I was thinking about posting a different thing today, then I realized I wanted to reference this, so I figured I’ll post that other thing later and this today.

Full disclosure: I did not grow up in the 1960s. I was not alive during the 1960s. When I watched The Wonder Years, I watched it with my dad, who had grown up during the 1960s. Now, when I hear “A Little Help from My Friends” as sung by Joe Cocker, or see The Wonder Years on TV, I feel an urge to call upstairs to my dad: “Daddy! The Wonder Years is on!” and have him drop what he’s doing and run down to watch with me. I live 3,000 miles away from him now, and almost never watch the show anymore, and have begun to primarily think of Fred Savage as a prolific and talented television director (whom I met once, and to whom I handed his keys!) rather than as a confused suburban kid trying to establish something concrete when everything around him was changing rapidly. If there’s anything that has ever understood what it means to watch these opening credits, it is surely the greatest three-and-a-half minutes of television ever (I might stand by this, actually):