“When did you decide you wanted to become a manager of distribution and product support services?” Kevin asks Jack, as they sip on black coffee in the soul-crushing office break room. Reflexively, Jack laughs, accustomed to the sarcastic in-joke shared amongst his fellow office drones. Instead, it’s his son asking the question, sincerely and with childhood innocence. “One thing leads to another,” Jack eventually tells his son, knowing it’s a sentiment that only an older Kevin may one day understand. After all: we can’t all grow up to be center-fielders for the San Francisco Giants, ship captains, or astronauts. You have to make your choices.
“My Father’s Office”, the third episode in the first season of The Wonder Years, is a bittersweet, heartbreaking affair that speaks directly to the relationship between a father and son. The story takes place in 1960’s suburban America, where the nuclear family is in its half-life, the world is ablaze with political and civil unrest, social norms are rapidly evolving, and the Greatest Generation is struggling with its place in the world. While the time and place add specificity to the proceedings, the episode manages to convey the universal relationship between a young boy and his father at that crucial age when the mystical shroud of the patriarch begins to unravel and slowly reveal the flawed man underneath.
Jack (portrayed masterfully by Dan Lauria) is a cold, angry sonofabitch. His car comes screeching to a halt in the driveway every day after work, followed by a hurried storm of his castle, briefcase in hand, spouting off the more depressing and cynical versions of “Normisms” from Cheers.
Norma: How was work, honey?
Jack: Work is work.
The family stiffens and braces for impact after every entrance, trying to avoid crossing his path. While at home, Jack spends most of his time alone: in the dark, drinking whiskey and watching TV, or standing out back gazing through a telescope at the stars; neither occasion is one designed for interruption. And yet, his youngest son Kevin (Fred Savage), curious and mystified by his father's line of work, seeks answers. The problem is: no one in his family seems to know. “He works for NORCOM,” each family member refrains at some point in the episode, save for hippie teen daughter, Karen (Olivia d’Abo), who simply derides the “military-industrial complex” the company is allegedly a part of and moves on. Older brother Wayne (Jason Hervey) uses the phrase, and a round of emulated fart noises, to win a school bus argument. Norma (Alley Mills), the quintessential doting mother who herself doesn’t quite know, uses the phrase to end further lines of questioning. And yet the pressing question still lingers, the precocious son undeterred: “Yeah, but what does he do?” Off to the office we go.
What he does is perform generic office tasks, throwing out form numbers, taking calls and barking orders, his paper-pushing job one of the millions created in post-World War II corporatized America. Kevin, unsullied by the banality of adulthood, watches in awe as his father commands the room, respected and needed, much in the way he is at home. Kevin gains a newfound respect for his father, a man he views now in such great esteem that he deems him “better than this place”, his mythologizing running unfettered. It’s soon after that the curtain is pulled, as we see Jack chided and demoralized by one of his superiors for being ignored in favor of a coffee break with his son. It’s the sea change moment both father and son don’t realize they need: Jack unwittingly showing his offspring that he is, in fact, fallible, and Kevin subconsciously understanding that this does not make his father weaker, but stronger.
When we return to the backyard at the end of the episode, Jack once again peering through his telescope, we know now why he spends his nights out here: he still holds on to that boyhood dream of being a sailor, guided only by the stars. It's a nostalgic desire, in a world where technological and societal changes render many nostalgic desires irrelevant. When he invites Kevin to look through the telescope, they gaze upon both the past and the future, seeing the world together through the same lens, if only for a moment. “That’s Polaris, the North Star,” Jack remarks, and after a long beat, adds, “That’s how sailors used to find their way home.”
It's telling that “home” is not the house they stand just steps away from, but instead a fixed point in the distance; like for so many, the “American Dream” is forever out of reach, yet always something to look towards.
Warren Buchanan is a Los Angeles-based writer who writes short fiction, flash, novels and screenplays. He got his MFA from Saint Mary's College and a BA in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount. His mother is very proud of him. His work has been featured in Five2One Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Fabula Argentea, Eclectica Magazine, Hobart Pulp and Stanley the Whale. His website is warrenbuchanan.com. His twitter is @warrenbuchanan but he rarely uses it. Instagram is @warren.buchanan.