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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:05:28 GMT
Episode 4x07 "Singled Out"
"Singled Out" was a game show on MTV from 1995 to 1998, originally hosted by Jenny McCarthy, one of the most diabolical Americans of our time, and Chris Hardwick, the creator of the Nerdist podcast and current host of Talking Dead on AMC. Jenny McShit does not appear in this episode of Boy Meets World, thank GOD, but Hardwick does.
Eric's moping around the house. He wants to be dating college girls, so he's in luck when a commercial airs for Singled Out, giving him a number to call to become a contestant on the show. In the kitchen, we learn that Cory's tonsils are fucked up and he's going to need a tonsillectomy. Shawn tells Cory about a CNN story on the disappearance of a young boy after a routine hospital procedure, so now Cory and his tucked in shirt are scared. It is truly amazing how Cory transitions up and down the spectrum of logic. Sometimes he's the voice of reason and sometimes he does stuff like this. Either way, Tobasco is our voice of reason today and she's mad at Shawn for making her boyfriend worry.
For some reason this late hour is mail time, as Eric runs into the kitchen hoping for a letter from MTV. And indeed he has been accepted to be on the show. Wouldn't be much of a plot otherwise. The next morning, Eric heads out the back door to speak with Mr. Feeny, but the old man is nowhere to be seen! This perilous catastrophe causes Eric to give glorious birth to the legendary Feeny Call.
So this is the college edition of Singled Out, but Eric doesn't go to college, and the only name he knows of is Harvard. He doesn't want to use Harvard, so he asks Feeny what college he went to. Ah the days before search engines. Feeny doesn't want to take part in Eric's deception, even though it's completely harmless, so Eric ends up going with Harvard in the interview with MTV later that day. The lady says it doesn't even matter and that they only chose him because of his hair. Sounds about right. Gosh, what was this, '96? Was there ever music on MTV?
We're in Cory's hospital room now, and Shawn comes in dressed as a surgeon. This hospital's lack of security is a running gag and it's consistently funny. Shawn's got a newspaper with an article about another kid vanishing off of the operating table. Since we last saw him, Cory has shifted to the other side of the Logic Spectrum, and calls out Shawn's story as tabloid nonsense.
Shawn goes off to deliver a baby. At long last, it's time for Singled Out to begin. The host Chris Hardwick is introduced, who is actually the real host of Singled Out playing himself here on Boy Meets World.
Now, listen, I want you guys to understand the love I have for you, the fans, and for this blog. I am actually going to watch a real episode of Singled Out on youtube now to accurately compare it to this scene.
Jesus Christ this is terrible. Okay so it's a girl eliminating contestants from a pack of 50 guys. The first category was, and I'm not lying, dick size. She will now eliminate either the "Kentucky Derby Winners" (horse sized dick), or the "Kentucky Derby Jockeys" (short guy sized dick). This actually happened, in real life.
Unsurprisingly, she eliminated the smaller dick guys, claiming that she is "from Texas where everything is big" and a whole bunch of dudes left the stage. Like, why would they even admit to it? They fill out a card or something beforehand with their answers to all the questions, and obviously the girl is gonna pick the big dick guys, so I don't know what they were thinking. Her next question is smart guys or dumb guys, and of course she eliminates dumb guys, so everyone who wrote "small dick" would have been eliminated on that one too.
I can't believe this is real. Well, the most realistic part is that Jenny McCarthy is being the biggest toolbag in the universe the whole time. It's honestly somewhat cathartic seeing her do this shit on television. Chris Hardwick is actually a lot of fun to watch here though. Maybe I should start watching Talking Dead. Anyway, it's down to five contestants now. The five introduce themselves (the girl can't actually see any of the contestants, because this show doesn't want to cheapen the love experience with things like appearances, but dick size is fine). Now she eliminates the five down to three with some bull shit that I can't really explain with words. It doesn't look like there's a part two to the episode I picked, so we'll have to stop there, but I checked another episode and it ends the same way as on Boy Meets World. So they're at least staying true to the source material.
