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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 23, 2015 13:15:36 GMT
Episode 2x22 "Career Day"
If this episode doesn't involve a career day, I am going to feel betrayed.
Okay it involves a career day. And it takes place in Mr. Turner's class because what else are you gonna do in English class. But Cory's not excited! He's using his "this is about to shame the shit out of me" voice to remind Shawn (read as: the audience) that his father is a grocer. Alan gives the two boys a preview of his presentation, and it's looking quite grim. The first to present is Topanga's father, Jedediah, who has chosen to wear the Goron Tunic from Ocarina of Time today. Jedediah is annoyingly humble about his cool job of making guitars for famous musicians, and then plays a little bluegrass to really drive home his superiority over Allen, unintentional as it may be.
Alan goes next and he's all sweaty and nervous and fumbling with notecards. It's cringey, but it's supposed to be, so it works. This would probably be a good episode just with Alan's story, but they went ahead and gave us more. Shawn's father, Chet, shows up at the classroom's door and decides he's going to present next. Chet starts grandstanding and making up shit like inventing the microwave. I think this is the first time we've actually seen Shawn's father, so I'd like to comment on what a great actor this guy is. His name is Blake Clark and he's been all over Hollywood for decades. Most recently he voiced Slinky Dog in Toy Story 3 and played the billiards teacher on Community. He really brings an incredible charisma and fire to the character of Chet Hunter. The show never says it explicitly, but he's essentially a con artist.
You can't tell from the gif, but everyone except Shawn believes these wild stories, even Cory. Shawn, however, is not pleased.
At lunch, the Ericlogue begins as the man himself talks with his best bud Jason about their SAT prep course. Eric comments that he's so focused on studying that all his other senses have shut down. He proceeds to spill his soup onto his lap but doesn't notice (because his senses shut down). This makes the audience laugh for, and I'm not exaggerating, fifteen seconds. It's fifteen seconds without dialogue. Eric is just eating to the sound of laughter for fifteen seconds. It's pretty bad.
The camera pans over to the table where Cory and Shawn are eating, and then Chet shows up with the news that Shawn's mother has taken their trailer/home and run away, "this time for good". Chet says he has to chase after her, and Shawn storms off. This marks one of the few times in the series that Shawn's storming-off is actually justified.
At the Matthews house, signs of stress are continuing to manifest in Eric's behavior, causing him to rethink the idea of going to college altogether. Due to his shame and embarrassment from earlier in the day, Alan gives Eric the "Son, don't be like me" speech to motivate him to go to college. It's not an original father-son moment by any means, but they set it up well. I would be much less interested in this part of the story if we hadn't witnessed Alan's embarrassment first hand earlier in the episode. At the same time, he was juxtaposed with a hippie playing a guitar and a compulsive liar, neither of which is likely to have gone to college either. And surely Alan would know that Chet Hunter is as full of shit as his trailer's septic tank. So it's not quite on the mark, but still thorough and it's obvious that they put thought into it.
And then!!!!!!!!!!!! Something exciting happens. The next scene opens at Mr. Turner's apartment, where he and Ms. Kat Tompkins, his season-long romantic interest, are finishing up a a romantic dinner. Turner thinks it's about to be business time but Kat initiates the "where is this going?" conversation. Turner's got his "oh shit" face on, and is saved by a knock at the door. Our very own Shawn Hunter is here! Ms. Tompkins decides the moment is over and hits the road, while Turner invites Shawn in. They have a chat while Shawn eats some of the dinner's leftovers, and we learn that Shawn's staying at a shitty motel while his dad goes to search for his mom. Turner's being a real cool guy like "hey if you ever need anything, you can always stop by here", and turns his back for a second. Turning back around reveals an exhausted Shawn asleep on the couch.
This scene is so good you guys. If someone had only seen, say, the season premiere, and then watched this episode, this scene would look pretty stupid. But we know better, don't we! They've been steadily building up Turner as a father figure for Shawn for a while now, so this feels very natural. The dialogue is well written, both actors do a great job, and Shawn's trying his best not to show how shitty he's feeling, he's bottling it all up inside, and that's a big part of his character. In the past I've commented on the writers not building up to the big moments, and that sucked, but this time they got it right. Thank goodness.
The next day, Turner is at Feeny's house for some reason, and they're talking about what's happened with Shawn. Feeny advises Turner in a genuinely respectful way to be careful of the line between friend and authority figure. This is the first time Mr. Feeny truly talks to Turner as an equal, quite possibly because it is also the first time Feeny has seen what a good heart Turner really has. It's a wonderfully meaningful conversation.
Alan joins the two teachers outside for a moment, but then Amy calls him back in saying that Shawn's father has just arrived. Turner asks to come along for this conversation, since he'd like to add in a few choice comments for Chet.
Shawn, previously upstairs with Cory, (thinking about it, maybe Turner had just dropped Shawn off and went to talk to Feeny,) comes downstairs to join in the discussion. Unfortunately for Shawny Shawn, his old man's going back on the road to look for Mrs. Hunter, and has come to ask the Matthews parents if they'll watch Shawn. Of course they agree, and it's very reminiscent of that one scene from Fresh Prince, with Will's dad. If you don't know what I'm talking about, shame on you.
The first scene of this episode is readdressed, bringing us full circle, as Turner and Cory both point out to Alan that he's not just a grocer, he's a father. And a damn good one.
William Russ is so fucking perfect at playing a father, I can't even handle it.
During the credits Eric realizes there's a math section of the SAT and freaks out, launching a bunch of food onto Mr. Feeny. .....Didn't we already do a food bit........... Ugh.....
Plot: 1.0 - It's good! Shawn finally has a legitimate reason to be pissy. Showing up at Turner's apartment was well founded and believable. Now, this is the first time we've seen Chet. It might otherwise be hard to swallow the idea that he would just abandon his son like this, but the way he's been played since the very first scene really sells us on how irresponsible this guy is. I can't tell you how satisfying it is that the writers didn't just throw these big developments at us.
Character Development: 1.0 - Shawn and Turner? A+. Chet Hunter? A+. Alan? A+. Feeny too, for seemingly gaining more respect for Mr. Turner. Fuckin spot on here.
Humor: 0.5 - A lot of humor was sacrificed for emotion and plot, which is fine. The Ericlogue was supposed to serve as the primary source of laughter, but it just didn't work for me.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - This is a tough one, because the biggest real lesson here is learned by Alan, meaning that the target audience of this show won't internalize it as much. Either way, Alan learns that he isn't defined by his job. Everyone loves and respects him because of his kindness and his strong willingness to take care of the people close to him.
3.5 out of 4.0 - I don't think there were as many jokes as usual in this review, so sorry for that, but I definitely feel like there was a ton of analysis here. I guess I'm not sure why people read this blog, but hopefully it's a combination of both. Either way, thanks for reading, see you Friday for the finale of season 2!
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 23, 2015 13:16:04 GMT
Episode 2x23 "Home"
The first line of the episode is Cory saying "Come on Shawn, you've lived here three weeks and you've been in the bathroom two and a half of 'em," as he knocks on the bathroom door in the morning. A neat little way to immediately establish how much time has passed since the last episode. Eric's bothered by all this noise, as he's trying to study for the SAT. Looks like both plotlines are continuations from 2x22. As such, Eric's studying is still not going very well, and the test is in three days!
Downstairs, Morgan is having ice cream for breakfast as per Shawn's advice. I am genuinely shocked at how much better her delivery is here than it has been otherwise. Is ice cream the secret to good acting? Move over Stanislavski you old bastard, Ben and Jerry are runnin this shit.
Shawn comes downstairs and grabs some milk from the fridge, and drinks directly from the carton. Amy and Alan disapprove, but they don't want to give him a hard time about it, so Amy marks the carton with an "S", saying it's Shawn's milk now, but it's effectively a warning label for everyone else. Apparently this has been happening a lot.
My only question is what's the point of that can of soda marked with an S? Are you supposed to share cans of soda in the Matthews house? What's more, who the fuck has ever finished an already open can of soda? Just thinking about flat soda makes me gag.
Next, Amy shows Shawn that she's patched all the holes in his deliberately hole-y jeans, and she's bought him a new hoodie the color of honey mustard. He is clearly unhappy, but doesn't want to be ungrateful since she's granting him asylum in her home. Cory comes downstairs in the same jacket that Shawn has just been given, only Cory loves his and thinks it's cool that they'll be wearing the same jacket. The first four minutes of this episode have been extremely in-your-face about how completely out-of-his-element Shawn is.
Pictured: Shawn's element
Later, at school, we see a little "the night after" flirting between Jonathan Turner and Kat Tompkins in the only hallway in the school. Ms. Tompkins, who apparently left some article of underwear at Turner's place, is wearing her bolo tie again, which, like last time, I'm not happy about. She goes somewhere else and is replaced by Feeny in the role of conversation partner. The camera pans over to Shawn who has cut the sleeves off of his honey mustard jacket. Cory tries to understand why Shawn would mutilate such a wonderful piece of clothing, and Shawn's like "look I'm just tryin not to lose my fuckin mind here" and stomps off. Shawn's really had a lot of dramatic exits lately. I hope people don't do that in real life.
Mr. Turner overhears this exchange from a distance because high school hallways are known for being quiet enough for that to happen. Like, if Mr. Turner actually heard that, then everyone in the hallway must have heard it too. But they don't even move, they just keep silently reading their notebooks. Who the hell studies in a hallway? Why am I being so critical today? Did I just rhyme on purpose?
After Shawn makes his exit, Turner turns from Feeny to remind Cory that he's available if the boys ever need help with this situation. And now Feeny reminds Turner to be careful of crossing that line between authority figure and pal. It's five minutes in now and we've been reminded of all the positions and dynamics that were established in 2x22, so we can start to move forward. Personally, I think this is infinitely more effective than a "Previously, on Boy Meets World..." at the beginning. Good work.
The first step in our forward motion is Turner pointing out that Feeny is full of it.
I just noticed that I wrote "Mattews" instead of "Matthews" in the gif, but I'm going to leave it that way for two reasons. First, that's how Turner pronounces it anyway. Second, I ain't no bitch.
That evening in the Matthews kitchen, Eric and his best friend Jason have just finished a round of practice SATs. Eric got a comically bad score. Jason points out that Eric's practice scores keep dropping because he's overworked and stressed out.
That is honestly one of my favorite jokes from this show. No surprise that it comes from Eric and Jason. A more obvious punchline would have been "...what score would I need for that?" or "... well I would look good with a red nose..." or something like that. Those aren't funny at all, but that's what I was expecting. "Is that a four year school" strikes that delicate balance between realistic and unpredictable that's necessary for any really good joke. Add in their perfect facial expressions and Will Friedle's godly timing, and we've got a real masterpiece of a joke.
Jason tries to convince his best friend to get some sleep, but Eric insists that he just needs fresh air and bolts out to the backyard. Defeated, Jason goes home. Mr. Feeny shows up and, sympathetic to Eric's plight, strikes a deal with him. The three super top secret keys to doing well on the SAT in exchange for Eric's diligent help with yardwork over the next couple days.
Later that night, Cory is awoken by the howls of a stray dog "down on the corner", just like the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, and discovers Shawn seated at the bedroom window looking introspective as fuck. They have a pretty depressing conversation about how Shawn envies the stray dog's freedom. Cory starts preaching about rules and Shawn's like "screw the rules I have green hair" and escapes through the window with an expectedly dramatic flourish. This picture is just where I randomly paused the video to type this paragraph, but it's actually a really good shot so I want to throw it in.
The next scene fades in on Turner's apartment where Kat Tompkins and Turner himself are an intimate distance away from each other on the couch. We had a similar scene in the previous episode, and Kat said something like "we've been dating for three months, is this going somewhere?" Now bear in mind that Cory mentioned at the beginning that three weeks have passed. In this scene, Kat says "We've been together now for four months."
Just like last time, Shawn saves Turner from the commitment conversation when he shows up at the door. Only this time, he's been escorted by a police officer. Apparently Shawn and some other rapscallions were going to do some graffiti at the school, and when the cop chased him down he said he was staying at Turner's. Turner decides to go along with the lie and invites his student in, which sends Ms. Tompkins off, but for good this time. Mr. Turner has effectively committed to taking care of Shawn in favor of committing to Kat. That really says a lot about this guy.
Even more of Turner's character is on display as he turns on his you-better-fucking-listen-to-me voice and really lays into Shawn for all the stupid shit he's been doing. As always, it's fantastic.
They both cool off, though, and Shawn ends up staying over. I don't understand why they decided to do this scene twice. It was much more powerful the first time they did it, in 2x22, mostly because it was the first time. The scene in 2x22 didn't even impact the story, really. If this was believable in 2x22, then it also would have been believable (and much more powerful) if this scene were the first time. That sentence was difficult to word. Did that make sense? The point is, Shawn was vulnerable when he went to Turner in 2x22, this time he just got arrested because he decided to be an idiot. If they'd switched those around somehow, or just not done it in 2x22 and saved the vulnerability for this episode, it could have been fantastically amazing.
The next day, Turner brings Shawn to the Matthews house. Cory and Shawn go upstairs while the adults talk in the kitchen. In a miracle of convenience, Shawn's father, Chet, calls their landline from a payphone near Georgia, and Amy puts him on speaker phone. Amy and Alan express their concerns about continuing to take care of Shawn, but Chet tells everyone that he's not coming back any time soon and then points out that Shawn is probably eavesdropping. And indeed he is. Feeling the pain of being unwanted, Shawn yells "I don't need any of you!" and runs upstairs. The Matthews parents follow him up to console him, but Mr. Turner correctly guesses Shawn's plan to bail out of Cory's window. That's a bold guess since Turner shouldn't have any idea which side of the house Cory's room is in, but it works out, and he intercepts Shawn as he drops from the second story.
