Remember The Wonder Years? Kevin, Winnie, “butthead”, Vietnam, first kisses, all those funny and brutal truths about growing up in the 1960’s? As showrunner, I wrote a whole bunch of your favorite episodes. Now I’m watching those episodes for the first time since they aired. 🧵

Seemed to me that was a pretty rare thing, and a pretty good way to end up. So that’s what I did. Even though I might do it differently next time. And isn’t there always a next time? At least, on TV.

Compassion’s not always a part of teenage life. But by taking care of Winnie on her journey toward the light, Kevin undergoes a journey of his own…from a selfish, what-about-me privileged kid to the wiser, more compassionate human being we can hear in the voice of the narrator.

(totally shameful back then) – divorce. They hardly know how to talk to each other. They come together, then break apart; find each other, then screw it all up. They can’t seem to get it right, but they keep trying. And each time their understanding of each other grows deeper.

her beautiful eyes and his big heart, that I thought could make it better. Deeper. Their worlds – across the street - are totally different. Kevin’s part of a nurturing if often dysfunctional household. Winnie’s world has been shattered by the death of her brother and

Series Finale Followup 3: Kevin and Winnie. It didn’t have to be that way. They could have lived happily ever after in the burbs with a boatload of kids and a mortgage. Meh. To me that felt fake. There was something in the way Kevin and Winnie related on screen, something in

The story was pretty much told – anything further would have risked “jumping the shark”. So we ended it. I liked the ending - of course, since I wrote it - but a lot of people were pretty pissed about it. Especially about the fate of Kevin and Winnie. More on that next.

They were 17 now, young adults, driving, necking, probably (though we couldn’t say it then) having sex. No more hide-and-seek and throwing apples in the cafeteria. Pretty soon Kevin’s voice was going to be lower than Danny Stern’s.

I talked them into one more season, but the writing was on the wall. It was obvious that, for our characters, the “wonder years” – that age when little kids first begin to discover the world - were over.

Series Final Followup 2: Lotta misconceptions over the years about that final episode. Let me clarify. First, the show wasn’t suddenly “cancelled” at the last minute; in fact, the network had wanted to end the show the year before, at the end of 10th grade.

BTW, we don’t know – and never will -  if Kevin and Winnie did “do it,” simply because the Older Kevin would never share that with us.  As Wayne would say, it’s none of your business.  So censor that, Butthead.

set mothers, angry as hornets, who had heard that Danica was to be fitted for a “nude bodysuit.”   When I assured them that neither Danica nor Fred nor the horse would be wearing a “nude bodysuit,” they were relieved.  So, I think, was the horse.

Series Finale Follow Up 1: In the series finale, Kevin and Winnie spend the night alone in a barn in a horse’s stall. A rumor, completely unfounded, got started that they were going to “do it” on camera.  Yeah, right. The morning of the shoot I was met by a contingent of

It was a labor of love. Some people say the show was just nostalgia: I disagree. I think we said some important things. But that’s not up to me. As for controversies surrounding the finale, including the infamous “nude scene”, Kevin and Winnie, and endings, more on that soon.

All you can do is send them out the door with some hope and a kiss. Unless you’re the Sopranos. I put my heart into this final episode, tried (as I always did) to make it poetry. I didn’t create the show (kudos to Marlins and Black), but I worked to put my own life into it.

parented in the imagined universe of your show – one that, over the years, you’ve begun to think of as real. Kevin, Winnie, Paul, Wayne, Karen, Jack, Norma and all those teachers and friends: where do they go when the director yells “wrap”? It’s like losing a part of yourself.

Season 6, Episode 22: Independence Day Wed, May 12, 1993. When you’ve done a hundred episodes of a show, producing a finale can be like a death. All around you people are packing up, moving on to new careers, looking to the future, and so are the characters you’ve nurtured and

conflicts, putting herself last, keeping her light hid. Like so many women of her generation. Bravo, Norma. Bravo, Alley. Each of you made an enduring gem out of a thankless role.

son not to leave home. Kevin says he has to “find himself”. Norma’s response is only a few lines, but what Alley did with those lines is sublime. It sums up Norma and her big, beautiful heart; makes sense of all the years she’s spent baking mashed potatoes, refereeing family

was hoping for a kumbaya ending. I think we did a pretty fair job. Watching these two episodes, then the pilot, I think we got the long story arc pretty well told. One thing still amazes me: the scene between Kevin and Norma (@AlleyMillsTweet), where Norma tries to convince her

Season 6, Episode 21: Summer Part One of our series finale aired the same week as the “Cheers” finale, so the press wasn’t paying much attention. But we were: we had two episodes left to blow up Kevin Arnold’s world, put an end to adolescence, kill Jack and piss off everyone who