Yeah so Singled Out on MTV gets no badges. 0 out of 4. Anyway, here on BMW, it's swapped with a guy in that chair (Eric) and 50 girls behind him.
That guy in the background with the keyboard is the same guy from the real show, too. He looks like a Backstreet Boy.
Eric's first category is "First Date", with the options "Have You Been Naughty" or "Have You Been Nice". Eric accidentally sends away all the naughty girls, and follows that up with accidentally sending away the dumb girls. It's TREMENDOUSLY more enjoyable than the actual show. Eric's reactions to sending away the girls he wants are really funny, and Chris Hardwick is a real treat. So after two categories, Eric's got it down to five girls, (just like on the show, what a fascinating coincidence), and it's time for a commercial break.
After the commercial, it's down to three girls, I guess two of them rediscovered their dignity. From left to right, it's girls 2, 3, and 5. I'm already knee deep in this shit, so I might as well go all the way. There's a guy in the audience that I recognize from the episode of Singled Out that I watched.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS CONSPIRACY? WHO IS THIS PALM TREE HAIRED MAN? And since I know you're curious, he got eliminated by the "small dick" answer.
Anyway Eric answers a few rapid fire questions and ends up with Girl #5, Lisa, played by Bridget Flanery, whose career doesn't consist of anything I can comment on.
I'll give you three guesses at what their arranged prize-date is. Don't worry, you only need one. It's Chubbie's.
It's 12 minutes into the episode now, I don't know what they could possibly do for the rest of this, but here we go. Back at the hospital, Cory's loopy on anesthesia as his family wish him good tidings in the OR. Feeny arrives, having been called earlier by Cory himself. The young man wishes to make peace with his teacher, and directs him to an airport locker containing all of his homework from the past five years. It's one of my favorite jokes from the entire series, but it's too long to put in a gif, so check it out for yourself.
Oh, it's time for Cory's dream sequence. Well, when you wonder how a show is going to waste time, that really ought to be your go-to answer. His dream is a parody of Ripley's Believe It Or Not called We're Not Making This Up, investigating Cory's disappearance during surgery. It's got John O'Hurley as the treachcoat-clad host, before he was on Seinfeld or Family Feud, so that's cool. He also played the weatherman that Eric replaced back in season 3. This scene is the definition of wasted time, but it's probably a lot funnier if you had been watching Ripley's around that time.
At Chubbie's, Eric reveals that he doesn't really go to Harvard, and Lisa admits that she doesn't go to Columbia. In fact, they both lied about pretty much everything, so it's like a double negative, they're still a good match. It's actually really sweet, if we ignore the whole relationship-based-on-lies thing.
During the credits, Cory's wooziness milks a few more shitty laughs out of the audience, and Topanga takes him off to find soup. Shawn walks into the empty room, assumes the worst, and starts to disappear himself, with cutting edge 1996 special effects.
The audience laughs during this bit, and that sort of thing always confuses me. They obviously can't see the effects live, so is there just a sign that tells them to laugh at this part? Or is it a laughtrack? If that's the case, why bother? No one is dumb enough to believe that an audience is actually laughing at effects they can't see.
I stand corrected.
Plot: 1.0 - It's really random and feels like a big publicity stunt, but the Singled Out story was entertaining, if nothing else, and I like the reveal at the end that they were both lying. A surgery is a pretty lazy way to keep Cory occupied for an episode, but the writers still had fun with it.
Character Development: 0.5 - This was mostly a one-off just-for-laughs episode, but Eric at least learned that he doesn't need to be a Harvard student to meet a nice girl.
Humor: 1.0 - Chris Hardwick and Eric had great chemistry, their styles of humor synergize beautifully. And the bit about Cory's hidden stash of homework makes me laugh every time.
Life Lesson: 0.5 - It's a stretch, but you don't have to lie about who you are, and a further stretch, usually your lies are going to come out eventually anyway.