And FINALLY, this story arc comes to fruition as Jonathan Turner offers to let Shawn live with him after the two engage in a very well written and emotional dialogue.
During the credits, Feeny reveals the three SAT secrets to Eric: get a good night's sleep, clear your mind, and trust yourself. Not exactly the kind of secrets Eric was expecting and hoping for, but solid advice nonetheless. I doubt anyone reading this will ever be taking the SAT again, but there ya go.
OKAY. So let's break this one down. What exactly happened in this episode that didn't happen in 2x22?
Here's the abridged version: Eric struggles to study for the SAT, Cory's in the background trying to support Shawn, Chet is gone, Shawn has a hard time and stays with Turner for a night after interrupting a date, and Turner acts as a father figure. By the end, Eric feels better about the SAT, Cory thinks Shawn is going to be okay, Chet announces that he's going to be gone even longer, Shawn finds a place to stay, and Turner further solidifies his fatherliness.
That describes both episodes. The only real differences were Alan's existential crisis in 2x22 and the fact that Shawn goes with Turner at the end of this one, having gone with Cory in 2x22. They're almost exactly the same, and I already talked about repeating that scene at Turner's apartment, which is definitely the biggest problem I have with this episode.
I really think something happened behind the scenes with either time constraints or budget issues. They're just way too similar. If they really wanted to make it two episodes, they should have focused more on Alan in 2x22, had Shawn stay with Cory and skip the scene at Turner's apartment, then focus on Shawn and Turner in this one.
But that's not to say this is a bad episode. It's a great episode. It's just that it's great for the exact same reasons 2x22 was great.
(I have more to say after the badges. Keep scrolling.)
Plot: 1.0 - See 2x22.
Character Development: 1.0 - See 2x22. And we got a little extra Feeny+Eric time here.
Humor: 1.0 - The Ericlogue was once again the main source of humor, but it was much better this time.
Life Lesson: 0 - There wasn't really a lesson this time. Which is weird. It was a touching conclusion, very emotional, but did we actually learn anything? Doesn't seem like it.
Damn that was long.
3.0 out of 4.0
And there you have it. That's the end of season 2. It absolutely breaks my heart to say this, but this is the last episode with Jason Marsden. His last line was "I'm going home." Poetic. On the other hand, this is also the last episode with Lily Nicksay as Morgan. I'm sure Ms. Nicksay is a fine actress these days, she was simply too young for this role, and that's the management's fault anyway. Also, HOLY CRAP! WE FINISHED SEASON 2! What a drastic improvement over season 1, my reviews and the show. There's a solid amount of loyal readers out there, and I want you guys to know that you're awesome and I love your comments, upvotes, likes, and tweets. All that shit. That shit rules. Let's celebrate.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:47:23 GMT
Episode 3x01 "My Best Friend's Girl" As you can see, the only fundamental design change was on the plot badge, which is now a quill and ink pot. I wanted to make the life lesson badge an owl's head since owls are wise and stuff, that's why they usually roll cleric or ranger, but modeling an owl's head in 3D is... daunting, to say the least. Maybe next season. ARITE. Cory shows up at Turner's apartment to rendezvous with his best buddy Shawn before school. They've replaced Rider Strong with some new actor, lemme check Wikipedia real quick here... Nope, no, that's still Rider Strong. The hell happened to his hair? Turner's got a Mona Lisa fridge magnet there, as well as what appears to be a giant Magic The Gathering card on the left, while Shawn's in the foreground eating the most anorexic pizza I've ever seen and wearing that weird Atlas-with-an-apple shirt he wore a bunch of times in season 2. Visually captivating. Lots to see here. In the remainder of this scene we learn that Topanga's coming back from her summer trip today, Cory's going to ask her to be his girlfriend even though he's nervous about it, and Shawn and Turner are co-habitating with reasonable success. Cool, we've filled in all the holes between season 2 and this episode. Then Shawn goes to school in his pajama pants and bathrobe, pictured below. Fantastic, we've got a goal (Cory wants Topanga) and an obstacle to overcome (he's nervous). His hair looks like earmuffs. Like grungey Princess Leia. Does that make Cory Luke or Han? What about Feeny, is Feeny Obi Wan or Vader? We're at school the next day and there's been a slight change to the only hallway in the school. A door in the background previously led to the gymnasium, but it's now a stairwell. "Riveting, ConfidenceKBM. Absolutely riveting." Thanks. Cory spends a little time trying to go talk to Topanga, but he can't quite find the courage. "Why," you ask? Well it's a little different from all those times before. This isn't just a date, this is that serious business "let's date for the foreseeable future" stuff. The camera pans over to Eric on the other side of the only hallway in the school, using a staple-gun to staple both a flier and his shirt-sleeve to a bulletin board. In particular, it's a flier for the film society's presentation of Paint Your Wagon, a cowboy musical of some sort. Mr. Feeny approaches Eric since this is... sigh... the only hallway in the school... FUCK IT LET'S ABBREVIATE IT "TOHITS" FROM NOW ON. Eric asks Feeny to remind him why exactly he agreed to be president of the film society, which as always is merely a device to inform the audience. Our esteemed principal explains that this position will look good on a college application. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to perhaps the most compelling character arc in the series. Eric wants to get into college and Mr. Feeny wants to help him. You may have also noticed that Eric's hair is longer than the last two seasons, and I glossed over the fact that he stapled his shirt to the wall, so I've prepared this handy graph to help everybody at home follow along. Cory flubs another attempt at asking Topanga to be his girlfriend, and then once more after class starts. (Topanga mentioned in passing in the hallway that they all the same classes again.) This episode soaks up a lot of time with these attempts, but they're actually entertaining. It's almost a guarantee that this type of situation is going to be cringey and awkward on a television show, but Ben Savage works some sort of voodoo magic here to make it really genuine and not awkward at all. It's just uniquely easy to watch, I'm amazed. At lunch, some random students give Eric a hard time about showing a lame movie like Paint Your Wagon, but Frankie and Joey approach Eric and offer to sell out the show for him in exchange for part of the profits. Eric declines, but Joey isn't going to take no for an answer. Meanwhile, the mime club traps Frankie the Enforcer in a box, "again". Now we see Cory looking sad at his lunch table when Topanga comes up to him to figure out why he's being fucking weird. He finally asks her out (REMEMBER THAT THIS HAPPENED), but she reveals that she's going out with someone else on Friday. This mystery man turns out to be none other than Shawn Judas Hunter. That critical development is put on pause as the next scene opens on Mr. Turner's apartment and we meet a new recurring character. Turner's buddy Eli has just come over after a job interview to hang out and bro around and stuff. Cory shows up to confront Shawn Benedict Arnold Hunter about asking Topanga on a date. Eli and Turner tell the boys about the Bro Code and joke about some college exploits, and eventually Cory leaves without moving the plot at all. Nothing substantial comes out of this scene, it's just giving us a taste of Eli's personality and showing us how he'll be interacting with the other characters from now on. 90% of the punchlines in this scene are from Eli. They really want to convince us that he's a good addition to the cast. I remember reading an interview with Rider Strong where he said something related to this, and I managed to find it for you guys: "They only brought [Turner] in because Friends became a hit. And ABC was like, 'We need twentysomethings on every show. Including on this kids’ show that’s only watched by teenagers.' And, remember, they had him and they had the character of Eli, who was the black young teacher. And they were going to have this whole twentysomething storyline. I don’t know what they were thinking, but it was a complete disaster. It didn’t work at all." Source: ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/59026184.html#ixzz2v2iMa1CRHarsh. So Rider is not a fan of this development. We'll have to keep that in mind as we go forward. As an aside, I want to say how awesome it is that I just used my extensive knowledge of Rider Strong interviews for something productive. At home, Eric teases Cory about Shawn going out with Topanga. I'm not sure how he found out. Eric manages to squeeze out a few seconds of sincerity though, and advises his little brother to go to Topanga's best friend for more information. Meet Trini (pronounced tree-knee), Topanga's best friend for the next season or two. Cory has invited her out to Chubbie's to talk instead of doing something stupid like calling her on the phone. I was watching this and thought "you know, they've got this actress all clowned up for this role, but I bet she's reasonably attractive out of character." Sure enough, Trini is played by the late Brittany Murphy, who I suppose must be the most famous person to come out of this show, at least until Adam Scott got on Parks and Rec. Topanga and Shawn Et Tu Brute Hunter arrive at Chubbie's, prompting Cory to ask Trini on a date to that film society movie, the same place Shawnpanga are going. I don't think I can justify this. Is Cory trying to make Topanga jealous? A stranger would be better for that... I don't know. Whatever the opposite of surprise is, that's how I felt when Eric, Joey, and Frankie also showed up at Chubbie's. The thugs take Eric to the side room with the pool table to discuss the finances of the Paint Your Wagon event. A Reservoir Dogs joke! I didn't know this existed! Fantastic. So Joey is Edward Bunker and *spoilers* dies pretty early in the movie, and Frankie is Quentin Tarantino. Fun. Why isn't Joey Mr. Blonde? Whatever, it's the thought that counts. So yeah, the Reservoir Dogs here managed to sell out the showing of Paint Your Wagon. Blake Sennett has given a seriously commanding performance in this episode. You can practically hear him in that gif, the delivery is just spot on. I remember saying this at the beginning of season 2, but Frankie and Joey fucking rule. The last scene of this episode is at the movie event. It's pretty pointless, and after the movie ends Cory and Topanga hash things out and they become a couple. Like we didn't see that coming. During the credits, Trini and Shawn reveal that this was all an elaborate scheme to motivate Cory to confess to Topanga. I'm sorry, WHAT? Cory explicitly asked her out at the 8 and a half minute mark! Granted, Shawn had already made the date with Topanga by then, but CORY ASKED HER OUT. THAT WAS THE END GOAL. When life hands you lemons, you don't say "No thanks, I already planted some lemon seeds so I'll just wait for the lemons to grow instead." YOU TAKE THE LEMONS. BECAUSE YOU WANTED LEMONS AND YOU GOT THEM. YOU DON'T NEED TO WORK FOR THE LEMONS ANYMORE. WHY DID TOPANGA INSIST ON GOING THROUGH WITH THIS DECEPTION? The worst part is that Cory asking her out at 8 and a half minutes wasn't even necessary. Topanga could have mentioned that she was going out with Shawn in a hundred other ways. Ways that wouldn't have completely destroyed the resolution of the plot. The double worst part is that this could have been really interesting! If Shawn had genuinely asked Topanga on a date since she's "hot" now (his words, not mine), that would have opened up some compelling explorations of the friendship between Shawn and Cory. At no point in the duration of the series do the two boys ever sincerely chase the same girl. When has that ever happened in real life? What pair of heterosexual male friends in high school was never attracted to the same girl? That would have been a great episode. What's more, it could be founded on the life lesson of "if you don't ask her/him out, someone else will," which is really a great lesson for young adults. It's heartbreaking how much potential this episode had at the halfway mark, but we ended up with an entirely predictable conclusion, albeit an important one. Plot: 0.25 - Could have been good. Wasn't. See above. Character Development: 1.0 - Cory and Topanga are together together. That's... about as important as it gets. Also Eric has transitioned toward his dopey heart of gold rather than the first two seasons' preppy ladies' man. Humor: 1.0 - Cory's fumbled confessions to Topanga miraculously managed to be funny instead of awkward. Eric, Frankie, and Joey were fantastic. The writers definitely gave Eli too many jokes for his first appearance, but they were still pretty funny. Life Lesson: 0 - "Lie to your friends until they start dating." 2.25 out of 4.0 with two badges, and I'm gonna go ahead and slap down a Reservoir Dogs Bonus Badge because that movie is amazing and I loved Joey's delivery. Mmmm those shiny new badges. I'm learning a lot of new skills because of this blog.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:47:38 GMT
Episode 3x02 "The Double Lie"
Cory and Shawn are getting their schadenfreude on as they spectate an aggressive breakup between a cute girl in a beret and some jock in a letter jacket named Dennis . He looks like the kinda guy that woulda copied my homework in high school, so I say good riddance.
Shawn swoops in and sets up a date with the newly available Veronica Watson, even though his shirts are so loud that Helen Keller could both see and hear them. Shortly after, a herd of thirsty guys stampede into the hallway to try to ask her out, but they're too late. One of them is wearing overalls, I don't know what the hell he thought was gonna happen. You gotta wonder what it's like to live like that, to be one of those people who's only ever single for like a week at a time. Doesn't sound like fun to me, but what do I know.
But wait! Cory reminds Shawn that Mr. Turner is going to be out of town that weekend (during Shawn's scheduled date), and that Shawn will be staying with him. This is a problem since Shawn Hugh Hefner Hunter is going to want to get to second base with Veronica Watson, and Cory's parentally supervised living room is not the place to do it. So the boys resolve to convince Mr. Turner not to go out of town.
Compelling as that argument may be, Mr. Turner remains steadfast. Later, in the hallway, Mr. Feeny reminds Turner that he'll be late to the staff meeting on Monday morning due to a dentist appointment. It comes out of nowhere, and it's not nearly as funny as the audience thinks it is, but it'll probably be important later.
Refer back to the Eric Graph of Destiny from 3x01's review. So Eric's gotta write a term paper for Mr. Feeny on the Manhattan Project, or else fail a class. As far as history term papers go that's probably the best subject you're ever gonna get, so it's hard to sympathize. Even though that's a totally cool thing to learn about, Eric decides to order a term paper from Term Papers By Gerard. Further, Eric completely neglected to inform his little brother that Topanga called about something important earlier. Cory's not pleased, but Eric slaps down some wisdom with one of the most widely known lines from this series.
