|
The Wonder Years
*The tv show was on the air from 1988 through 1993. The show's stories took place twenty years earlier from 1968 through 1973.
*Poor Jason Harvey's character (Wayne Arnold) was so hated that one time in a bar a guy came up to him and said, "I had a brother just like you" and then punched him in the face! Fans generally didn't like him and obviously couldn't separate him in real life from his character on the Wonder Years!
*Probably the two biggest goofs made in filming Wonder Years both concerned school and space flight. On episode #5, "The Phone Call" Kevin fakes being ill so he can stay home from school. He states that later in the evening Apollo 8 will be going into orbit around the moon. That actually happened on Christmas Eve in 1968. There's no school on that day. Then in episode #41, "Faith", Kevin comes home from school to watch Apollo 13 lift off. That happened on Saturday, April 11, 1970. There is no school on Saturday.
*Fred Savage began his acting career at age 4 in the movie, "Dinosaur (1980)". He directed an episode of "Boy Meets World (1993)" in 1998. His younger brother Ben Savage stars in that series. Fred graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English in 1999.
*Kevin's dog was named "Buster". His grandfather gave him the dog.
*You might think of Danica McKellar as the cute little girl "Winnie" on the tv show. In real life, she went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude from UCLA with a degree in mathematics. She also co-wrote a paper in 1998 that was published in Britain's "Journal of Physics" which mathematically proved a theorem of magnetism in two dimensions (Whatever that means)! She also speaks fluent French!
*The influence of the Vietnam war was often felt on the tv show. Winnie found out her older brother Brian had been killed there in the very first episode. Dan Lauria (Jack Arnold) actually served a tour in Vietnam in real life as a Marine Corps Captain!
*Karen got married in 1992. Her husband Michael was played by David Schwimmer. A couple of years later, he would get the part of Ross Geller on "Friends (1994)".
*Kevin once dated a girl named Becky Slater. After they stopped seeing each other, she decided to become Kevin's worst nightmare! Becky was portrayed by Crystal McKellar, Danica McKellar's (Winnie) real-life sister!
*On the final episode of the Wonder Years, the viewers got a look at what would be happening to the Arnold family and their friends in the future. Kevin and his father had a "falling-out" but reconciled before Jack Arnold died (Only 2 years after the events at the end of the series). Wayne took over the family business. Karen gave birth to a baby boy. Paul Pfeiffer went to Harvard and got a law degree. Winnie travelled to Paris to study art. Kevin married (no, not Winnie) and had a son.
(And I remember that the girl who the played the sister, she's from London and has a real accent. She created a American accent for the show!)
|