in. But the star of this episode, besides Kevin, has to be Wendel Meldrum (also known as the low talker in Seinfeld's "The Puffy Shirt, where she does another excellent job) as Miss White. She very adequately conveys all the beauty, grace, charm and idealism that the character of Miss White is supposed to have and her beauty quite literally took my breath away
Well-worth watching
Kevin has a crush on his very beautiful English teacher Miss White. Love makes you do crazy things and in this case it results in Kevin volunteering to participate in a play that Ms White has written about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, despite his strong reservations about his acting abilities. How will he deal with his ever increasing crush on Miss White and how will it affect his performance in the play?
I think this episode succeeds because it very beautifully conveys a lot of what many of us have gone through during our formative years and maybe beyond. Many of us have known the futility of unrequited and impossible love and the heartache and pain it can cause and we can relate to Kevin in that situation. The writers of this episode have captured it succinctly with just the right amount of warmth, humor and empathy to make it work
As usual, everyone plays their part to perfection. Dan Lauria, although not a main player in this episode, is outstanding as Jack Arnold even in the brief scenes that he is in. But the star of this episode, besides Kevin, has to be Wendel Meldrum (also known as the low talker in Seinfeld's "The Puffy Shirt, where she does another excellent job) as Miss White. She very adequately conveys all the beauty, grace, charm and idealism that the character of Miss White is supposed to have and her beauty quite literally took my breath away
Well-worth watching