Shawn shows up and they waste some time making a few lame jokes. We skip ahead to night time and see Shawn trying to make his way to boob town with Veronica Watson on the Matthews' living room couch. This is a sitcom, so Murphy's Law is in full swing. Everyone in the universe interrupts Shawn's date, and it's really... just... dumb... It's two and a half minutes of poorly written fluff that you would expect from a bad show. It's just cheap. It's cheap writing. Watch the scene if you don't believe me, there's absolutely no substance here.
Eventually it's Matthews-family-curfew-o'clock, so Alan drives Veronica Watson home. Shawn's pubescent libido is in juggernaut mode, so he decides to sneak out to go make out with Veronica Watson some more. I have no idea how he gets to her home or how the pair then get to Turner's apartment, but that's what happens.
Now we see Turner's contribution to the title of this episode. When Shawn turns on the lights in the apartment, he finds Mr. Turner very much not out of town, and very much next to his blonde date. It's not Ms. Tompkins, but it does look like her. I guess he's got a type. Turner's lady friend takes Veronica Watson home while Turner lays into Shawn for sneaking out of the Matthews house. Shawn initially apologizes and feels guilty, but then calls Turner out on his blatant lie about going out of town.
So the two argue a little more and it's really just intended to show the audience how Turner's inexperience really does affect this arrangement. It's cool that the showrunners didn't decide to bullshit us here. There's no way Turner would be able to do this without fucking up sometimes, so it's good that this happened pretty early on.
The argument ends with (you guessed it) Shawn storming off. Turner assumes Shawn is going to go to Cory's house and goes after him. Through some form of sorcery, Shawn manages to get to the Matthews house before Turner does. When he does arrive, though, Turner approaches through the backyard because who even cares about this story anymore. In doing so, Mr. Feeny comes out onto his porch like "dude what are you doing here" and then a woman calls Mr. Feeny back inside because his viagra should be kicking in soon. The woman is his dentist. Mr. Feeny is going to be late to the staff meeting on Monday because he'll be banging his dentist all weekend. I am not embellishing that for the sake of comedy. That is what's going on.
Smug British bastard.
Anyway Alan invites Turner inside and they learn that Shawn is once again magically ahead of them and has already come and gone. Alan gives his worst speech of the entire series about how you can never truly be ready to be a father. It's not only shallow and poorly written, but it's also barely relevant. Raising your own child from infancy is not the same as taking care of a troubled teenager. Just more fluff in an already flufftastic episode.
Well it's time to try to find Shawn again, and indeed Turner does find him back at their apartment. Turner apologizes for lying to Shawn about going out of town, Shawn agrees to respect Turner's private life, and everything is copacetic again.
During the credits Feeny tricks Eric into admitting that he ordered a term paper from Term Papers By Gerard. They're both fairly nonchalant about plagiarism and literally failing a class.
Okay. Well, this was a complete disaster. I felt bad writing this review because there was almost nothing to talk about. This entire episode could have been compressed into about 5 minutes. They wasted an astonishing amount of time on failed jokes and fuckin chasing Shawn back and forth across town. It wasn't a bad episode, just mindless and forgettable. What was the "double lie" anyway? Turner lied to Shawn, but Shawn didn't lie to anyone. All he did was break curfew and try to get his rocks off. Perhaps the biggest tragedy to come out of this is the fate of the actress behind Veronica Watson, Erin J. Dean. She was actually really good in this episode. Her delivery was probably the best we've seen from a one-off girl since the beginning of the series, despite being almost entirely inexperienced before landing this role. She's clearly a natural talent but never managed to find much work after this. Maybe she just didn't enjoy it.
Plot: 0.25 - I love the idea of exploring the consequences of Turner's lack of experience and preparation. That's a great place to start a story. But that occupied maybe 20% of this episode's screen time. It's mostly empty.
Character Development: 1.0 - Shawn and Turner do manage to make some progress with their living arrangement and Mr. Turner starts to feel a little more comfortable.
Humor: 0.25 - I always say this, but a lot of this show's best humor comes from the chemistry between Shawn and Cory. That's the direction they tried to go with for this one, but they landed pretty far off the mark. Here's the template of every joke in this episode: Shawn: *something stupid* Cory: "Shawn, you just said something stupid." *cue audience* If you've ever watched this show, you know what I'm taking about.
Life Lesson: 0 - It's okay to be late to staff meetings as long as you're fucking your dentist.
1.5 out of 4.0
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:48:02 GMT
Episode 3x03 "What I Meant To Say"
Cory and Topanga are playing pool in the back room at Chubbie's. He's puppeteering her to teach her how to shoot, but he sort of spazzes out and they make a big mess with the cue, including ripping up part of the felt (it's covering the orange ball on the left), which I'm pretty sure was unintentional based on how the actors nonchalantly try to cover it up afterward.
There is some very, very serious innuendo in what just happened. Look at that picture. Look at their faces. The writers must have done that on purpose, it's too perfect.
So next they fumble around at darts, Cory gives Topanga his denim jacket, and then he gets caught up on the moment and tells her he loves her. She makes a face like a deer in headlights and decides that it's time to leave. At school the next day, Cory tells the story to his best buddy Shawn. Shawn is not happy.
It looks like Shawn is talking there, but he's just making choking noises because his entire world has been shattered. According to Shawn, once word gets out about what Cory's done, every girl at school is going to want to hear it from their boyfriends. This idea is corroborated by Eric's reaction to the news.
Oh Will Friedle. You are so amazing. That's Eric's one-off girlfriend Christie, played by Anastasia Horne. The most noteworthy thing she's done since this role was playing "Preppy Bride" in some Renee Zellweger movie in '99. So... that should tell you what you need to know. So now Eric's gotta figure out how he's going to tell Christie that he loves her.
Later that day, Cory has somehow procured a bouquet of flowers for Topanga, but Shawn tackles Cory to prevent the exchange. Our vest-clad hero thinks Cory should wait for Topanga to come to him, and gives away Cory's flowers to some jock passing by.
Turner's pal Eli just finished an interview with Mr. Feeny to become the new Media Arts teacher at John Adams High, after accidentally stealing Feeny's coffee earlier that morning. We see Eli exiting from a door labeled "Principal's Office" at the end of this hallway near the telephone, which is usually where a bathroom is located. So the gym became stairs, the bathroom is Feeny's office, and Turner's classroom is simultaneously Feeny's classroom. Good.
That's good.
Eli's interview, however, was not very good.
I don't know why I didn't talk about it before, but Eli is played by Alex Désert, who's actually kind of a boss. He had a recurring role on Becker for its entire run, and he played MOTHAFUCKIN NICK FURY on the Avengers cartoon between 2010 and 2012. He voiced the character portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson. That's awesome. Hey Rider Strong, do YOU share a character with Samuel L. Jackson? YOU MAD, SON?
So Eli and Turner go to Turner's classroom to talk things over and vent and Eli's backstory is revealed. He was a hard hitting investigative journalist, but got fired for his unwillingness to report on meaningless bullshit that most news stations like to show. Nice social commentary.
This is Turner's basis for claiming that Eli really deserves to get this job, to which he replies "Not after that session in hell with Mr. Mustache." WOAAAAAAAAAH WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. I mean, obviously I don't give a single fuckin god damn about bull shit profanity, but that's edgy for ABC.
Anyway Feeny shows up says Eli got the job and that he "starts on Monday". Wait what? Who's going to enroll in his class? We're like three or four weeks into the first semester. Whatever. I definitely don't have a problem with this character yet. I'm enjoying his screen time. Although, we are seeing very little of Alan so far this season. It's entirely possible that the showrunners decided to forego Alan's involvement in favor of Eli's and Turner's dynamics, in which case I agree with Rider that that was a bad idea.
We jump to the cafeteria where Shawn says "Yes Cory, absolutely. When it comes to affairs of the heart, I am king".... in French... And we get one of the most peculiar lines in the whole series.
Where on earth did that come from? This is the only episode (past and future) where that's ever even hinted at. There's nothing wrong with it, it's a funny line and the randomness of it adds to that, but it's just... It's weird. It's bizarre. Right? Why did they include that? If anything, Eric is the idiot savant on this show. In the long time that I've been a fan of Boy Meets World, that line has always tickled the back of my mind. It's just odd.
Topanga comes up to Cory and straight dumps his ass and parts with a pity cheek kiss. That's something they do a lot on this show. The women in the Boy Meets World universe are very prone to pity cheek kisses, something I've never witnessed nor experienced. Maybe it's a New England thing.
Anyway, Cory and Shawn go to Turner's class room to try to figure things out. I guess this is just where people go to talk about their problems today. Shawn needs more information, so he has Cory re-enact that night at Chubbie's with himself as the role of Topanga.
That might be the best "the main characters are gay" joke I've ever seen on television. Shawn handing off those flowers earlier seemed completely insignificant, but they brought it back on us brilliantly. The jock's face is absolutely priceless. And it's not insulting! How many gay jokes on sitcoms aren't insulting or derogatory these days? Modern Family does a good job, but that's about it. The point is, that was hysterical and I love it.
Turner brings Eli into the class to introduce him and be like "this is my best friend, don't be a dick to him."
Eli tells the students about how the media is full of shit and that searching for truth is important. It's pretty inspired. I'd definitely sign up for his class after that.
At the Matthews house, Cory tells his mother that he "went to far with Topanga." She thinks they had sex, and they do a bit, and it's actually pretty funny. Eric comes home with Christie and we see just how whipped he's become since using the L word.
Now Cory's at Chubbie's looking sad. Turner and Eli show up to grab some food because where else would they go. Eli ends up advising Sad Cory to go get the truth from Topanga, a la journalism, so he's sort of coming full circle in this episode. The writers are really trying to make us like Eli. This is definitely harder than they pressed Turner at the beginning of season 2. But like I've said, I'm okay with it so far. He's a great actor and is genuine and not stereotyped at all.
Finally, Cory climbs through Topanga's window at night because that's an okay thing to do. I'm actually not sure what set this is. It doesn't look like anything we've seen before, and it's pretty elaborate. Cory's like "what the fuck is going on" and Topanga's like "I was scared of these feelings since we're so young" and Cory claims that he's been in love with her since he was 6 and fuck the police. That is the most famous of Boy Meets World's many retcons, but we just have to live with it. Topanga says she loves him too and we're done.
It actually might just be Cory's room with different wallpaper.
Okay so what was the point of this? Well Cory and Topanga are in love, and that's important. But what about Eric and Shawn? I think the theme of this one is just the general danger of saying "I love you". On the other hand, that's a fairly mature message, right, it's talking about the adult version of "I love you". High school kids say that to each other after dating for like a week, so the writers may have slightly over estimated their audience on this one.
Plot: 0.25 - Maybe I'm just too jaded to understand it, but "I'm scared of my feelings"? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh....
Character Development: 1.0 - Eli moves on up, Cory and Topanga are in love.
Humor: 1.0 - Tons of good stuff from everybody, especially the part with the flowers. A few misfires too, but that's okay.
Life Lesson: 0.75 - It's important to know the consequences of telling someone you love them, but trying to tell that to adolescents is like yelling at a wall to convince it that it should be ice cream instead of a wall.
3.0 out of 4.0. Definitely worth watching just for the humor. Regarding the title of this episode, what did he mean to say?
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:48:26 GMT
Episode 3x04 "He Said, She Said"
Mr. Feeny's got some fruit/gift baskets. He explains to Eli that these baskets are from seniors, trying to bribe Feeny into writing better letters of recommendation for them. Has any college ever asked for a recommendation for undergraduate study? How could that possibly be worth anything? Whatever.
I will never understand these students' compulsion to hangout and study next to that big trash can behind Eli. Most of the time somebody's leaning on it. Baffling.
The esteemed principal strolls into Turner's classroom, presumably minutes before class starts as only a few students are seated, and informs Mr. Turner that Shawn Hunter missed his history exam that morning. Cory claims that Shawn's absence is due to being sick with "Hong Kong Sloth". Somehow Turner sees through Cory's deception, stating "That's it" as he walks out of the class, and then it cuts to him walking into his apartment to confront Shawn. Am I crazy or is that really irresponsible? He was about to teach a class. I always tell myself that Turner did a good job dealing with Shawn, but that... that wasn't good.
Anyway, Turner is tired of Shawn's shit and tells him he has to see a guidance counselor the next morning. Shawn is not on board with this plan.
Hey look, Shawn's hair isn't an abomination anymore. That's a relief.
This is good though, the most we've seen of Shawn this season is when he was trying to get to second base with that girl. Looks like we've got something more interesting here.
The next morning, Shawn and Cory meet the new guidance counselor, a perky woman in her 30s, played by an actress that I looked up but then forgot her name because she didn't do anything else. Her office was Feeny's office in the previous episode, and a bathroom in season 2. Where does the school find the budget for these renovations. And hey, the payphone is gone! Dammit, Boy Meets World.
Meanwhile, Eric approaches our old boy Griffin Hawkins and his trusty sidekick Frankie the Enforcer to purchase some stolen Feeny-stationary, the kind he uses to write letters of recommendation. Eric asks where they got it and Frankie answers "Let's just say it fell off a truck." The audience sort of half-laughs at that, it's pretty weak, and then this is never mentioned again. It's a bizarre sort of joke to make, I mean, did it actually fall off a truck? That sounds like the kind of thing that leads into "No, really, where?" "It fell off a truck." Or maybe it's a reference to a movie...? I dunno. It's odd.