3.0 out of 4.0. I recommend watching this episode just for the sheer novelty of it. Sometimes shows will parody a real game show, but this was a direct carbon copy of the real game, so it's definitely fun to watch. At the end of the day though, I've gotta ask why. And how. It's so strange that this happened. I could understand if it was a parody, but it's not. Very peculiar episode here.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:06:06 GMT
Episode 4x08 "Dangerous Secret"
Cory shows up at Shawn's trailer/tardis late at night with paper bags full of various provisions. Cory believes Shawn to be sick and wants to help take care of his best buddy. He even brought flowers. What a lamb. Cory wants to go plug in the humidifier he brought when A LIGHTNING BOLT OF TROUBLE STRIKES.
Ahhhhhh shit, it's one of the ones where they try to be serious.
Cory tries to make his escape, but Shawn follows him outside. Naturally, Cory assumes that Shawn and Claire are doing a little more than holding hands, and Shawn tells Cory to trust him on this one. Claire joins the boys outside and asks Cory not to tell anyone. So this all looks pretty racy to the audience here. Shawn is 15 or 16 right now, and given his history it's pretty believable, while still a little shocking, that he'd be sleeping with this girl.
At Chubbie's the next day, Cory's got his mind set on the whole Claire situation, and once again our hero feels like he needs to catch up to his best friend. Saying that he genuinely feels ready to go further than kissing with Topanga, Cory asks Shawn how to... get there.
Later that night, it's date night for Cory and Tobongos. He lures her up to his bedroom and makes the most awkward sexual advance in the history of Philadelphia. It's two minutes of accidentally playing Barney CDs and stuff. It's sort of unfunny and hard to watch. Eventually he gets the right music on. They start to make out and Cory shoves his hand up the back of his girlfriend's shirt. If Shawn's advice was to unhook her bra while her shirt was still on, I am seriously disappointed, but I guess there's not much else they could have done on ABC.
Topanga's a little weirded out by the moves being laid down and the whole thing blows up as Cory admits that Shawn had a girl stay over and that he and Topanga should be at least as intimate and Shawn and some random girl. "We should be at like ninth base by now", he claims.
So the brakes are thrown on and the night is ruined. I'm not entirely sure what to say about this. It stops being awkward once Cory makes his move, and is well written after that. Topanga doesn't freak out or anything, she's just like "you're clearly doing this for the wrong reasons," ya know? So it's a good scene for that reason, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure we're all adults here and I don't need to spend too much time discussing adolescent wisdom about sex.
At school the next day, Mr. Feeny smells the smoke between Cory and Topanga and suggests that Cory keep the lines of communication open, regardless of hurt feelings. That's probably the most meaningful thing we're going to get out of this episode, that really is good advice. Alas, it doesn't help Cory as Topanga doesn't "know what to say" to him.
Cory blames everything on Shawn and tells him what happened the night before. Shawn's main takeaway point is that Cory told Topanga about Claire, even though he promised not to. They really should have paid more attention to the writing on this. Cory didn't actually mention Claire by name to Topanga, he just said "a girl", so there's really no problem here.
Later that night, Cory's lurking around at home, so his parents know something is off. They inquire, and our hero tries to distract them by initiating a group singing of Michael Row The Boat Ashore. A lot of shows try to do random-funny, and most fail, but this is random-funny done properly.
So now it's time for THE MATTHEWS BRUTHAS to talk sex in their room. Eric sticks to his classic insult-advice, but he's pretty much right on the money: "these things have gotta happen naturally", "sex is like a bike without training wheels, if you try it before you're ready you're gonna fall off and break your head". It's not the typical preachy stuff that circulated the "family friendly" tv environment of the 90s, and reminds us of this show's previous mature approach to sex in "Wake Up Little Cory" from season 2. Great stuff for the target audience.
Shawn arrives through the window as Eric heads back downstairs.
