But not all episodes of The Wonder Years are created equal, and some are more liable to make you weep openly than others. With that in mind, here’s a list of the most emotion-inducing episodes. Let’s hope I can make it through this without breaking down. Wait, no, already getting teary-eyed at the titles.

1. My Father’s Office (Season 1)
Jack Arnold is one of the most believable TV dads—he’s always well intentioned, but he’s also kind of an asshole. And this is the episode where we learn why, as Kevin sees the shit his dad has to put up with at work. When we’re younger we think of our parents as superheroes: learning how hard they really have it is one of life’s cruelest lessons.

2. On the Spot (Season 3)
This one’s kind of cheap, because the most emotional moment doesn’t really belong to The Wonder Years: it comes from Thornton Wilder’s iconic play Our Town. But whatever, as soon as Winnie launches into the “goodbye, Grover’s Corners” speech, I start to lose my shit. Close-up on Kevin, tears streaming down his face. It’s too much.

3. Faith (Season 3)
And again, this could be considered a cheat—the emotional impact of “Faith” rests on the real-life Apollo 13 failure. But there’s so much more to this episode: the weight of our personal problems in light of national tragedy, the fear that we’ll die without leaving our mark on the world, the strangely comforting power of prayer. Houston, we need a tissue.

4. Good-bye (Season 3)
Anyone who ever had one of those “very special” teachers can relate to Kevin’s experience with Mr. Collins, the math teacher who sees his C-student’s potential. Of course, most of us didn’t have to deal with the trauma of said teacher suddenly dying, but hey, now we can live vicariously through Kevin’s pain!

5. Daddy’s Little Girl (Season 3)
Wow, Season 3 of The Wonder Years was a heartstring-tugging doozy. I’m not a father or a daughter, but just the phrase “daddy’s little girl” makes me misty. (I might be hormonal?) I love Karen, the free-spirited Arnold daughter, and all of her big moment episodes make me mushy inside. Also, Jack leaves the porch light on for her. Crying.

6. The Ties That Bind (Season 4)
Oh, boy, it’s a Thanksgiving episode. What is it about ritualized feasting that makes us feel feelings? Jack finally gets the promotion he wants, only to discover that his new position means he’ll be spending more time on the road. He’s going to miss Thanksgiving, you guys. Is work more important than family? (Spoiler alert: no.)

7. Graduation (Season 4)
I remember my graduation well. We talked all night about the rest of our lives, where we’re gonna be when we turn 25. OK, that’s the Vitamin C song. The point is, it was a very emotional time, and TV graduations always do me in, too. Yeah, it’s only junior high, but the school is named for Robert F. Kennedy, and that’s pretty sad, right?

8. Grandpa’s Car (Season 5)
I don’t have a great first-car story, but naturally Kevin does. (Seriously, how could anyone survive a childhood this poignant?) In addition to teaching us the important lesson that old people are still kind of cool—even the scary ones who shouldn’t be driving!—we learn that Kevin’s first car was his grandpa’s last. Because aging. Because death.

9. The Wedding (Season 5)
Another episode about Karen growing up? Sorry, she just does it for me. Or maybe I’m crying out of jealousy that she got to marry David Schwimmer. Jack and Norma get the double-whammy of seeing their daughter wed, then learning that she and her hubby are shipping off to Alaska. It’s OK—they’ll never really let her go. Sunrise, sunset, sobbing.

10. Independence Day (Season 6)
I know The Wonder Years’ season finale has some detractors, and I get it. It’s maudlin and predictable, but damn it, it works. This is the episode that did me in more than any of the others: I’m talking body-shaking, snotty devastation. The moment Kevin starts telling us what happened after, from Jack’s death to—oh, God, I can’t go on. But I will always look back on this episode … with wonder.

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Even those who hate Zooey Deschanel‘s cloyingly “adorkable” onscreen persona must admit she’s a decent songwriter. She and Him, her band with M Ward, has put out consistently solid retro tinged pop records, proving her the exception to the rule that actors shouldn’t dabble in musical vanity projects. Which was why I was sort of interested to hear the full version of the theme song she wrote for New Girl, currently streaming over at Vulture. Could it be that something redeemable had come out of that painfully un-funny excuse for a sitcom?