I already loved Griff, but this just exchange just cemented it. He's a better thug than Harley in every way, and obviously a better actor. That's strangely relevant though, since Joey the Rat runs up and pulls Frankie aside to tell him that Harley is planning to bust out of his reform school and come back to John Adams High. Joey learned this while he was "surfing the internet, verbally pounding people", and he got a message from Harley. So there you have it folks. Joey the Rat invented internet trolling. I'm honestly stunned that the writers had the insight for that sort of joke all the way back in 1995. Awesome. Regardless, the two lackeys realize that only bad things can come from their former leader meeting their current leader.
Now we're privy to Shawn's meeting with the new guidance counselor. He explains that he's feeling lost, and the counselor's counseling contains the story of her trip to Europe to "find herself". Shawn's wearing that weird Atlas holding up an apple shirt again. I know it seems weird that I keep mentioning that, but he's honestly worn it like ten times now. That's unusual, for any show.
Back in the hallway it's Feeny+Eli again. Eli says his students wanted Mr. Feeny to narrate some of their video projects and Feeny agrees. I guess it'll be important later because it's not even remotely interesting to watch. The camera pans over to Frankie and Joey discussing how they've alerted Harley's reform school to his plan to pull a Shawshank Redemption, but it's too late. Harley's already broken out.
That is probably the funniest thing Frankie's ever said. He's talking to Joey, if that's not clear, saying "let's review this foolproof plan of yours." Witty. It's interesting how binary these guys are. Most of their jokes so far this episode haven't landed, but then other times like this it's just spot on. I think they're always at their best when they're being witty, like in 3x01 when they were selling tickets. Also, it's great to see the original Harley again. If you'll recall, they tried to give us that shitty replacement Hollister model Harley for an episode, and everybody in the studio knew it didn't work. It's good to have our boy back. Anyway, Joey's pager (required in the Griff administration) goes off, alerting Harley to the existence of their new leader, and the greasy haired man wants blood. It's kind of adorable, honestly, that he's so protective of his old lackeys.
Somehow, Shawn has arranged a rendezvous with his best friend at Chubbie's at five in the morning. It's obviously nonsense but there's no reason to dwell on it. Shawn explains his plan to run away to Europe, Cory tries to talk him out of it, but as you should know by now, that's never gonna work.
Back at the Matthews house, Eric is finishing up his forged letter of recommendation on the black market stationary. There's some really forced humor that doesn't stick at all, and then Alan rips up his son's forgery. Is that the end of that plotline? Why did Eric want the letter in the first place? What college has he even considered applying to? It's hilarious that Griff is running a black market for this stuff, but Eric doesn't really have any use for it right now. They probably wanted to do it later in the season, but this is the last episode with Griff for whatever reason, so I guess it was now or never.
In the hallway at school, Eli informs Feeny that the students have chosen Eli to do the voiceover for their projects, instead of Feeny. The principal is heartbroken and then they walk away from each other. And that's it. That's the end of that story. "Hey Feeny do some voiceover. Nah, I'm doin it instead." The writers felt like that was an okay thing to do. It wasn't funny or even relevant to anything at all. *scratches head* I dunno guys.
Cory runs into Turner's class to tell him Shawn's Stupid Shit Of The Day. Turner queries the guidance counselor and learns about her Europe story and puts 2 and 2 together. Even though Cory already knew everything. So that was unnecessary.
Finally the time has come for the high noon showdown between Harley Keiner and Griffin Hawkins, while Frankie and Joey watch in nail biting suspense. The two ringleaders have some comic book-esque witty banter, including the first direct insult toward Harley's bizarre grammar. I'm glad someone finally said something. Harley orders Frankie to commit an act of battery against Griff, but Frankie realizes his best option is to quit being a lackey for anybody, and he convinces Joey to do the same.
I told ya about that bromance. That's that real shit. Also, now that Griff is gone forever, I want to say again how incredible it is that Adam Scott had trouble finding steady roles for so long. This scene was one of his best, and it's blatantly obvious that he's just on a completely different level. Ah well. At least he's famous now. Harley's gone as well, but fear not, there is more of Frankie and Joey yet to come. But yeah, I've watched this scene so many times. I love it.
So that was by far the best plotline out of the four in this episode. Eric's was ultimately meaningless and Eli/Feeny's was entirely meaningless. Time to find out if Shawn is going to Europe.
He's not.
Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.
Turner finds Shawn at the bus station with a ticket to Paris, TX. Shawn thought the TX "stood for tax". The two have a heart-to-heart and the English teacher explains to his young ward that he can come to him with these life problems of feeling lost, and that he cares about him and stuff, and Turner agrees to take Shawn to Europe over the summer if Shawn can get his grades up and stop skipping class. It's well written and, taken alone, it's a good ending, but in the context of the rest of the episode it's nonsense. To quote Mr. Turner, "how come you didn't come and talk to me about it?" GEE, I DON'T KNOW MR. TURNER, MAYBE BECAUSE YOU ORDERED HIM TO TALK TO THE GUIDANCE COUNSELOR. Neither of them seems to remember Turner's unwillingness to talk things through at the beginning of the episode.
During the credits, Turner and the guidance counselor have eye sex while Shawn and Cory hash things out in the hall.
There was a whole lot crammed into this. Feeny+Eli should have been discarded completely, in favor of some more focus on Shawn. Maybe another session with the counselor. Anything to make it seem like he put more than five minutes of thought into going to Europe. Hell, Eric's plan to go backpacking in Europe with Jason back in season 2 got more attention than this. Eric's story was fun, and its primary purpose was to remind the audience that Griff exists and that he's still leading Frankie and Joey. After that, it fell pretty flat. On that note, though, the Griff vs Harley storyline is one of my favorite setups so far. Frankie and Joey have changed a lot since their introduction, and their new senses of self worth as independent non-lackeys parallels Shawn's desire to find himself, so it really just works from every angle.
Plot: 0.75 - Carried by the Enforcer and the Rat.
Character Development: 1.0 - Joey and Frankie, obviously, and even though Shawn has about fifty more crises like this, we can at least pretend that he made some progress.
Humor: 0.5 - The chemistry between Feeny and Eli is completely non existent. Every joke between them is a flop. The audience seems to think the guidance counselor is funny, but I think she's just hard to watch.
Life Lesson: 0 - Don't run away to Europe and don't be a lackey? I don't fuckin know.
2.25 out of 4.0. This season hasn't been scoring well so far. It feels a lot more sitcommy and less Boy Meets Worldy than season 2, and even season 1. And honestly, I've gotta chalk that up to the near-elimination of Alan from the show. Alan did so much to make this show powerful in the first two seasons, and they've abandoned it in favor of... I don't really know what. And what the fuck does the title have to do with anything.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:48:42 GMT
Episode 3x05 "Hometown Hero"
It seems like the music over the title sequence is changing every episode. It's usually some type of jazz. I've decided to start reviewing that too. This time it was 7-P.M.-In-Vegas-So-It's-Not-Quite-Time-For-The-Good-Shows Opening Band With Just A Hint Of Daytime Talk Show.
Holycrapwe'reinchemistryclass. There's beakers and test tubes and spiral notebooks, this shit is legit.
That's a pretty good opening shot! They threw that table in the foreground to make it look like this room is a lot more crowded than it is. Cool. Although, I'm not sure why Cory and Shawn are being so antisocial. And the lab coat on the teacher? Maybe it's tongue-in-cheek, I can't tell. Anyway, our boys have a lab report due by the end of the day, and they have done zero work. We get a short clip of the teacher, Dr. Sorrell, telling a jock that he doesn't have to turn in the lab report on account of having sports to play. So it's made pretty clear right away that this guy is a bastard, but if I had a PhD and ended up teaching some punk ass kids I'd be a little crabby too. This guy is one ex-student junkie away from Walter White.
In a truly unprecedented move, Cory and Shawn stay up really late that night to do their lab reports (off camera) and then break into the lab through the window to turn them in (on camera). Shawn's flashlight dies, so Cory finds some matches. If he can find matches, surely he can turn in a paper, but fine. Sitcom+matches? How many guesses do you need?
Shockingly, blowing air at the fire doesn't put it out, so they retreat back out the window. Cory quickly realizes the potential disaster of this situation.
So Cory hurries back inside to pull the fire alarm. The next morning, Janitor Bud confronts our heroes, saying that he knows what they did, and pulls Cory aside and into Turner's classroom. Here we are presented one of the most bullshitty things we've ever seen.
Mr. Turner and Eli are here too. So all these students, Feeny, Turner, and Eli were just waiting in this room while what? Janitor Bud goes to find the student he saw pull the fire alarm the night before, who happened to be standing right outside the classroom? We put up with a lot from this show. We do. And that's fine. It's television. But this is a little hard to swallow. Did Bud just round everybody up and say "hey sorry but I'm going to put your class on hold, everybody wait here for a minute"? Ugh.
So yeah, during the previous night's events, Janitor Bud was sleeping in his janitor closet, he woke up to the fire alarm, and saw Cory running down the hallway. Bud claims that Cory saved his life. Naturally everyone applauds Cory as a hero (oh hey, that's in the title of the episode, HOW FUCKIN COOL IS THAT) except Feeny, who's lookin pretty skeptical..
As you can see, being a hero has its perks. Dr. Sorrell comes around and gives Cory his lab report back, saying he got an A, even though the report has been mostly burnt away. This mirrors the special treatment given to the jock earlier. It's funny how every single person who plays sports on this show wears their letter jacket constantly. It's literally their only defining characteristic.
The scene fades out and then back in on a solitary Shawn. Topanga comes up and says "Shawn, there you are. We've gotta meet Cory." "Where?" Shawn asks. And then Ms. Topanga Lawrence takes two freshly sharpened, needle pointed Dixon Ticonderoga #2 graphite core pencils and skewers our eardrums with them as she answers: "The rally in the caf'!"
THE RALLY IN THE CAF'!
THE RALLY IN THE CAFFFFFF
I feel like I need a shower.
So the RALLY IN THE CAF happens. Cory gives a speech and really starts hamming it up, milking the crowd and embellishing the fire alarm story. There's like twenty people in here, tops. Shawn is visibly unsettled by his best friend's transformation. Later that night, the same sort of thing happens at home.
They used caps lock on the banner, that's how you know they mean it. Reminds me of that birthday episode of The Office. Cory decides to lie to his parents while that "woah this has taken a turn for the worse" music plays.
At school the next day, Cory concedes that things are getting slightly out of hand, but explains that he doesn't want to go back to being same old Cory Matthews. We've apparently got cool-headed aloof Shawn for this episode, since he replies "What was wrong with him?" Well what the fuck is wrong with same old Shawn Hunter every time you decide to throw a hissy fit, hmmm? Two can play at that game!
Anyway Eli's used his contacts in the news business to get Cory's entire family a spot on the evening news to regale all of Philly with his heroic tale. Mr. Feeny is like "maybe you'll tell the whole story this time". It's pretty clear that he doesn't believe any of this crap.
You guys ever notice that Feeny's always doing something with his hands? Watch his hands while he's saying his lines. I always see Patrick Stewart doing it too, maybe it's an old-British-actor thing. *EDIT* William Daniels is not British and I should be ashamed of myself.
Cory decides to call one of those advice radio shows and explains that he's feeling scared and guilty. The advice person suggests he watch the news later that night for an inspiring story about brave Cory Matthews who saved his school. It's kind of a weird thing to just throw into the story here. Up in his bedroom, Cory banters with Eric and Shawn. Nothing particularly funny or interesting, just a bunch of wasted time since this episode has almost no content.
I swear, if Alan doesn't get to give some kind of awesome speech at the end of this, I'm going to have a very bleak outlook on the rest of the season. He's right here. It would totally make sense to let him have the lesson this time. Don't let me down, Boy Meets World.
It's about time to start the live broadcast in the Matthews' living room, and off to the side Shawn is stealing everything from the refreshments table.
This is certainly the funniest thing to happen in this episode. THEY WANT YOU TO TAKE THE ROLLS. It's all in his face. Rider Strong has such a handle on Shawn's character at this point, he's just like "yup, gotta steal this stuff."
Cory wanders out to his backyard while his family waste time on the broadcast and finds Mr. Feeny. Ahhhhhh yes, here we are. Back where we belong. Alan didn't get the lesson, but a backyard moral from Feeny is just as good.
Is it just me or is that a little unsatisfying? Before this, he also said that a firefighter can be a hero, and that a man who worked a dead end job to support his family for a couple decades was a hero as well. And that's all true, there's nothing wrong with what he's saying here, but... like... Everybody knows this stuff. Mr. Feeny usually gives us a gem of wisdom that he's been polishing for his entire life. Like I said, I agree with his definition of a hero, but it just doesn't feel like a Feeny-lesson. It feels like a fortune cookie.
So yeah, Cory admits to his parents that he started the fire. And they are genuinely incredulous that Cory started the fire. LET US REVIEW, MONSIEUR AND MADAME MATTHEWS. Cory sneaks out to the school in the middle of the night to turn in his paper. When asked earlier in the episode, he claimed to have been in the right place at the right time. AND HIS PARENTS BOUGHT THAT! This kid has a curfew! Are they seriously not more interested in why their son was out by the school in the middle of the night just before a fire started?! I can't believe for a second that Feeny is the only one with suspicions. Topanga isn't even suspicious. And what happens at school now? Apparently people know truth since Janitor Bud takes away Cory's locker opening contraption, but everyone else acts like they've already forgotten. Forgotten about breaking and entering and arson. Blech.