Turns out, Shawnie's parents are back in town, so he wants to have Claire stay with Cory now. But whyyyyyyy what's the big secrettttttttt. Cory insists that he can be trusted, even though he demonstrated earlier that he cannot, and Shawn relents. Apparently Claire's father, a vice president of a bank, occasionally beats the crap out of his daughter. There's no mention of alcohol but it's sort of implied. And they can't go to the cops since their word ain't gonna mean shit against the VP of a bank. Damn, the 1%'s ability to avoid prosecution, that's some harsh reality that, as far as teenagers go, only the punk rock kids are gonna catch. Even without that, it's an unusually heavy subject matter. In the end, Cory agrees to call Shawn once his parents are asleep.
Claire arrives later that night and comments that the house reminds her of her aunt's place in Vermont. As Cory takes her coat, he sees some bruising on her arm.
Claire is played by Ariana Richards, who was actually Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park, which is pretty cool. JEFF GOLDBLUM and all that. She hasn't seen a whole lot of work since then though.
Anyway, Cory goes to get her a glass of milk, and returns to the living room to find her already asleep on the couch. It's almost an exact reproduction of when Shawn fell asleep at Turner's place right as Turner looked away for a second, back in 2x22.
I am so good at making gifs. Regardless, it's kind of an interesting parallel. Shawn was physically abandoned by his parents, while Claire's been sort of emotionally abandoned by hers.
At school the next day, Cory insists to Shawn that they go to the police, but Claire overhears and explains that she'll just lie to the cops. She claims that her father just has a lot of stress from work and that she gets in his way. It's actually classic self-blaming, a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, and the reason why people all-too-often stay in abusive relationships. I'm impressed, Boy Meets World. That's real as fuck. Ultimately, Cory agrees to let her stay at his place another night.
As always, there's a bunch of posters unrelated to English class on the corkboard of the English classroom in the background there.
Later that night, Cory shows up at Shawn's trailer with a very black-eyed Claire. I'd make the obvious joke, but it's probably in bad taste. Heh, bad taste. I guess I made a different joke on accident. Whatever.
Claire breaks down in the trailer and the sad music plays. I guess the boys decide to have Claire stay at Shawn's, since they go back to Cory's to retrieve the pillow and blanket she used earlier. But Cory's parents are lying in wait! They found one of Claire's textbooks that she left there the other night, and the boys spill the beans. Oh okay, they've bought Claire a bus ticket to Vermont to stay with her aunt, which is why the writers had her talk about it earlier (and why I mentioned it). It's a Happily Ever After ending, and it's honestly how I expected it to end, but I underestimated this show. It doesn't end there. Alan points out that there's nothing to stop Claire's father from just going to Vermont to get her back, that their solution is actually kinda shitty. Finally, Shawn accepts that the only way to stop this guy is to go to the police.
During the credits, we learn from Cory and Boomeranga that Claire has in fact gone to Vermont and her father is in a therapy program. That is an incredibly progressive resolution, instead of "he'll be locked up for a long time". Fascinating. Cory and Topanga kiss and she suggests they "take a lead off of first". Scandalous.
When this aired on TV, there was one of those cheesy PSAs at the very end with a hotline for domestic abuse, but it is evidently not on the DVDs.
Plot: 1.0 - There's the very real question of why Claire even went to Shawn in the first place. He blatantly said that they aren't even dating, so there's really no reason for it. But if we accept that premise, it's a reasonable exploration of how these types of things play out, and the self-blaming was an excellent touch.
Character Development: 0.5 - Cory's goin to boob town.
Humor: 0.5 - There were some really funny lines, but overall it's kinda bogged down by the gravity of the main story.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - For 1996, this is decent stuff. And we're not talkin about Skins here folks, this is a fuckin ABC sitcom. All the stuff about sex is much more mature than we might have expected, especially from Eric, and then there's the whole "don't abuse your kids" thing.
