The Wonder Years

The t.v. show "The Wonder Years" is one of my all time favorites. The showed followed Kevin Arnold as he grew up and experienced life. It was a show I could relate to. Kevin was going through all the things that I had gone through when I was growing up. Everything from trying out for a sport to school issues to girlfriends to everything else a teenage boy goes through.

There was a girl in Kevin's life that was his "it" girl. Her name was Winnie Cooper. It seemed that no matter where life took Kevin, he would always come back to Winnie. The more you watched the show, the more you realized just how perfect Kevin and Winnie were together.

As the series came to a conclusion, I remember anxiously awaiting the last episode to find out what happens to Kevin and Winnie, in the future, with their great Love affair. The entire last episode was, more or less, showing how Kevin and Winnie both realized that they were meant to be together and how they would always be there for each other. Then, during the last few minutes of the finale, it happened.

As the show was concluding, the voice over of Kevin told us what happened in the future. He went through each character and let us know how their life unfolded. When he finally got to Winnie and himself he said, "Winnie left the next summer to study art history in Paris. Still, we never forgot our promise. We wrote to each other once a week for the next 8 years. I was there to meet her when she came home, with my wife and my first son, eight months old."

What? Are you kidding me? Kevin and Winnie didn't end up together. I had watched this show for so long and was invested in these characters so much, that it hurt to find out they wouldn't end up together. On the other hand, as much as it hurt, I also loved this ending. To have a series not end up with the "fairy tale ending" was refreshing. It also proved that The Wonder Years once again mirrored real life. Sometimes, things don't always turn out exactly as we expect them too.