Plot: 0.5 - I'm being generous.
Character Development: 0.25 - Ultimately, Cory was glad to be back to "same old Cory Matthews". So he really didn't change at all. You could argue that he has higher self esteem now, but we all know he's going to forget it in a few episodes from now.
Humor: 0.5 - I'm being generous again. They gave a lot of punchlines to Eric, and most of them didn't land.
Life Lesson: 0.5 - I like Feeny's point about heroes, but it's just really weak in this context, like I explained earlier.
1.75 out of 4.0. I still feel like we're missing that Boy Meets World charm from season 2. There isn't anything to make this stand out from other teen-centered sitcoms. Nobody is using their fucking common sense in this episode. "Well that's TV." Fuck TV, this is Boy Meets World. I expect more, dammit. That's why I started writing this blog, because BMW is better than the rest of TV. And frankly, it's better than this episode.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:49:11 GMT
Episode 3x06 "This Little Piggy"
Shawn has taken in a stray pig and brought it to school to show Cory. How could this possibly be bad?
Oh, what did you say? You don't see how there can be any conflict in that premise? Boy are you wrong. Topanga doesn't think Shawn is capable of taking care of the pig, and wants to find a better home for it. IN YOUR FACE, CHECK OUT THAT CONFLICT.
GUESS WHAT ERIC'S GOT SOME CONFLICT TOO. Home boy wants to go to college, and so he asks Mr. Feeny for advice about what colleges he can get into, in particular he asks about Yale. But get this, get this, get this, get this: he mispronounces it! Wheeeeeeeeeeee
Good lord... I don't know if I can do this one, you guys... Who the hell is writing this shit? "Mark Blutman and Howard Busgang"? The same guys that wrote Who's Afraid of Cory Wolf and On The Air? IMPOSSIBLE.
This is just blatant fucking pandering. Like, if I was gonna write a shitty movie with an animal in it, the shittiest movie you could imagine, these are exactly the jokes I would be making. We're at the Hunter/Turner apartment right now, and lemme list what just happened: The pig licks Turner's face while he's sleeping and so he thinks he's dreaming about making out with a woman, wakes up and is grossed out. And all of the pig noises are BLATANTLY just stock sounds of a pig, it's not matched up to the pig's mouth at all. Next Shawn feeds the pig with a baby bottle, and the crowd goes awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, and there's some more stock sounds of sucking noises. It's just.. it's so fucking lazyyyyyyyyy. Probably the laziest writing I've seen on this show so far.
Cory comes over and they make a few dumb jokes, and then Shawn sets the pig on the floor so that he can talk to Cory in private. The pig walks offset and the crowd is in hysterics. It's just a pig walking. I don't get it. What's the appeal?
Either way, apparently Topanga is still upset with Shawn for keeping a pig in his apartment. Turner's not having a great time of it either.
Mr. Feeny has some contacts at Yale, so Eric tries to bribe him with tickets to an opera, hoping Mr. Feeny can hook him up with Yale. I can't fathom why a man who has taught elementary school in Philadelphia for most of his life has contacts in the admissions department at an ivy league university in Connecticut, but I guess that's just Feeny for you.
Shawn has somehow brought the pig with him to Chubbie's and is impressing some women of varying hair color with his compassion for animals. Who woulda thought. He even gets them to buy food for him and the pig. Hell, who am I kidding, I'm just jealous.
Topanga and Cory are also at Chubbie's, obviously, and Topanga's not happy that Shawn still has the pig. She's patronizing (matronizing..?) the shit out of Shawn over this whole thing, and she's definitely supposed to be the bad guy here, but she does make a good point.
So now Cory's gotta choose a side. His best friend and his girlfriend are at an impasse and they both want his support. Now there's some Boy Meets World. It took us 10 minutes to find it, and it's wrapped up in nonsense, but that's actually a perfectly legitimate adolescent problem to address. Ultimately Cory sides with Topanga.
Oh my god, now he's getting advice from his parents. Just like the good old days ;____; This is nice, we've got a very brief window of good television here. Let's see if it can hold up. Also, in the back of this scene is a whiteboard with a numbered list of some kind. The first item says "Eric goes to opera", which is something that hasn't happened yet in the show, so I'm wondering if it's like an outline of the rest of the episode, but I can't quite make out numbers 2 through 4.
Now we're at school and it's lunchtime. Shawn's managed to bring the pig to school again, and it's having lunch with him. I don't think there's been a single scene where this pig hasn't eaten something. It's probably having a pretty good time out here. Cory tries to patch things up with his best buddy, and Shawn explains that the pig's previous owners (some family in the trailer park) just abandoned the pig and got outta Dodge. He then draws the parallels between the pig's abandonment and his own, which is genuinely sympathetic. It's not stated explicitly (even though it totally should have been), but Shawn is effectively doing for this pig what Mr. Turner did for him. This emotional outpouring sways Cory over to Shawn's side, and I gotta say, I'm on board too.
Now it's time to convince Miss Lawrence. Cory has invited her over to Shawn/Turner Kingdom to show her how great the pig's doing. She arrives as Shawn is giving the pig a bath. But before you know it, the pig is missing. Goobers.
Shawn blames Topanga for leaving the door open, but she blames Shawn for having the pig here in the first place. The trouble doesn't last long, though.
Topanga reveals that she called animal control to come take the pig away from Shawn and Cory's like "well that was a super shit thing to do, Topanga" and leaves with Shawn to try to hide from animal control. Mr. Turner explains to Toperoni that this pig really means a lot to Shawn, and that he really does take good care of it, and she realizes that she fucked up.
Next scene is Eric and Feeny at the opera. Eric's bored and is about to bail, but then Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries starts playing, which he recognizes from some Bugs Bunny cartoon and regains interest. So I guess they're seeing Die Walkure, the second of four operas in Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung cycle. I don't know how they could possibly even enjoy that without the context of the first one, I mean that's just preposterous, what are they thinking.
Inexplicably, the animal control guy found his way to Cory's house, where Shawn and Cory are hiding out. He's ready to take the pig away, and Shawn asks for a chance to say goodbye, to which the animal control commando specialist officer brigadier complies.
It's a shame that one of my favorite jokes in this series is in such an unfavorable episode. That was hilarious though. Admit it. I mean, it's fuckin Richard Karn! From Home Improvement! He's hysterical, even if that show was kinda bad.
But wait! Topanga arrives, saying the pig's real owner is with her, and is ready to take it back home. This is indeed a ruse, as Turner comes in and says the pig belongs to his son, Zed. His face and the way he says "Zed" is really funny, but maybe only because I've had a couple drinks at this point.
Turner comments, "Hunter, I must really like you." And it's actually genuinely sweet.
During the credits Feeny and Eric agree to go to a ballet and the philharmonic together in the future. Adorable.
So yeah this was 75% garbage. Like just take any movie or cartoon where the plot centers around "oh here's a baby, let's engage in some WACKY HIJINX" and then replace the baby with a pig and you've got this episode. I really don't understand why they decided to do this. "Hey guys we're already season 3, IT'S ABOUT TIME WE DID AN ANIMAL EPISODE. WHEEEE." It's horrifyingly predictable but at least we got some meaningful parts with Turner and Feeny, as well as Cory having to take sides.
Plot: 0.25 - It deserves that much for being unpredictable. I honestly wasn't sure how it would end. And the Feeny/Eric opera story was reasonably interesting.
Character Development: 1.0 - Because whatever. Cory had to get through choosing between his best friend and his girlfriend, and was ultimately able to call out his girlfriend on her bull shit when it really mattered.
Humor: 0.25 - Like I said, it was mostly the same type of humor you'd see in a movie or a cartoon where they have to take care of a baby or whatever. Or any other animal movie.
Life Lesson: 0 - Pfffffffff
1.5 out of 4.0. I am not impressed with season 3 so far. Not at all. Which is odd, I definitely remember liking it. I mean, like I keep saying, it's not bad, it's just not Boy Meets World. Season 2 was a lot better. Hopefully it picks up.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:49:36 GMT
Episode 3x07 "Truth and Consequences"
Shawn and Cory are making some sort of documentary in the cafeteria. They get some footage of this sasquatch lunch lady and her jello, and Cory comments that she was formerly the nanny for the Gorbachev family. The audience does not laugh at this because they're a bunch of tools.
Oh okay, that was actually the finished product, and the students were watching it in Eli's video journalism class. Well it was shit and nobody liked. Eli wants them to redo their report since they're going to be putting on some sort of public access broadcast in a few days.
I'm trying out white font instead of yellow today. Maybe it's easier to read, I don't know. Somebody leave a comment.
After school, Cory and Shawn are at Turner's apartment (it should be understood at this point that Shawn is living there) filming some woman across the alley who dances around her living room in a towel every day at 5:30. Turner comes home and ends the voyeurism, explaining that "exploiting someone's body isn't news." He then turns on a tv news channel to prove his point, but the news is running a story on breast implants. BOOM SOCIAL COMMENTARY. Nice one, Boy Meets World. And that's actually not the first time. When we learned Eli's backstory we heard a similar story about new stations reporting on bull shit, so this seems like an issue that Michael Jacobs felt pretty strongly about. Neato.
At lunch the next day, there's a bit between Feeny, Eli, and Turner about the gorgeous women interviewing to be Feeny's new secretary, but it's mostly a flop. Across the room, Cory and Shawn decide they're going to find a scandal to report on. Just then, Joey the Rat comes in with some tires asking if anyone needs to buy tires, and additionally offers to sell the boys some tube socks since, according to the man himself, "everybody needs tube socks!" They reckon that if they follow Joey around, they'll find the scandal they want. It's interesting, Cory and Shawn are now looking to Joey for the same reason that I look to him when I watch the show: he gets to do things that nobody else can do. He's a criminal doing whatever criminal thing is relevant to the plot, but it's always got that tinge of believability.
It's time for the Ericlogue to begin, and this one's actually pretty funny. A "science lady" is conducting a dream research study in, conveniently, John Adams High- Turner's classroom in particular, since that's the only room they built a set for. She wants to pay Eric some money to sleep for a while so she can monitor his brain activity. As anyone would be, he's pretty excited about getting paid to sleep.
We jump ahead to the news broadcast being conducted by Eli's class. Topanga is anchoring, and she sort of turns into a diva about the whole thing. It's humorous, but the audience is taking it a little far. Eventually, she announces the Cory's investigative report on the subject of... Janitor Bud.
Turns out, Bud is leaving early every day and pays Joey to go punch his card out at 5:00. That's.... actually a well thought out scandal, all things considered.
After the broadcast, Feeny reveals to the boys that he's going to have to fire Janitor Bud because of what they've uncovered. They're feelin pretty rotten. Next day, nobody wants to talk to Cory and Shawn after they've exposed Janitor Bud, and indeed Mr. Feeny mercilessly fires the old man, even though he could retire with a full pension after two more months.
Our favorite thug JoeJoe comes along to inform our heroes that they didn't get the whole story, pointing out that they don't even know where Janitor Bud was going every day.
Honestly, this is Joey's finest moment. He has a lot of lines here, and they're all perfectly crafted to his character. His timing and delivery and posturing are all spot on. I had trouble choosing which part to make into the gif.
Anywho, Joey reveals that Bud has been leaving early to go bet on horses, which Joey finds acceptable. Cory however remains steadfast in his belief that what they did was right. Janitor Bud comes back real quick to tell the boys that he knows it's their fault, and inflicts "the janitor's curse" upon them.
Back in the Ericlogue, Eric wakes up from his nap and the science lady informs him that he registered absolutely no brain activity while he was sleeping, which she calls remarkable, and Eric's pretty proud. I think this is funny. It's obviously silly, but it's a smart sort of silly. Compare this to the Eric-based humor from season two and you can see just how much they've changed this character. The general consensus is that it was a change for the better, and I definitely agree.
At lunch, Shawn slips on a plunger and blames the Janitor's Curse, and then they face the scorn of the other students for getting Bud fired. This might sound ridiculous depending on what your high school was like, but I remember at my high school we had this janitor that we all called "Lightning." I'm not sure if anybody knew his real name, but we called him that because he was pretty spry and quick for an old dude. The point is, Lightning was awesome, and if somebody got him fired, there would probably have been hell to pay.
On the other side of the cafeteria, Turner and Eli discuss the consequences that Cory is currently facing, and Eli realizes he probably shouldn't have put so much pressure on Cory to find a real story.
At home, Amy and Alan take opposing sides on whether or not Cory did the right thing, but nothing really comes of it. Which is depressing. Another wasted opportunity to get some valuable wisdom from Alan. Matter of fact, Eli is almost certainly going to be the one giving the advice here, so again we can see how much the show has changed from seasons one and two. Also Eric got a letter from U. Penn saying that they want to study him.
And indeed, now it's time for the Eli-Cory talk at school. It's actually pretty decent. Eli explains that journalism is naturally a gray area, that there's no right or wrong, adding the concise yet powerful insight that "It's a tough game when you care." Maybe this is just me extrapolating beyond their intention, but that's a pretty good line, relevant to almost every aspect of life. Not bad, not at all.
Eli and Cory visit Mr. Feeny to try to get Bud his job back, and learn that Bud has in fact been hired as Feeny's new secretary so that he can get to his retirement. So that's why they mentioned the women interviewing for the position earlier. Smooth.
During the credits, the Ericlogue concludes as a team of scientists are watching him sleep (in Turner's classroom again). As before, he shows no brain activity during sleep, while the field mouse being studied shows quite a bit.