3.0 out of 4.0. I definitely prefer the first seven episodes of this season. A good tagline for BMW is "lighthearted and funny, yet profound" but this episode's seriousness really breaks the rhythm we had established. Every series has to have a couple of these though, so for what they were trying to do it's pretty good.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:06:26 GMT
Episode 4x09 "Sixteen Candles and Four-Hundred-Pound Men" Sixteen Candles was a movie in the 80s with Molly Ringwald. Anthony Michael Hall was in it too, in a minor role, and then a year later they were both starring the Breakfast Club. But that's probably all unrelated to what's going on in this episode. A miracle has occurred. Frankie Stachino is in Turner's class with Cory and Shawn. I can't begin to explain this, but I should know to stop trying by this point. Cory's reading poetry to the class, and I googled the verse, to no avail. Either way, Turner tries to get Shawn's opinion on the poem but he's slightly too unconscious to provide it. Turner's actually got a professional haircut now. Looks like he finally broke down. Unsurprisingly, Frankie gives a very emotional and thorough analysis of Cory's poem, explaining that it's about reaching closer and closer to an unattainable love. After class, Cory asks Frankie "why the sad puss oh king of poetry", and he's all, "the poem is just like my life." Then Turner's like "hey Frankie you're awesome at poetry maybe you can teach Cory and Shawn to not be shit". So the boys bargain with The Enforcer, offering to help with his unrequited love problem if he helps them with poetry. What a completely non-contrived and reasonable setup they've thrown together in these first two minutes. Arite I guess we're at Frankie's trailer now, remember he lives in the same trailer park as Shawn, and after only seconds Frankie's father, known mostly as Vader, the wrestler, comes home from the gym with The Enforcer Jr, Herman. As always, Herman gives his lines in a I-need-my-face-punched way, and we learn hat Vader doesn't like Frankie's poetry interests, and is all around disappointed in him. And in Cory, for encouraging his behavior. But Cory displays some quick wrestling knowledge so now they're bros. At school we get some more shoehorned plot structuring as Topanama invites Cory to her sweet 16. And then that's the end of the scene. Real clever stuff today. Back at Frankie's trailer, which is blatantly the same set as Shawn's trailer, Frankie is trying to teach poetry crap to our inattentive heroes. Isn't this the second time we've done this story? "Cyrano", in season 2, where the boys help Frankie with some girl he loves, except this time it's his dad. Whatever. Vader comes home, announcing with gusto that he's got a rematch with "Jake the Snake" for a shot at "the belt". The boys use this opportunity to coach Frankie as he talks to his dad about wrestling. Pretty much exactly like they did in "Cyrano". It... is surprisingly effective... I think I've said this before, but it's cool how good of an actor Vader is. Then again, pro wrestling has a lot of elements of acting. Either way, he's a ton of fun to watch. Herman is really the weak link in this family. At school the next day, Frankie requests Cory's ringside coaching at his father's match the next day, since he himself still knows very little about wrestling, while Cory's never missed any of Vader's matches. But wait! Cory's got to go to Topanga's sweet 16 that night. Maybe Shawn can help? Shawn cannot help. At least, not with this. Frankie goes emo for like 10 seconds, and then Cory reluctantly agrees to help him. Topanga arrives on the scene, and Cory tries to get out of going to her party. It doesn't work, and he ultimately promises to be there. ......Really? The "has to be in two places at once" trope? That's what we're doing today? Nah, I uh, I'm not doin that. This isn't the fuckin Flintstones, or the Jetsons, okay, this is Boy Meets World and I am not doing that bull shit. There's even a TV Tropes article on this. That's how you know we're in the Detroit of storylines here. tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoTimerDate"Hilarity allegedly ensues." Oh TV Tropes, I wish I was as funny as you. Oh, wow, this is interesting, Shawn brings a tape of that exact Flintstones episode to Cory's, and explains how to use the same strategy as Fred Flintstone. Does this count as meta? A parody sort of loses its edge when it directly acknowledges the thing it's parodying. Shawn's plan is to learn from Fred's mistakes in order to carry out the scheme successfully, so I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's meta or not. Oh okay, we didn't have to wait very long. Cory observes that time is compressed in a cartoon, and that the timeline can't properly be adapted to real life. Okay so it's not meta or a parody, it's just self