The setting seems to dovetail with Dean’s own adolescent turmoil, his personal growing pains reflected in the rapidly changing world around him. The first episode alone references desegregation, white flight, Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panther Party and even the 1968 flu pandemic, in a knowing wink to viewers in 2021. The Wonder Years isn’t shy about its historical context. All the regulars seem poised for their own breakout turns in future episodes, some in storylines that touch directly on the political issues of the era. The standout of the first episode is Hill, who somehow calibrates his performance to the precise level of cool where a respected academic, an on-the-rise musician, and a dad firing up the grill might conceivably overlap. He’s well complemented by Williams, an instantly likable presence that Dean is sort of a dork only makes him more endearing. (“Black Jesus, mellow out, man,” advises his skeptical best friend Cory, played by Amari O’Neil.)Ĭheadle proves to be ideal casting as the older Dean, his voice fond and familiar with just the right touch of gravitas. Dean struggles to see how he might distinguish himself among such company, and the pilot sees him trying on a new identity as “The Great Uniter” - the kid capable of bringing together Black students and white students, bullies and nerds at Jefferson Davis Junior High through the sheer force of his good intentions. Patterson, Fred Savage, Mark Velezĭean’s middle-class family consists of professor/musician dad Bill (Dulé Hill), career woman mom Lillian (Saycon Sengbloh) and teenage sister Kim (Laura Kariuki), plus big brother Bruce, who does not appear in the first episode. Once again, the show is set entirely the past, but overlaid with voiceover by an older, wiser version of the protagonist - here, 12-year-old Dean Williams (Elisha “EJ” Williams), a Black kid growing up in Montgomery, Alabama.Ĭast: Don Cheadle, Elisha Williams, Dulé Hill, Saycon Sengbloh, Laura Kariuki, Julian Lerner, Amari O'Neil, Milan RayĮxecutive producers: Lee Daniels, Saladin K. Yes, fellow millennials, we’re that old.) The narrative structure hasn’t changed much either. (For comparison, had the reboot jumped back only as far as the earlier show did, it would have been set in … the early 2000s. It’s a somewhat curious choice that aligns its young lead with today’s grandparents rather than today’s parents or yesterday’s Wonder Years fans. Like the original Wonder Years, which aired from 1988 to 1993, the new series is set in the late 1960s. But the finer details of that journey can’t help but be informed by the world it’s taking place in, and so the series attempts to balance pointed cultural commentary with a genial coming-of-age narrative - and it largely succeeds, thanks to its warm humor and winning cast. “One thing about being 12 that hasn’t changed over the decades is that it’s around 12 that you figure out what your place is in the world.” So says the narrator ( Don Cheadle) in ABC’s The Wonder Years pilot, and it’s essentially a mission statement for the series.
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