The science lady is played by Kathy Trageser, who hasn't done anything since 2003, and her most noteworthy role was something on 22 episodes of "Team Knight Rider", which was some shitty ripoff of Knight Rider that got cancelled after one season. But that's sort of interesting, since William Daniels (Feeny) was the voice of K.I.T.T, the car on the original Knight Rider series. Full circle.
So yeah, this episode was good! The Ericlogue was funny without trying to be too important. Shawn and Cory actually had a reasonable school assignment with reasonable consequences. I always love when I'm not quite sure how to feel. We in the audience experienced that same gray-area that Shawn and Cory did. The absolutely insufferable I'm-going-to-puke conclusion would have been Bud being rehired as janitor, and I probably would have preferred him just straight up getting fired to really drive home the idea of facing consequences. But, being hired as Feeny's secretary is an acceptable middle ground, especially for the target audience.
Plot: 1.0 - Maybe I'm just used to bad stories this season, but this one seems pretty solid. It was believable and entertaining, and I couldn't be certain how it would end (the first time I watched it, anyway).
Character Development: 0.5 - Cory and Shawn didn't change much, but we saw Feeny's heart of gold at the end, and Eli's character became a little more fleshed out
Humor: 1.0 - Great work from the whole cast, Joey in particular deserves another shoutout.
Life Lesson: 0.75 - I dunno, I wanna give it the point, but they really don't even try to extend the "it''s a tough game when you care" to anything outside of journalism. If they had even MENTIONED that that could apply in other aspects of life, I woulda gone for the full point.
3.25 out of 4.0. It's about damn time. Pretty sure that's the first plot badge of the season, and I still don't think we've had a life lesson badge. All I know is, 50% off week at Dominos starts today, so it is very much pizza time.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:50:08 GMT
Episode 3x08 "Rave On"
The jazz music during the title sequence sounds like game-show-contestant-walking-down-to-the-stage, mixed with some heartbroken blues.
Eric's throwing a rave, as is indicated by the number of "ILLEGAL RAVE THIS FRIDAY" posters around the hallway. Cory doesn't know what a rave is, and even Mr. Feeny points out how lame that is. I would prefer not to do another story about Cory feeling like a loser, so hopefully that doesn't turn into anything. He does, however, threaten to tell their parents if Eric doesn't invite him to the rave, and Eric caves.
The pay phone is back, and that punch-out clock from 3x07 is gone. Also, thanks for all your feedback on the text. I'll stick to the yellow, and I am now using the "Calibri" font, which was my intention when I accidentally used "Cambria" for a while.
So as if we couldn't guess, the rave is going to be at Chubbie's while Chubbie is out on a cruise. But wait, Friday is also the Matthews parents' 20th anniversary, which Eric forgot about when he scheduled the rave. Cory chews him out, but obviously Cory didn't know until just now either, so hey, shut up Cory. Let's play a game where you win if you name one sitcom that never used an anniversary as a plot device. You lose. On the same token though, both Mr. and Mrs. Matthews themselves remembered, so it's not horribly cliche. And we get this thing, which I distinctly remember from the first commercial I saw about this show.
Topanga's father, Jedediah, shows up with the guitar Amy ordered from him as a gift for Alan. Jed is played by Peter Tork, bassist for The Monkees, who also played this role back in 2x22. In that one, it was career day at school, and he did in fact describe his job of making guitars. So this is a rare showing of continuity. Micky Dolenz, also from The Monkees, reprises his role as Alan's best pal Gordy as he helps Alan carry a new bathtub/jacuzzi upstairs. As in his previous appearances, he's got some funny lines and great delivery. He clearly has a lot of fun being on this show, and it's always a treat when he shows up.
WHHHAAAAA?!! THE TEXT IS MOVING WITH THE CHARACTERRRRRR???!!!!
THIS IS THE BEST BLOG YOU'VE EVER SEEN??!! IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY??!!!!
As an aside, I remember that the anniversary in season 2 was their 18th anniversary, so we have indeed skipped time. We already knew that though, I just forgot to mention it: Turner commented that Shawn is 15 a few episodes ago, and he was in 7th grade in season 2. Also Eric is a senior now and I'm pretty sure he was a sophomore in season 2. So that all points to missing one year between seasons if we assume that Shawn is in 9th grade and has a birthday early in the school year. At the beginning of this season, it was heavily implied that Shawn had only been staying at Turner's for a short time, but for the sake of putting this to rest, I'm willing to say that there was actually an entire year that we didn't see.
On the other hand, last season's anniversary episode was after the Christmas episode, while this anniversary episode is before the New Year's Eve episode (no Christmas this season). So the timing doesn't make any sense. But then, who would notice other than me.
That kind of analysis is why I started this blog in the first place. I'm just glad I found an audience who wants to hear about it.
Now something odd happens. A posh Englishman named Reginald Fairfield arrives at the Matthews house. Apparently he accompanied Amy and Alan on a backpacking trip in Europe and Alan promised Reginald there would be a couch waiting for him if he ever visited the states. Well Reg is here to collect, even though Amy and Alan barely remember who he is. It's sort of a "wait what?" kind of funny, and both parents have some great lines here. I'm just soaking this in as much as I can only Odin knows when it'll happen again. Also it's a little less "wait what?" now that I've seen who this actor is. It's Davy Jones from, yyyyyup, The Monkees.
Amy overhears Eric talking about a "secret party" while he's on the phone, which she interprets as a surprise anniversary party. Then Cory overhears Amy telling Alan what she's just learned. Lots of eavesdropping going on in this family. So now it's up to our heroes to try to turn their rave into an anniversary party. Cory begins by recruiting Messrs. Turner and Feeny to come to the party.
Best line in the series? Possibly.
Reginald Fairfield shows up and starts stalking Feeny. A couple girls, the two behind Feeny at the beginning of that gif actually, are talking about how lame it is that the rave's been cancelled, and wish they could meet a guy with the stones to go actually host one. Eric overhears, and I mean, one of the girls is wearing a tartan skirt, so, honestly, what options does he even have.
Later that night, Cory, Shawn, and Topanga arrive at Chubbie's for the party and see a line of ruffians and scoundrels trying to get inside, while Frankie the Enforcer is on bouncer duty. Eric has relaunched the rave because, like I said, tartan skirt. "Good news bro, we're throwin both parties." Things are not going well inside. There's a huge crowd already and nobody wants to cooperate. Cory is informed that his parents are outside trying to get in.
Frankie is wise beyond his years, that's for sure.
They did some weird shooting with these scenes, some of the people in line right now were inside just a second ago, including Jay from Jay and Silent Bob.
So Eric has decided to convince his parents that everyone at the party is either related to them or a family friend or whatever. Gordy and Reginald Fairfield have some dialogue here, reminding the audience that two members of The Monkees are currently at this party, so there's really only one way for this to end.
Either way, it doesn't take long for Amy and Alan to catch on to what's going on, thank goodness, and they're pretty fuckin disappointed in their sons. I also want to point out the lack of Morgan here. From the beginning of the season until now, it's been reasonable to just brush it off as "she's not around" or whatever, nothing wrong with that. But in this episode, we're looking at a blatant disregard for her existence. What's weirder is that they reintroduce Morgan with a different actress only six episodes from now. I feel like a small amount of rearranging could have made this work. In fact, airing this episode later in the season (with the new Morgan) also would have made the timeline match up with last season's anniversary (a few episodes after New Year's/Christmas).
Back on track, Amy and Alan want to leave, but the third Monkee, Jedediah, arrives with Alan's guitar gift. Seeing the guitar gives Cory the idea to have the band they booked for the rave play the song that his parents danced to at their wedding. But Frankie the Enforcer did some enforcing earlier and didn't let the band into Chubbie's. WHO CAN POSSIBLY FILL IN FOR THEM?
Remember that episode of Scrubs where J.D. has a fantasy about what would happen if life were more like a sitcom? And at the end Clay Aiken sings Turk and Carla's wedding song to win some money for the hospital? Yeah, this ending here is exactly what Scrubs was parodying in that episode. But hey, it's cool to see the Monkees play. And it's pretty convincing! I think they're actually playing live here. If not, at least their guitars are plugged in (lookin' at you, RHCP).
During the credits, a man played by Dave Madden tells Gordy, Reginald Fairfield, and Jedediah that he wants to be their manager. This didn't make any sense to me at first since I didn't actually know what The Partridge Family was about, but now I do, and Madden played the manager on that show. So this makes sense. But boy is that joke dated. The Partridge Family ended its run in 1974, so they were really stretching for this bit. Either way, he ends by telling the musicians that they "could be bigger than the Beatles." Not exactly funny, but it brings the whole Monkees-inside-joke-meta-humor thing to completion.
Plot: 0.75 - It was great until the painfully predictable ending.
Character Development: 0.5 - I'm grasping at straws here, but it was nice to see Eric and Cory actually work together on something.
Humor: 1.0 - Absolutely non-stop humor from start to finish. Definitely the funniest episode so far this season. This is a prime example of how funny Boy Meets World can be. There were a few dead jokes, of course, but you can never expect 100%.
Life Lesson: 0 - The Monkees will always have your back.
2.25 out of 4.0 - I tried to throw some extra points in plot and CD because I genuinely enjoyed watching this. The score doesn't do it justice, this episode is hilarious. Obviously I've shown a preference for the life-lessony episodes of this series, but sometimes it's just so funny, with fantastically written dialogue, that it works purely on comedy. Finally, I'm gonna throw out a Monkees bonus badge, because hey, they're the Monkees and people say they monkey around, but they're too busy singin to put anybody down.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:50:23 GMT
Episode 3x09 "The Last Temptation of Cory"
The title sequence music is like a 15 year old's first guitar solo that they wrote all on their own.
Topanga's out sick and Cory gives her a call on that pay phone in the hallway after every class. When he hangs up he calls her "Topey", which is adorable. The two of them think this constant communication is sweet, but everyone else (including Shawn) thinks it's gag-worthy. A popular girl named Libby Harper comes up for some quick flirting with Cory, followed by some more quick small-talk from another popular girl named Missy Robinson.
I don't know why that 10 year old girl is sitting on that trash can, but even SHE is holding her notebooks that way. It's an epidemic.
So was that the last temptation of Cory? Or is there going to be more? That's suspense, people. Anyway Shawn explains that these girls want what they can't have, that Cory is significantly more attractive to them now that things are pretty serious with Topanga. That's the damn truth right there, Shawn actually knows what he's talking about today.
In Feeny's class (which, as always, is the same room as Turner's), Shawn and Cory are whispering about the Missy/Libby problem, when Feeny asks Cory what he was just saying. Cory claims that he was "too busy absorbing to listen." How 'bout Shawny Shawn?
You can see Ben Savage trying not to laugh there. The whole scene is pretty damn funny.
Class ends and Feeny tells them to choose partners for a project due next Friday, and makes the wise executive decision to split up Cory and Shawn. Some cute girl asks to be Shawn's partner, and Trini, played by the fabulous Brittany Murphy, tries to partner up with Cory since her best friend Toperingo is out sick.
Look at her body language. She really does an amazing job with this role. Like, there are a lot of awkward and annoying characters on television that are just painful to watch, but somehow Trini is endearingly awkward and annoying.
As Cory flees the scene, he is intercepted by Missy. Forced to choose between Trini and Missy for a partner, he goes for the one in the skirt. What a dog. That was a successful temptation on Missy's part. I hope that wasn't the last one.
At lunch, Feeny is collecting pledges for some sort of walk-a-thon from Turner and Eli. Feeny runs a con on Eli, saying how his joints hurt and stuff and Eli ends up pledging way too much. But who cares. Where's Eric? I want an Eric story, not this. On the other side of "the caf", Cory is eating with Missy with the intention of talking about their project, but she just wants to invite him to her party, which he accepts after some badgering. ANOTHER TEMPTATION. At home later, Cory tells Shawn about the party and goes off to ask Topanga if she's okay with him going to this party.
Eric replaces the family photo with a signed picture of Teddy "Beanbag" Bagwell, a fictitious baseball player who is only two hit-by-pitches away from the all time Major League record. Eric bought this picture for $200 in the hopes of turning a huge profit when Bagwell breaks the record. This is a pretty unique setup, honestly. That's pretty detailed for a side story.
The scene skips over to Topanga's room when Cory shows up. He tells her about the party and she encourages him to go because she's a reasonable human being and she trusts the person she loves. THANK GOODNESS. I was afraid of a "don't go" and then he sneaks, and then it's a thing. Whew, dodged a bullet. He promises to bring her back some ice cream after the party, and she requests "jimmies" on her ice cream. Is that a New England thing? Quantum Mechanics makes more sense to me than saying "jimmies" instead of "sprinkles." It just kinda wigs me out when people say it, I dunno.
This whole episode is a showcase of Cory's wit. Let's see, who wrote this... Susan Meyers and Judy Toll. They definitely know how to write Cory. Toll died in 2002 of melanoma, prompting a documentary to be produced by her brother in 2007 called "Judy Toll: The Funniest Woman You've Never Heard Of." Well don't worry, Judy Toll's brother, we've heard of her, and we acknowledge her greatness.
BTW Missy's party is a makeout party for just her, Cory, Libby, and Shawn. Woopsies.
Heyyyyyyyyyyyy we've been here before. Melissa threw a party here in 2x05. The decorations are different though, I just checked. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT I CHECKED. EXCUSE ME FOR BEING THOROUGH. Also it's amazing how much Cory's voiced has changed since then. I'm unsettled by the fact that both Cory and Shawn are wearing white+honey mustard yellow. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, I have literally never worn yellow on a date. It can't possibly be okay...