aware. And I don't really think that excuses it. The rest of this better be damn good. The next scene opens on the beginning of Vader's wrestling match. As such, I just did a little research and there's some interesting stuff if you care. Vader is wearing his actual getup from the WWF (WWE as of 2002). Further, Jake "The Snake" Roberts is also a real wrestler, but the two never fought one-on-one like this as far as I can tell. This episode was filmed in summer-ish of 1996, and earlier in that year there was a 3v3 tag team match with Vader on one side and Jake The Snake on the other. Vader's team won the match when he pinned Jake The Snake, so that's probably what inspired this. I was expecting footage from that fight, but they've actually got the real Jake The Snake in this episode too, so that's pretty cool. Now, this is an interesting set. I have no idea how they got all these extras, maybe they even came in on a real wrestling event, but there's no "live audience" here. The boys make a few jokes and, by golly, there's no "audience laughter". It's quite wonderful, to be honest, even if the jokes aren't particularly funny. Anyway, the match begins and our heroes run off to Topanga's party. He arrives, as does the studio audience. The laughter's consistency usually lets the viewers tune it out, but here it's just kinda weird to only have it in half the scenes. It really breaks the immersion. Cory chats with the birthday girl a little bit and then makes a bullshit Flinstones-y escape back to the fight. Zzzzzzzz. Jake the Snake looks really unsuited for this. That guy was a pro wrestler for years after filming this. Now go pull up a picture of John Cena. Boy have times changed. Cory gives Frankie some timely advice to feed to his father, and it helps, so I guess the plan is working so far. Back at the party, it's more cliche awfulness and I hate it. Topanga puts on her special birthday song just as Cory bails again, leaving her to stand alone in the middle of the dance floor looking sad. At the fight, Cory's all out of ideas for Vader, so why the fuck did he go back, and then Frankie tells his father that he'll love him whether he wins or loses. This revitalizes the bald wrestler and he goes and does good wrestling, finishing Jake The Snake with his famed Vader Bomb. Is this over yet? The boys run back to the party, which by this point is empty except for Topanga. For Hollywood reasons, the wrestling match was on the TV at Topanga's party, so she saw the above picture as it happened. Topanga demands a good reason for this fuckery, and Cory explains that he was trying to help Frankie get closer with his dad. A quick glance at the TV shows Topanga that he was successful, and she... is okay with it... But she still wishes she could have had a special dance with her boyfriend. Shawn reminds them that Frankie owes Cory a favor, even though he doesn't since the deal was for him to teach them poetry, which somehow translates to Cory and Topanga dancing in the wrestling ring. Plot: 0.25 - Literally on TV tropes. Why did they do it? Why? Also, the part about Cory and Shawn learning poetry from Frankie never turned into anything at all. I think the draft of this script was different, where they just do Frankie a favor (because of what Shawn said about a favor) and then the first half was rewritten with the poetry deal, without changing anything in the second half. But I might be talking out of my ass. Character Development: 0.5 - Frankie got closer to his dad, which is nice, I guess. Humor: 0.5 - The first ten minutes was good, and Shawn was consistently funny, but once the two-places-at-once cliches came rolling in I wanted to vomit. "Hilarity allegedly ensues" indeed. Life Lesson: 0 - Have an extremely forgiving girlfriend so you can get away with dumb shit. 1.25 out of 4.0. - The first real disappointment of the season. I guess if you liked wrestling in 1996 this was probably pretty damn cool, but I don't and didn't, so it's not really doing anything for me. At least we got to see Frankie again, but he's honestly not as good without Joey around. Herman was actually listed in the credits this time, he's played by E.J. De La Pena, who, CRAZILY ENOUGH, hasn't had any real work since this. |
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:07:02 GMT
Episode 4x10 "Turkey Day"
Mr. Feeny is actually teaching history today. In particular, the Rwandan Civil War, between the Tutsi aristocracy and the lesser Hutu majority, with a focus on the influence of class differences. The school-day is about to end and usher in the Thanksgiving break, but in the last moments Feeny announces that he wants the students to write a paper on class differences over the break. Further, he informs the students that Shawn and Cory have "won" the food drive by donating the most food, which is going to go right back to Shawn's poor family anyway.
