I mentioned The Wonder Years yesterday, so it seems appropriate to make that show’s opening our TV Title Sequence for this week. My research — okay, the two minutes I spent perusing YouTube — indicates that the 30-second version of the opening I’ve been seeing on those nightly re-runs on the Ion channel is actually cut down from the original sequence, which I had forgotten ran much longer when the show first aired. Here’s the full-length, one-minute version as it appeared in the show’s first four seasons, circa 1988-1991:

The style of this sequence — the fake 8mm home movies and the unabashed nostalgic flavor — has been copied, parodied, and outright mocked a great deal in the years since the show debuted, but I personally think it’s brilliant. It perfectly captures the tone and setting of the show and introduces pretty much everything you need to know about the character dynamics — e.g., Wayne’s constant, mindless abuse of Kevin, the tentative feelings between Kevin and Winnie, the lovable goofiness of Paul, etc. — all without any dialogue or voice-over whatsoever. The sequence was modified in later seasons, incorporating news photos and archival footage from the period, and using a different sampling of the Joe Cocker tune, but the revision wasn’t nearly as effective, which is probably why it isn’t as well remembered as this simple loop of a late-60s suburban summer afternoon.

Incidentally, I just thought of something somewhat-related that happened to me the summer I lived in Cambridge, England: I was punting with my friends along the river Cam, when we encountered another boat going the opposite direction. The puntsman in that boat caught sight of my shirt — which sported the show’s logo against a plain black background — and called out, “Pardon me, where does one obtain a Wonder Years t-shirt?” I stammered something lame about a mail-order catalog back in the States and we continued along on our merry way, never to see each other again.

I’ve often thought in the years since then that I should’ve whipped the shirt off my back and offered to trade the guy for his snazzy boater hat…