Quick tangent, Missy is played by Elisabeth Harnois, who had a shaky but consistent career from age five up to 2011, when she a big break! She got the role of Morgan Brody on CSI, one of the main characters on the CSI team, and has had that role ever since. Right on. Libby is played by Lindsey McKeon, who has had a bunch of ~10 episode recurring roles, but also had the role of Katie Peterson on... "Saved By the Bell: New Class".......? That's a thing...? That shit had SEVEN SEASONS from 1993 to 2000. How can that be...
So anyway Libby seduces Shawn pretty quickly.
Libby is being about as direct as you can be without actually tearing clothes off, but Cory is displaying a truly gargantuan level of self control. Talking on the couch isn't working, so Libby goes for plan b: dancing to romantic music.
Wuh oh, it's past 9 o'clock, so Cory takes the phone into the close to call Topanga and let her know he's coming with her ice cream. Missy follows him into the closet and starts like, nibbling on his ear, and then kisses him after he hangs up the phone. Missy's dad comes home so Cory and Shawn make a mad dash outta there. Okay, I'm pretty sure THAT was the last temptation.
Back at the Matthews house, Eric is watching baseball in the hopes that Bagwell will get hit by some more pitches, but instead he announces that he's retiring. Alas.
We're at Chubbie's now as Cory and Shawn arrive to get Topanga's ice cream because where else were they going to get it. Then Topanga also arrives because she "needed to get out of the house", which is just annoyingly convenient, but fine. Ultimately Cory confesses that he "accidentally kissed" Missy.
Nothing bad really comes out of it though, he just explains what happened. During the credits, Eli realizes that he got conned. Woo hoo.
Plot: .75 - Yeah it was fine.
Character Development: .5 - Relationship stuff I guess.
Humor: 1.0 - Great showing from Cory, not really anybody else though.
Life Lesson: .5 - Don't kiss other girls when you have a girlfriend.
2.75 out of 4.0. Sorry for the hasty conclusion. My attention is required elsewhere.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:50:50 GMT
Episode 3x10 "Train of Fools" Boy Meets World has decided to mix things up in the world of television by doing a New Year's Eve episode instead of Christmas. Shawn's uncle Lazlo drives a limo as a business, and he's "not busy" for New Year's, so uncle Lazlo is going to chauffeur our heroes around to various parties or whatever fifteen year olds do on New Year's in 1995. Eric's got a date with some jeans model named Rebecca Alexa and he's preeeeetty excited. Okay now it's New Year's Eve. Boy that was probably the most blatant plot establishment in the series. Just explicit statements of exactly what was going on. Hm. Lazlo's limo is actually a hearse. Big laughs here guys... big ol laughs... The disappointment continues at Turner's apartment where we get a story that we don't want. Turner and Eli are about to have a bros' night for New Year's with pizza and beer, and they reminisce about women they dated this past year. Over the span of less than 60 seconds, two women from Turner's past show up at the door and invite themselves in. WHAT A KOOKY CRAZY WACKY ZANY WHATEVERTHEFUCK. And apparently the two women are old friends. My face is lookin a lot like Eli's there. The director was probably like "hey, just make the same face you made when you read this script." I feel you, man. Apparently the corpse in the back of Uncle Lazlo's hearse started breathing, so the boys have lost their mode of transportation and are back at Cory's house. They picked up Topanga along the way, so she's with them now too. Oh hey, Eric's car broke down so now he and Rebecca Alexa are also back at the Matthews House. I DIDN'T KNOW I WAS WATCHIN, FUCKIN, THE FLINTSTOOOOOONES. OR THE JETSONS OR WHATEVER. HAS THERE EVER BEEN LAZIER WRITING? I'm not happy with this so far. Rebecca Alexa is playing by Angela Visser. She's not a real model, but you'd think so from the way she delivers her lines. I have absolutely no idea how she got this part. Fuckin, Jim Abbott was a better actor and he's a baseball player. Anyway Ms. Visser has had a very limited career in television, except for playing "Ms. Dupre" on some shit called USA High that miracle'd its way into three seasons. So now the gang decide to share a cab to get downtown. But then Cory sends the cabbie away because of some kinda shit like, I dunno, his license doesn't look like him, so Cory thinks he's a serial killer or something. We're almost halfway into the episode and fuck all has happened. Is this a bottle episode? Are we going to be stuck here forever? Nope, they take the subway. But it's still basically a two-bottle episode between the subway and Turner's place. On the wall of the subway car, Cory and Shawn find a PSA with a picture of Mr. Feeny, which is the closest thing to humor we're gonna get today. Cory spills the beans that Eric just wants to kiss Rebecca Alexa at midnight as a sort of trophy display, so she bails out of the subway car while it's stopped. And then the subway train breaks down. I need a snorkel for how many tropes I'm swimming in right now. Who gave this the green light? Anybody can tell you exactly how this is gonna end, they're gonna find some way to make a cool party right there on the subway. Sorry Boy Meets World, but you're playing at a disadvantage right from the start here: nothing can ever beat that subway episode of Hey Arnold. LET'S ALL HOLD HAAAAAAAAAANDS, HERE ON THE SUBWAYYYYYY. So Eric's freaking out but Shawn is playin it coooooooool. So far he's found a woman who's gone into labor in car 2, and some parochial schoolgirls in car 5. And then they waste some time making some bad jokes. The scene fades out and then back in on Turner's apartment where Turner's two ex girlfriends are yucking it up and talking shit about the guy WHOSE APARTMENT THEY JUST STORMED INTO while the men look on with disapproval. Well that's real great, trolls ass writers, ask the only reasonable question and then brush it under the goddamn rug. Great. I'm great. No problem. Back in the Subway, Shawn announces that the woman in labor is close to finishing or whatever the word is for that, and so asks the car if anyone knows anything about delivery. Shawn then picks out a pizza delivery guy who then enthusiastically runs to help deliver the baby. It's word play. It's a pun. It's like a uh, it's like a children's coloring book in here. I quit. Shawn's havin a great time though, he's about to go check up on those parochial girls. I'll be honest with ya Shawnie boy, at this point, I would believe that one of your uncles is the pope. You've had an uncle just about everywhere else, so why not the Vatican. This prompts Cory to give us today's platitude, that you can make the best of any situation, so he's gonna try to have fun with Shawn and Topanga. Not Eric though. Okay that was actually pretty funny. Will Friedle usually comes through at least once. Back at Turner's, Eli is saying a bunch of terrible things about his best buddy to fit in with the women. Bros Before Hoes, come on Eli, this is a blatant violation. A third ex girlfriend shows up at the door, crying about how she needs someone who will listen to her problems. Turner sets her loose on Eli and his concubines, and then high-tails it the fuck up outta there. The best thing about this arc is that it's over now. There's some slight unintentional humor in the fact that Turner feels the same way about all of this as I do. In the subway car, everyone has some party hats on somehow, and one of the other passengers is like "hey guys, lets hear it for this guy who put all this party shit together". The guy in question is Cory, and the one speaking is a black guy who pronounces party as "parrrrrrttayyyyy", and none of the white people on the subway understand what that means. Ughhhhhh. And then everybody starts shaking Cory's hand and patting him on the back. It's just an absolute travesty of sitcomy bull shit. Eric's still moping, but then he and Cory reminisce about all the past New Year's Eves, and then Eric's not sad anymore and jesus christ are you kidding me. Shawn's got some of those schoolgirls hanging around with him but they look 30 years old so I don't even know what the fuck. Plot: 0.15 - pffffhahahahaha. Character Development: 0 - pffffffffhahahahaha. Humor: 0.5 - Eric and Shawn did a decent enough job, by the end of it. Life Lesson: 1.0 - Poorly conveyed as it may be, it's at least legitimate. Don't get all pouty when shit doesn't go the way you planned. Spontaneity and adaptation are the keys to happiness in otherwise crappy situations. 1.65 out of 4.0 - Mostly a waste of time. About 70% of the episode is spent at either Turner's apartment or Cory's living room, and nothing interesting happens in either of those places. There's really not much to say about this one. And then if we compare it to the holiday episodes from the first two seasons, Turnaround in season 2 and Santa's Little Helper in season 1, this show had a pretty awesome track record. I don't know what happened here. They must have learned their lesson though. Seasons 4, 5, and 6 all go back to Christmas episodes.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:51:42 GMT
Episode 3x11 "City Slackers"
It's Amy Matthews's birthday, so Mr. Feeny gives her a key to his cottage in the Poconos, so that she and her darling husband might enjoy a romantic getaway. They've already got birthday related plans this weekend, but another time, perhaps.
Shawn swipes the key and suggests to Cory that they sneak up to the cabin that weekend and do snowy mountain things.
At school, Eric lies to a girl to get a date with her, since she only dates jocks. What sport does he play, you ask? Well she asked too, so have some fucking patience. They're at Chubbie's, so he sees the pool table in the back and claims to be a grand master at the game. They approach the table so he can show off, but Frankie and Joey arrive and challenge him for the table. What was he going to do otherwise? He's not actually good...
This whole time I've been thinking to myself that I know I've seen that actress before, she's totally familiar, and now it hit me. Word of honor here, I haven't checked yet. But I'm 99% sure she plays Rita on Dexter. I'm so sure, it has to be. ... Okay, now I checked, it is in fact Julie Benz, the actress behind Rita. How bout that shit!
The next scene is at Feeny's cabin in the Poconos. The boys have arrived by the magic of Hollywood, and a man named Ranger Mark escorted them to the cabin believing them to be Feeny's grandsons. They make an incest joke, which was surprising, and then Ranger Mark tells them the legend of some serial killer named Grady. It's mostly a waste of time. It's okay though, Ranger Mark is played by Troy Evans, whose voice is absolutely hysterical here, it doesn't even matter what he's saying, and he was in 129 episodes of E.R. so that's cool.
The boys can't figure out how to turn on the electricity in the cabin. Wuh oh.
We're back at Chubbie's now for about a minute, and we see that both Eric and Frankie are actually really bad at pool. They've been playing for an hour and have sunk zero balls. This extreme ineptitude has attracted quite a crowd, including Eli. This guy is in more episodes than Topanga. I wanna know how he pulled that off.
Anyone else think that girl's face looks like a Salvador Dali painting? It's just the angle, it's kinda... weird... Anyway...
Back in the Poconos, Shawn and Cory have discovered that there's no one else around, and there isn't even any snow. Shawn managed to misinterpret the weather report, because that's just what he does. He heard "The Rocky Mountains" and thought that was just a general description for mountains, "you know, like chewy nougat," so Cory points out that they are in fact 2000 miles away from the Rockies. That is an oddly specific measurement to just pull out of your ass like that. He's not far off either, it's about 2200 miles away, but I had to look that shit up. I wouldn't even BEGIN to be able to tell you that off the top of my head. I guess Feeny's geography classes were the real fuckin deal after all.
Shortly thereafter, Feeny arrives with the intention to pack up the cabin so he can sell it (or maybe sell the stuff? I'm not sure), and is surprisingly not outraged at the young boys' trespassing. It's too late for Cory's parents to come get them, so it looks like they'll all be staying the night. There's no reason in the universe for Feeny to show up here this late, but whatever.
It's pool time again, and the crowd cheer every time Eric or Frankie misses a shot. It has now been three hours. Eric's date, I don't even know her name, bails since Eric is a huge loser. Then we get a montage of Eric and Frankie being bad at pool, which is honestly hilarious. I've seen this episode at least a dozen times, and this marathon billiards match is always funny. It just works on every level. Definitely one of my favorite gags in the entire series.
There's a pun there about "levels", but I'll leave it alone.
At Feeny's cabin, the man himself and Shawn are butting heads. They butt heads earlier in the episode too, so Shawn finally confronts him with a "Why do you hate me so much?" Mr. Feeny delicately explains that he only hates to see Shawn wasting his potential, and that he does in fact know quite a bit about the young man, including his affinity for the band Counting Crows. I would be lying if I said that I didn't go look them up the first time I saw this. I'd also be lying if I said that this scene didn't captivate my entire being. This is an absolutely beautiful conversation, my friends. We have seen maybe one or two instances of Feeny and Shawn building their relationship, so this is truly a treat. The dialogue is perfectly constructed, the acting is on point, it's just fantastic. This is some season 1 Feeny right here.
Put yourself in Shawn's shoes for a second. Your parents have abandoned you, Turner barely has any idea what he's doing, your best friend is falling in love, and pretty much everything is a mess. But now you learn that Mr. Feeny is looking out for you. Mr. Feeny has your back. He's rooting for you, he's in your corner. Can you even imagine how reassuring that is for Shawn? What's even better is that this is a revelation for the audience too! We know Feeny secretly loves Cory, but we haven't seen NEARLY that level of guidance toward Shawn. But now we've peeked beneath the surface. I absolutely love this scene. Top 10 in the series, no question.
Next, Cory knocks Feeny's wristwatch off the counter and down the sink's drain. That's a very Shawn thing to do, but Shawn just had his big moment so I'm glad the writers chose not to ruin that. Feeny is truly furious, but keeps it contained. Later that night, Cory wakes up to find Shawn reading Mr. Feeny's old diary, in particular a few entries describing very Shawn-like behavior. And then there's the one that breaks our hearts: Feeny's late wife, Lilian, bought him that wristwatch for their fifth anniversary many years before.
That shit right there. Damn, Feeny. You got a way with words.
The next morning we discover that Shawn and Cory have dug up the cabin's septic tank to retrieve Feeny's wristwatch. Far fetched, but it worked out, and we get another nice moment of unspoken connection between these characters. Feeny tells them to go wash the septicness off of them in the lake, which will surely result in their deaths since it's 20 degrees, but fine.
