‘The Wonder Years’ : Was it Set in Maryland, New York, or California?

The Wonder Years had a successful run from 1988-1993. Though the series was set in “Anytown, USA”, there have been arguments through the years about where it was actually set. There isn’t a definitive answer, but there is a place that stands out to us.

The Wonder Years is a coming-of-age sitcom television series created by Neal Marlens and Carol Black- a Silver Spring native who graduated from Springbrook High School in 1976. The show ran on ABC from January 31, 1988, until May 12, 1993, premiering immediately after Super Bowl XXII. The series was filmed in Southern California and stars Fred Savage as protagonist Kevin Arnold- a teenager growing up in a suburban middle class family in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The rest of the characters on the show are closely related to Kevin- his father Jack, his mother Norma, his brother Wayne, his sister Karen, his best friend Paul Pfeiffer, and his crush-turned-girlfriend Winnie Cooper, with all occurrences narrated by the adult version of Kevin.

Many elements  of the show were pulled from Silver Spring, Maryland, where series creator/writer/producer Carol Black was raised. Co-creator Neal Marlens, who is also Black’s husband, wanted the series to be set in Long Island, so you’ll see protagonist Kevin Arnold wearing a Jets jacket throughout the series, but a town was never mentioned and Black made sure to include as much of her childhood neighborhood as she could.

Black also attended Francis Scott Key Junior High, which has since closed and reopened years later as Francis Scott Key Middle School. The fictional John F. Kennedy Junior High in the series was loosely  compared to Key in an old interview with the Washington Post. Black also said in the interview, “The notable thing about our little area was that for a time we had the largest Sears in America. There at the intersection of New Hampshire and Colesville Road … It was just little quarter-acre lots, completely bare of trees when it was first built. And gradually they grew up, as we did.” While there are conflicting reports on whether or not MoCo had the largest Sears or if it just felt that way to Black, she wanted to include some of these elements in the show. Sears closed in 2021 after decades in the location.

The show was narrated by actor Daniel Stern, who many know for his role as Marv from Home Alone. Stern is also a Montgomery County, MD native, growing up in Bethesda and attending Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School before leaving a bit early to pursue his acting career.

“We played around with writing a screenplay that used narration as a device,” series co-creator Carol Black told New York magazine in 1989. “We just started to think that there was a lot of potential fun in that ’cause you can really play with the contrast between the narrator’s point of view and what the characters are doing. And you can go inside their head and expose what they’re really thinking when they’re saying something different … And then we just sort of jumped from there to thinking that effect is accentuated when you have an adult narrator looking back on childhood.”

ABC insisted that no city or state was ever mentioned– an idea that allowed viewers from various parts across the country to relate more to the show.  While Maryland is one of the front-runners for the obvious reasons listed above, there are clues that place the show elsewhere. Jack Arnold, the family patriarch, has a license plate that places the show in California. Bratty brother Wayne Arnold has a California driver’s license that is also flashed on the screen in an episode, but the explanation for those is that the show was actually filmed in California without much else to truly connect it to the state.

While the question can never definitively be answered due to it being left ambiguous by the show’s creators and the network, the close connection to Silver Spring in Montgomery County, MD cannot be doubted. The show was rebooted in 2021 and lasted two seasons until it was officially canceled earlier this year.