Not really. It’s perky and annoying. (In fairness, I should mention that Zooey’s more nuanced work is not.) The way she phrases the word “lolli-pup” makes my skin crawl. But it does do a fairly good job at capturing the show’s mindless tweeness, so I guess you can’t blame Zooey if that’s what she had to work with. She gets herself into dicier territory, however, when discussing her inspiration for the track.

“There were theme songs I had in mind as inspiration, like, I love the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter,” she recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “John Sebastian wrote that, from The Lovin’ Spoonful. I really love that sound, so I wanted something upbeat that really felt like a theme song.”

Here are the first two lines of the theme song to Welcome Back Kotter:

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out. Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about.

Here are the first two lines of the theme song to New Girl:

Hey girl, whatcha doin? Hey girl, where ya goin’?

Can you spot the differences? The theme to Welcome Back Kotter sets up the serious premise underlying the show’s comedy, while New Girl‘s theme song sets up that the show has no premise. And no, sunshine and lollipops don’t count.

Related posts:

• A Discussion Of Fox’s ‘Quirky’ Zooey Deschanel Vehicle New Girl
• Snap This: Teenage Zooey Deschanel Wrote a Feminist Letter to Vogue
• Dear Zooey Deschanel: Don’t Want To Be Called Quirky? Then Stop Being So Darn Quirky!
• Giving Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl a Fair Shake

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Entering to win is easy. You just have to become a fan of Crushable on Facebook. Already a fan? Follow this link to enter to win. If you’re not a fan, enter here, too. You’ll have until 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 23 to enter to win. You must be at least 18 and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) to win. (Full terms and conditions here).

Plus, every friend you get to to “Like” Crushable on Facebook by sharing the giveaway on your Facebook page will mean additional entries for you. Liking the Charlie’s Angels Facebook page, where you can join the Charlie’s Angels Mission Challenge, will get you bonus giveaway entries, too. And you’ll be able to complete missions, collect badges, watch exclusive videos and earn your wings!

Don’t forget to tune in for Charlie’s Angels‘ explosive season premiere on Thursday, September 22 at 8/7c on ABC. If you want to know more about these new angels, visit their official website.

And don’t forget to “Like” Crushable on Facebook for access to more giveaways and fun stuff like this in the future.

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Huge

This whole series was about camping — fat camp, to be precise, and the insecure, resistant, hopeful teenagers who populate it. It’s really too bad that it didn’t make it past one summer season: My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman wrote it with her daughter, and critics hailed Huge for showing an unflinching, sympathetic look at overweight characters. Over the show’s sole season, it addressed overeating, divorce, and first love, and even managed to poke fun at fitness celebrities like Jillian Michaels.

One Tree Hill – “(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight”

Poor Julian – this is where OTH‘s habit of making fun of him begins. Julian wants to join the guys’ camping trip, but is worried since, as he confesses to his girlfriend Brooke, “I don’t have homies.” Here’s how Julian becomes a man: He ziplines, hears the grisly details of Nathan and Brooke’s high school sex tape, and gets his first-ever fist-bump. Aww! (You can watch more detailed clips here and here.)

Related posts:

• Welcome to Crushable Camp Week!
• Snap This: The ‘Twilight’ Second Stringers Bring Breakfast to Fans Camped Out at Comic-Con
• Video: Meet the Harry Potter Fans Who Camped Out to Attend the NYC Premiere
• Interview: ‘Skinny’ Author Diana Spechler Went Undercover at a Fat Camp

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Even Ben Savage seemed surprised, as he told CollegeCandy:

You all had a lot of great things to choose from and I’m flattered that you selected us! However I don’t blame those of you who voted for the Spice Girls….they were pretty damn good! Spice Up Your Life was a pretty damn good song.