During the credits, Frankie leaves their 15 hour game of pool to go to choir practice, and then Eric sinks all the balls in one shot.
Plot: 1.0 - The details of how exactly Shawn and Cory get to the cabin are a little shaky, but it's good overall, and the marathon billiards match is genius.
Character Development: 1.0 - The Shawn-Feeny connection gets a massive boost.
Humor: 1.0 - A lot of dialogue at the cabin was funny, especially Ranger Mark, and the entire pool match was hilarious.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - Get to know somebody before you start drawing conclusions.
4.0 out of 4.0 - Fantastic episode all around. Nothin really bad I can say about it without being pedantic. This one honestly never gets old, I love it every time I watch it.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:52:03 GMT
Episode 3x12 "The Grass is Always Greener"
We open on Topanga and Amy Matthews watching a chick flick together on the living room couch, and they're on the verge of tears. Cory's asleep on the edge of the couch though. I'm genuinely curious, have any of you been in a situation like this before? I kept my high school girlfriends as far away from my parents as possible, but I guess this is no ordinary couple we're talking about. One way or the other, Eric comes to spirit his little brother away to watch the Superbowl with him and their father.
Eric sets him down in the kitchen, and unleashes some animosity toward the trends of Cory's relationship with Topanga. Apparently they've been doing old-married-couple stuff like this frequently.
We're in dire straits tonight, folks.
At school, Cory tells Shawn the story of his old-married-couple weekend. He mentions that just he and Topanga "went to the mall" on Sunday, and the audience fuckin "wooooOOOOOOOO"s louder than I have ever heard in my life, and I just do not possess the cognitive ability to figure out why. The mall? How is the mall a sexy place? I am at a total loss here. Both of our heroes admit that Cory is in a bit of a slump.
That is a well written joke. Simple in concept, clever in execution. What's also interesting is who's giving the punchline. We've seen a lot of jokes this season coming from Cory, directed at Shawn. Shawn's lack of intelligence has been brought center stage recently, so it's refreshing to have it going the other direction. What's more, didn't Cory become "the most dangerous guy I know" to Shawn back in season 2's "Danger Boy"? Is that the old dangerous Cory? How many times is Cory gonna go through these transformations?
Anyway, Shawn invites Cory out to a party with students from some other high school that night, but first Cory is going to have to cancel his plans with Toplamingo. Ah, what a stroke of fortune, Topanga cancels the plans first, saying she's having a girls' night out, and then departs after a quick cheek kiss. The audience loses their shit again. Seriously this must be the most sheltered group of homeschooled Amish kids they could find, they'll go crazy over anything remotely intimate.
That is a real show. If you didn't know that, I apologize for destroying your faith in humanity.
It's Eric's turn now. First Turner reminds him that his essay on Of Mice And Men is late, Eli reminds him his journalism project is late, Feeny gives him an F on his Joan of Arc report, and (wow really?) that chemistry teacher from earlier in the season is here too, telling Eric to just blow something up at home and bring it in. WHAT ABOUT HIS MATH TEACHER? DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT MATH AT THIS SCHOOL? Seriously though, all four of them just show up. Seconds after each other. I think we all would have been happier with four different direct cuts to different places, but we got this instead.
At Turner's apartment, Cory is having self-image issues, so he borrows a leather jacket from his best bud to be a little less himself at the party. Then we jump back to John Adams High, still at night, and Eric is wandering near Turner's classroom. We overhear the same four teachers pictured above playing poker, looks like 5 card draw, and Eli tells Turner that he "cannot check-raise", to which Feeny agrees. I put up with a lot in these reviews, but YOU CAN'T FUCKING FORBID CHECK-RAISING. I am disgusted.
Eric wants to play cards with them, and offers to go home and study as soon as he loses. I'm assuming he means until he loses all his chips, which, in general, can take a pretty long time. But the teachers agree regardless.
I.... don't really know why Eric was at the school in the first place. If that isn't addressed at some point... *EDIT* I didn't bother talking about an earlier scene where Eric wants to study, but his mother points out that he doesn't have his textbook. So he is in fact back at school to retrieve his textbook from his locker. Thank you Anon for pointing that out. That scene wasn't funny so I just completely forgot about it.*END EDIT*
We're at that other school's party or dance or whatever, and a miscommunication at the door leads to everyone thinking that Cory is the legendary Shawn Hunter.
Being Shawn Hunter has its perks.
Now, see, this is interesting. It's almost meta. We spent the entire second season watching Cory try to pick up traits from Shawn. Shawn has quality X, Cory wants it, and by the end Cory either has it or decides he doesn't want it. But now, now he has actually BECOME Shawn. He is now all of those things, and we're going to see what he can do with it all.
Back at the poker game, Eric's full house beats Feeny's set of Aces. Poker is just one of those things that gets hideously embellished in Hollywood. It's like hacking, or medical dramas. Five Card Draw is a terrible game. Anyway, the teachers are still set on getting Eric to lose, but he's been doing very well so far. There isn't really a development here, it's just like "yeah, this game is still going on."
At the dance, real Shawn informs Cory-Shawn that some allegedly hot French girl is at this dance, so Cory-Shawn goes to find her.
Poker time again. Eric wins the hand with Jack high. Alright I take it back. That's actually not embellished at all. Good for them. The teachers are convinced Eric is cheating somehow. Because... Jack high reeks of cheating..?
Hey, a Rain Man reference. There were 246 toothpicks in that Rain Man scene though.
So Eric has savant powers, apparently. The chemistry teacher ends up quitting his job and invites Eric out to Atlantic City to count cards. You can't really count cards in poker, that's a blackjack thing, but at least they tried. They've still got my approval from that Jack high hand.
At the dance, the French girl is finally located. Cory bastardizes the French language and Shawn completely forgets that he previously laid claim to the one-per-series savant allocation, which allowed him to speak perfect French. That seems like something you would remember, but neither of them mentions it.
Wuh oh. The French girl is Topanga. Which would probably be pronounced in French as Teh-PUHN-gehhhhhh~~~
Apparently her group of friends thought it would be fun to come to another school's dance and pretend to be other people. Cory's unhappy, but another girl comes up and calls him Shawn, so both members of our happy couple are revealed to be in disguise.
Thus the two move their conversation outside and they both comment that they haven't actually had any fun together in a long time.
Solid advice! And then they break up. Enjoy this moment, this is the most rational interaction between these two for the rest of the series. They walk off in different directions, apparently leaving their friends at this dance to fend for themselves.
During the credits, some sad music plays while they look at each other in Turner's class and have, like, flashbacks to earlier seasons when they did stuff together. At first I was like "Oh this is camp! It's a parody, that's funny and self aware!" But the audience never starts laughing. It's actually serious. We're actually supposed to feel sad because of this montage of flashbacks. Yikes.
Plot: 0.75 - It was cool seeing Cory fully adopt Shawn's persona since he's been doing it in little parts for a while now, and I was actually pretty surprised that Topanga turned out to be the "French girl". But Eric's poker story was pretty bad. And nothing ever even came out of it. No lessons, no wisdom, he just won at poker until everyone else quit. What a massive waste of time.
Character Development: 0.25 - Cory and Topanga work through some identity issues, and Eric is a savant...?
Humor: 0.25 - Again, the poker story failed to deliver. Shawn had the most consistent laughs, but he's had better.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - That gif of Topanga up there. That's good stuff for adolescents. Real good stuff. And for adults.
2.25 out of 4.0. Enjoyable, but largely forgettable, save for the breakup scene. You should watch this one just for the credits, maybe someone out there can tell me what the fuck the writers were thinking.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 11:52:38 GMT
Episode 3x13 "New Friends and Old"
If you haven't seen Samuel L Jackson's slam poetry about Boy Meets World, you really really ought to.
This episode had the season 4 title sequence for some reason. Who are the old friends going to be? Is it Minkus? Is Minkus in this episode? Please?
Apparently Frankie and Joey have implicitly forced Cory and Shawn into some cheerleader uniforms, and they've just finished telling the story to Mr. Feeny.
They go out into the hall just as classes end, so a bunch of students make a few jokes at their expense, it's pretty funny and they manage to avoid any easy gay jokes, which is cool. Now Feeny's got Frankie and his pro-wrestler father, Vader, in his office to administer discipline. Vader does his whole "I'm a wrassllerrrrr" bit like always, and I guess it's funny if you like that kind of thing, and he promises that his son is going to shape up. Apparently Joey the Rat has already been suspended, and Feeny advises Frankie to find some new friends that aren't blatant criminals. A quick glance back at the title tells us where we're going with this.
Did they just not have the budget to give her any lines? It's so weird to watch, she nods and makes some hand gestures for like two more seconds without saying anything.
Frankie drags Cory and Shawn into Turner's empty classroom to kill them for ratting out him and Joey. I like to imagine Frankie running home to his dad with rainbows in his eyes, "Dad! Dad! I killed two snitches today!" And ol' Vader gets dewy eyed and sniffs before giving his son a clap on the shoulder and a couple prideful nods.
To avoid being mercilessly slaughtered, the boys offer to be Frankie's new friends, and he accepts.
A jammin' guitar riff transitions the scene over to Turner's apartment. Some ex of Turner's leaves a message on his voicemail saying that she wants to meet up while she's in town for a little while, but the man himself doesn't really wanna meet up with her, or give any details about the situation to Shawn. The two actually have a pretty funny dialogue here, they've always had good chemistry. Eli's there too, but he mostly keeps his mouth shut, which lends itself to my approval of the scene as a whole.
Turner takes a walk to cool off before he murders Shawn. While he's gone, Eli gives us the abridged version of Turner's backstory. He comes from a wealthy family and could have been rich with the country clubs and the yachts and the winters in Aspen and whatever if he had stayed to inherit the family business, but he chose to go do his own thing, leaving behind Melanie, the rich girl who's been leaving these voicemails. I could totally get behind this if it had been hinted at at least once, but they clearly never even considered to do this before now. It's still not terrible though.
At the Matthews house, Frankie sets up a sleepover at his place for Cory, against Cory's will. Back at Turner's Melanie finally shows up and she's lookin super duper poor, poorer than ol' Johnny Turner, in fact.
Melanie is played by Eliza Coyle who hasn't really done anything else worth mentioning.
Another characteristic guitar riff takes us to Chubbie's with Cory, Shawn, and Frankie. Our heroes see that the younger kids pay tribute to Frankie out of fear in the form of hamburgers and sandwiches, so they decide to cash in on these benefits as well by announcing their new best-friendery with Frankie.
And nowwwwwwwww we're on a date with Turner and Melanie. It's like three minutes of them talking about their lives, and how you have to like, choose your own path in life, and apparently Melanie has also left the rich life behind to start her own bookstore, and came to Philly to show Turner that she's changed, and to maybe get some of his respect back. This is a disaster. Why the fuck are we doing this? This doesn't anyone else on the show. This is purely an attempt at making us care about Turner's backstory and to try to value him as more than a teacher/guardian/mentor. And that's a mistake. That's not who he's supposed to be. This scene just seems like a completely different show. I don't know what they were thinking.
So... much... 90's.... Why is Turner wearing a sweater but she's fine in a t-shirt?
At the school's lunch the next day, Shawn and Cory abuse Frankie's power to get a lunch table, and Frankie's like wait what the fuck you guys are just using me. Mr. The Enforcer wanders out into the hall and scares off some more people just by being near them, BUT WAIT. Mr. Feeny is on the scene. This better be good. This is the perfect opportunity for Feeny to slap some wisdom on this kid. Don't let me down Feeny.
So yeah it's not too bad, Feeny basically just tells Frankie that he has to stand up for himself and refuse to be a tool for his friends.
Now we're at Turner's place as he and Eli return and discuss the date with Melanie. Turner talks about how he and Melanie both misunderstood each other because of their first impressions (trust fund kids), and this resonates with Shawn and he reconsiders his first impression of Frankie The Enforcer. We're getting a two-pronged attack on morality here, from both Feeny and Turner, which sounds good in theory but... really? That's what we did all that Melanie work for? We were just building up to a lesson on first impressions? That's kind of underwhelming. PLUS! None of this shit is actually about first impressions! Turner and Melanie knew each other for a long time, those were prolonged impressions, and fuckin Frankie's been terrorizing Shawn since his first day at John Adams High. There is no misconception here, there's no hasty judgments, Frankie has been a bastard to Shawn for years, but now we're supposed to sympathize? Fuck that.
At school the next day, a bunch of those 7th grade slaves are about to exact their revenge on Shawn and Cory, but Frankie shows up and they run off. But Shawn's like "no, don't be afraid, he's not The Enforcer" and this is an actual quote, "that's only what you think of him as". Then he starts giving the speech about how there's a lot more to Frankie than beating the shit out of people. The 7th graders don't buy it though, THANK GOODNESS, I would have thrown up. Frankie appreciates the gesture though, and they all ride off into the sunset to get a hamburger. And the audience applauds. That is the first time in the series that they've done that, or at least that I've noticed it. What a joke of an ending.
Plot: 0.25 - What the hell even happened? Turner went on a date and the three boys just sorta... hung around.
Humor: 1.0 - Certainly not the best I've ever seen, but funny enough to outweigh the boring plot.
Character Development: 0.5 - I don't believe for a second that Frankie is actually done being a bully. But we learned a little more about Turner, I guess.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - It's clear what they were trying to say, and they got close enough.
2.75 out of 4.0. You guys know I love Frankie, but this is far from is best showing. Turner and Eli were boring, Feeny didn't get nearly enough screen time, Eric only had one line... But Cory and Shawn did pretty well until that last speechy preach scene at the end. Who the hell were the "old" friends?
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