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YMMV / Wings
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The TV series:
Critical Research Failure: "In "Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young Man", Casey is trying to get Lowell to create more of his random-object art, but Lowell says he needs a special occasion like a birthday. Casey looks at a calendar and says that it is Charlotte Brontë, Babe Ruth, and Angie Dickinson's birthday. None of those three people have birthdays anywhere close to one another.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
Antonio. A fan favorite from day one, his role grew more prominent each season. Just before the show's cancellation, he was heading rapidly toward Breakout Character status.
The show in general. Despite constantly being moved from one time slot to another, the ratings held firm and it lasted for a solid eight seasons.
"Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Tim Daly played a character married to someone named Helen. Three years after the series ended, in the remake of The Fugitive, he played a character (the title character, in fact) married to someone named... Helen.
Growing the Beard: While the first two seasons are seen as pretty decent, many fans feel that the show really hit its stride in the third season, in part due to several new writers being brought in, but largely because that was when Antonio joined the main cast.
Harsher in Hindsight: In a sad irony for a show about running an airline service, David Angell and his wife, Lynn, were both killed when they were flying back home to California after attending a family wedding in Cape Cod, when the plane that they were on, American Airlines Flight 11, was hijacked and deliberately flown into the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.
Joe's behavior after Helen leaves to accept Davis's proposal—following her to New York after breaking his promise to leave her alone if she can swear that she loves Davis instead of him, cornering her in an elevator, basically browbeating her into admitting that she loves him, ignoring her pleas that he leave alone—"It's just not going to work out!"—and basically further browbeating her into accepting his own proposal—has really not aged well.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
In the Cheers Crossover episode "Planes, Trains, and Visiting Cranes," Joe calls Lillith Crane "Morticia." Bebe Neuwirth would later originate the role of Morticia in The Musical version of The Addams Family.
Also, the fact that Tony Shalhoub starred in this show gets funnier when you realize that Wings was rerun quite heavily by the USA Network— which would have its first bonafide hit original in Monk, which had Shalhoub as the protagonist.
Hollywood Pudgy: Many jokes were made about Helen being overweight growing up, but when we finally see her as a kid, she is only slightly larger than the other children.
Iconic Sequel Character: Antonio is a later addition to the cast who is often associated with some of its funniest episodes and Tony Shalhoub went on to have a brilliant career as both a comic and dramatic actor.
Recycled Script: The three Sandy Cooper episodes all followed the same basic template: Sandy comes to town, Joe freaks out and tries to tell everyone that she's crazy and obsessed with him but nobody believes him, the others finally get Joe to calm down only for Sandy to corner Joe alone somewhere and proceed to act out a fantasy scenario based on her delusions that she and Joe are in love with each other, Joe escapes but cannot convince anyone else what happened, then finally Sandy leaves, but on her way out, she makes a small comment to Joe indicating that she isn't finished with him yet.
Replacement Scrappy: Budd Bronski, the mechanic who replaced Lowell. He was criticized for essentially being the same character, and quietly dropped after a handful of appearances. Speculation abounds that the reason for his existence was because his episodes were written before Thomas Haden Church left for Ned & Stacey, and that he was essentially supposed to have been a placeholder character.
Retroactive Recognition:
Steven Levitan wrote 15 episodes. Levitan is best known as creator and executive producer of Just Shoot Me! and Stark Raving Mad and co-creator and co-executive producer of Modern Family.
Dave Hackel wrote 12 episodes. Hackel is best known as creator and executive producer of Becker
Mark Reisman also wrote 12 episodes. Reisman is best known as creator and executive producer of The Exes.
Michael Sardo also wrote 12 episodes. Sardo is best known as creator and executive producer of Fairly Legal.
Howard Gewirtz wrote ten episodes. Gewirtz is best known as creator and executive producer of Oliver Beene.
Christopher Lloyd wrote six episodes. Lloyd is also best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Modern Family.
Laura Innes (ER's Kerry Weaver) as Lowell's sweet, but slutty and perpetually unfaithful wife.
A young Matthew Fox plays a high school pitching phenom who almost misses a game because Joe refuses to land the plane he's on in a thick fog. Maybe if Joe had been piloting Oceanic Flight 815, things would've ended differently...
The Scrappy:
Casey. Some fans were able to appreciate what she brought to the ensemble, while others disliked her. Others feel she sucked at first, but got better once the writers ditched the spoiled rich girl persona and gave her an actual personality.