The thing is, we would agree that Ben Savage as a person may be one of the best 90s-now transitions: He directs and writes episodes of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, is tight with a bunch of comedians, and has a really good sense of humor about being a child actor. He’s like a lesser-known Neil Patrick Harris! But Cory and Topenga’s relationship? Sure, we kind of grew up with them as our role models of relationships (they were certainly more healthy than Angela and Jordan Catalano), but we always found BMW a little bit too sappy to be our favorite thing about the 90s. What about Twin Peaks, you guys? Anyone? Anyone?

Fine: What was your favorite thing about the 90s?

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Last night I watched the season premiere of My Boys on TBS. Now, before you go thinking that I do that sort of thing for fun – and by “that sort of thing” I mean immersing myself in the television equivalent of a hotel pool that smells of urine – let me make clear that money was involved. Enough money to justify DVR’ing Don Draper’s long-anticipated return to my Sunday nights? No, probably not. But masochism is a strange, strange thing.

Needless to say, I’ve never been a fan of My Boys, a sitcom about non-threateningly attractive tomboy P.J. (Jordana Spiro) and her guy friends, whose intense bro-love and overzealous fear of anything perceived as unmasculine betray them to be deeply closeted homosexuals. I am a fan of Jim Gaffigan, the brilliant stand-up who did paycheck work on the show’s first three seasons. But Gaffigan has left the series – which is nice, because I like it when people escape burning buildings.

Last night’s premiere centered on finding a replacement for Gaffigan’s character, Andy, at the gang’s weekly poker game. The search is urgent, because if poker night falls apart, Kenny – a hideous, bald moron who wears ugly warm-up jackets and has no value as a human being – will be forced to spend Thursday nights with his implausibly attractive girlfriend, Stephanie. This will not do. Auditions are arranged, and the first candidate for New Andy, a Caucasian man named Mexican Freddy, blows his by being too serious about poker (and by being a mean prick with a racist nickname). The second candidate, a bimbo cocktail waitress, displays no knowledge of the game and distracts one of the principal man-children by flirting with him and talking about body shots. The third and final candidate turns out to be Stephanie. The men protest, because unlike P.J., Stephanie displays traits that are identifiably female and thus threatening to the homoerotic tension on which the group thrives. But Stephanie then presents a gift of food, a submissive gesture that proves she can fulfill a domestic and useful role. She is accepted into the tribe, and after the credits role, the mutual-masturbation ritual presumably begins.

But it would be unfair to view the premiere of My Boys’ fourth season only as an attack against women. It is also an act of violence against anyone who enjoys laughing. Fundamental sitcom structure has been abandoned (no “B story,” no “C story”) in favor of an approach that appears to involve writing while wearing horse blinders and drinking Sterno. And while it’s occasionally possible to identify places where a laugh line should be, no laughs appear. For example, here is a selection of dialogue from a scene in which P.J. proposes to the group the names of several potential New Andys:

P.J.: “Mark Borowitz.”
Unremarkable guy-friend named Mike: “No way. That guy is way too light. He’s like a howler monkey.”
P.J.: “Really, Mike.”
Other unremarkable guy friend whose name I can’t remember, because that’s how useless he is: “He’s also really into Civil War reenactments. It’s like, dude, seriously, stop e-mailing me Gettysburg crap.”

The only funny line in that exchange, of course, is “Mark Borowitz.”

Another episode of My Boys aired immediately after the premiere, but I couldn’t do it. By that time I had already begun to fantasize about what the new office at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce might look like. I was pleased to discover that they look fabulous.

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Last week, FX’s upcoming series Lights Out was filming for several days near Crushable HQ in New York. We spotted them filming scenes for the show, which focuses on the life of a former heavyweight boxing champ, in a boxing gym nearby.

But, according to a Crushable spy, the series also filmed for two days at Allegria Hotel in Long Beach, New York. Our tipster snapped this photo with the show’s stars Holt McCallany and The Wire‘s Pablo Schreiber. Our spy said they shot a weigh-in scene, which is supposed to take place in a Miami hotel, in the Allegria’s LOnda lounge. “They were in boxers in the middle of the Lounge, and weighed in for a boxing match!” she told Crushable. “It was great.”

Have you seen Lights Out filming somewhere around you? Have you seen any movie or TV show shooting nearby? Send your tips and photos to tips AT crushable dot com — we’d love to hear from you!

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