Turkey is essentially a stuffing delivery device. Cory and Shawn think so too, and neither wants to give up the stuffing. This is definitely one of the more relatable issues this season. Blood has been spilled over stuffing. But the boys decide not to spill blood, and instead agree to have Thanksgiving together. It's never been addressed until now, but apparently the Matthews and Hunter parents aren't exactly friends, just incidental acquaintances. The only one on board with the group thanksgiving is Virna, Shawn's mother. She convinces Chet, and Cory manages to convince Amy and Alan on the basis that Shawn's parents are excited about it.
Later, Frankie shows up at the Matthews house to arrange a "dating situation" with Morgan.
Hilarious, but he's actually trying to arrange a date between Morgan and Herman. Like always, he delivers his lines like he's got a mouth full of cotton, and Morgan agrees to eat a piece of pie with him on Thanksgiving. That would have been enormously inconvenient if the Matthews weren't already going to be eating with the Hunters, but whatever.
I guess the writers are trying to make it clear by this point that Frankie has been reborn. He is definitely not The Enforcer anymore.
We fast forward to the trailer park on Thanksgiving day. Amy has left her purse in the car and wants to retrieve it for fear of it being stolen, but Eric steps in to be a gentleman.
It's difficult to translate Eric's tone to text, but it's perfect. You all know that sometimes Will Friedle says something perfectly, hilarious beyond explanation, and this is one of those times. His voice acting has been great over the last two decades, but I would love to see him on the screen more often. Anyway, Alan sends Cory to get the purse since he won't drive off.
After an awkward, accidental encounter with the Unters, the family find their way to the Hunter trailer. Some obvious class differences raise the tension right away. The Matthews family has brought food in nice dishes, as well as a bottle of fine wine, while the Hunters have plastic utensils and boxed wine. The parents and Eric are all painfully aware of how uncomfortable this is, even though Virna is trying her damnedest to not look like trailer trash in front of their middle class guests. She decides to go out and buy some fancier cheese to meet that end, telling Chet that she just wants the meal to go well.
Once again, much funnier with the voice. Regardless, Virna does not in fact leave to buy cheese.
Cory comes back with the purse, just in time to hear Chet tell his wife that the party is going to suck with or without fancy cheese. Cory asks Shawn how things could have gotten so bad so quickly, and Shawn concedes that these problems are bigger than either of them.
This is great stuff so far. A believable examination of the tension from class differences. Virna is obviously envious while Chet is bitter, and the Matthews parents are just trying not to be rude or condescending. Nothing exciting is happening, and we're at 10 minutes, but that's okay! It's building up for a payoff at the end, or at least it seems like it. There's a lot of framing going on, and it's interesting to think about how much better this could be if we'd seen some of these clashes between the parents in previous episodes.
The realism breaks a little bit when the Unter guy from before knocks at the door and takes Chet outside to a meeting of the Trailer Park Patriarch Mafia, or Tray-Pay-Pay-May, who tell Papa Hunter that they don't take kindly to middle class folks around these parts. It's a little silly, but it gets the story moving.
I'm going to go ahead and say that Amy was justified in worrying about her purse. These guys mean business. Chet tries to defend the Matthews folks, but the old guy orders him to get rid of them and then goes off to watch Jerry Springer. The sad acoustic guitar music plays through the fade out, but then the electric guitar fades back in, so that's weird.
Chet pulls Shawn and Virna outside to explain why their guests are going to have to leave. Inside, Cory calls out his parents on their bull shit class prejudice, and Alan brings the wisdom smackdown.
Hooooooooooly SHIT. That is amazing advice, especially for teenagers. I've wasted a monumental amount of time in arguments where everyone involved "knew" they were right, and by the end nothing changed. I think this is the harshest reality we've seen so far on Boy Meets World, and it couldn't have come from anyone but Alan. Damn that's real.