Alex, the character who preceded Casey, was not universally popular herself, as she was intended to be a strong career-minded woman, but in practice tended to come across as being completely stiff and humorless. Many fans also didn't like that she ended up in a relationship with Brian, when her personality seemed like a much better match for that of Joe. (Though in hindsight, the writers had a good reason for not putting her with Joe- it would have interfered with their plans to get Joe and Helen back together.) Additionally, many felt that her reasons for breaking up with Brian were petty and weak, note Specifically, Brian had been spending time with an old womanizing buddy of his, but hearing the guy say Brian was lucky to have Alex made him go back to her. She asked him if he wanted that life back again, and, when he hesitated in answering, took that as a "yes" and ended things. and her behavior toward him afterward (refusing to make any attempt to talk things out, then leaving in the middle of the night so he couldn't contact her again) was unnecessarily cold.
Soundtrack Dissonance: The DVD versions of both parts of "Joe Blows" retain the 1987 Paramount Television theme under the CBS Paramount Television logo due to a plaster error. The remaining episodes of the Season 5 DVD contain the correct music on the CBS Paramount logo.
Special Effect Failure:
Scenes taking place inside Antonio's cab often featured very obvious chroma keying, complete with jagged edges and blue screen reflections on the actor's faces.
Some scenes showing the plane in flight also used chroma keying and suffered this to a degree, but the blue sky made it less noticeable in those instances.
Unpopular Popular Character: Nobody else in the show could stand Carlton Blanchard, but fans loved him.
Values Dissonance: Joe follows Helen to New York after breaking his promise to leave her alone if she can swear that she loves Davis instead of him. He promptly corners her in an elevator and basically browbeats her into admitting that she loves him, ignoring her pleas that he leave alone—"It's just not going to work out!"—and basically further browbeats her into accepting his own proposal. None of this would fly in the #MeToo era.
With Friends Like These...: Almost everyone has their moment in this barrel, allowable for any sitcom, and seemingly premised in this one. But even with Joe's Woobie status, and even with his uptight and pushy nature, special mention should be made for Brian and Helen in the second Sandy Cooper episode. Joe has told them who this woman really is, and not only do they blow off his account, they set him up for a prank that reinforces him looking like the crazy one. Joe's own flaws and foibles aside, they completely dismiss his obvious fear?
The band with Paul McCartney:
Covered Up: The group's song "Girlfriend" is sometimes more recognized as a Michael Jackson song, although it was originally intended to be sung by him, so no surprises there. However, "Live and Let Die" made Paul's grandchildren think he was trying to be cool covering a Guns N' Roses song...
Harsher in Hindsight: Both of the songs Jimmy McCulloch wrote and sang for the band, "Medicine Jar" and "Wino Junko", carried strong anti-drug messages. After leaving the band, he would die of a drug overdose.
Misattributed Song:
The theme to Live and Let Die is often mistakenly attributed to The Beatles.
One classical pops Cover Album for the Beatles included "Mull of Kintyre"(!).
Many of the songs Paul did after leaving the Beatles, but before The Beatles Anthology, have a tendency to be attributed to Wings. It doesn't help that compilations make little distinction between Wings and Paul on his own; they all include songs from both "artists" regardless of what the focus of the compilation is supposed to be. All The Best! is officially a Paul McCartney album, but over half the songs are by Wings. Wingspan: Hits and History features quite a few songs which are Paul solo or Paul and Linda. Even Wings Greatest includes Paul solo and Paul & Linda.
Retroactive Recognition: Laurence Juber went on to solo success for his acoustic guitar work - including an album of Wings covers, natch - making Back To The Egg an example for his fans.
Ho Yay: Jack and David spend more time together on screen than they do with their supposed girlfriends. While most of it is just Values Dissonance in how men used to express their affection towards one another, it's easy for a modern audience to interpret their competitiveness over the same girl as a way to hide their feelings for each. The last scene in particular where Dave lies dying is just chock-full of sexual tension. Jack's holding him in his arms, they run their fingers through each other's hair, and they're so close to one another that when Jack flat-out kisses David on the side of his lips, it's not that big of a surprise. They also reaffirm in this scene that their friendship to each other is the most important thing they have.
Just Here for Godzilla: The story might not hold your attention as well as the skyborne action scenes and/or Clara Bow (aka The It Girl) can.
One-Scene Wonder: Future legend Gary Cooper gave a breakout performance in his cameo as Cadet White.
The web animation
Cliché Storm: Wings is a story about an outcast teenager who is bullied by everyone around her for her "special" trait (namely her wings). She, however, is destined for great things. Hoping to win respect from her hometown, Dawn runs off after she sees a comet crash in the mountain. This leads her on an adventure where she meets a boy and goes up against enemies.