Outside, Chet explains the situation to his family. The Matthews kids come out to escort Morgan to her date with Herman. At Chet's behest, everyone walks really low to the ground to avoid being seen.
We get some more tense class-conflict between the four parents while the kids are sneaking over to Herman's. Hopefully Frankie's dad was not in the Patriarch Mafia. Wait, his dad is Vader, how the fuck is Vader poor enough to live in a trailer park? Thaaaaaaaaaat doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, the parents agree that this event isn't really working out, and that the Matthews family should just head home. Alan comments "That doesn't make it anybody's fault," and they all know that it's nothing personal. And that's the KEY, ladies and gentlemen, that is the most important part! How easy it is to be uncomfortable around "different" people, for "not personal" reasons; that's basically the definition of prejudice. Even without violence or animosity or hostility, it's still so easy to be prejudiced.
Over at Frankie's trailer, Vader is nowhere to be seen so I don't know what's going on there. The Stachino boys invite Eric, Shawn, and Cory to stay and eat with them, as they've all just finishing setting up the table outside. That's actually reasonable. Unlike the magical trailer pictured above, an average trailer wouldn't have room for a big table inside. I don't know if the allure of a thanksgiving meal could get me to sit down with Herman though. Look at his dumb face.
At least he's being nice to everybody. AM I THE PREJUDICED ONE? HOLY SHIT. It's not because he's fat, it's just the way he says his lines, I can't stand it.
They decide to go around the table and have everyone say what they're thankful for. We did that in my family on Thanksgiving, and it was always the most awkward thing ever. I have two sisters, and so for any Thanksgiving at least one of us was at an angsty age, so we could never just get through the damn thing, but ultimately it's probably a worthwhile tradition.
Eric goes, then Frankie, and they're both meaningful without being cheesey, and then Herman says "I ah thehfuh tuh buh si'i neh ta this delkuht blawshm," while looking at Morgan. AND MAYBE IT'S JUST BY COMPARISON, but Morgan goes next and does her best delivery in the series.
The parents (listening from the background of that gif) realize that they're a bunch of jerks, and resolve to try their best to enjoy Thanksgiving, and sit down with everyone else at the table. It sounds cheesier than it is.
During the credits, we're in Feeny's class as he hands back the papers everyone wrote over the break. He calls Shawn up to the front of the room to read his paper out loud. And honestly, real talk, my heart is already racing. This is one of those top 5 scenes right here. Shawn reads part of his paper where he draws parallels between the Hutu/Tutsi conflict from earlier and the class conflict he saw during Thanksgiving. It's really quite good, and if you recall my mention of a "payoff" at the end, this is the payoff.
I strongly recommend watching that scene, if not the entire episode.
Plot: 1.0 - A Thanksgiving episode with a legitimate conflict? It's almost unheardof.
Character Development: 0.5 - I want to give this episode a full score, but I really can't justify the CD badge. The parents are all less dick-like about class differences, at least for the time being, but they kinda got guilted into it, so I'm not feeling a badge here.
Humor: 1.0 - The humor was spread around the cast really well. Everybody had at least a couple funny lines.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - The prejudice stuff, obviously, but that's not even necessary for the full point. That gif of Alan about "being right", man, that's some seriously heavy wisdom.
3.5 out of 4.0. This is a great one. That scene at the end though... It's City Slackers-esque, you know? Every time Feeny shows pride in Shawn, my heart sings. It's really just beautiful.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:07:51 GMT
Episode 4x11 "An Affair to Forget"
Our pal Shawn just got dumped. Way dumped. By a girl with the "popular" look named Jennifer Bassett. I checked the spelling because I thought they'd try to make a joke with Basset hounds, but no dice. She's played by Kristanna Loken who, aside from having a totally bitchin last name, has done a whole lot of everything since this role. At least one bad movie per year, almost, as well as a bunch of short-lived TV shows. My personal pick is her appearance in the Key & Peele sketch "Power Falcons". It's on youtube on the official Comedy Central channel, so it's guilt free in addition to being funny. Brenda Song is in that sketch too. (I love Key & Peele).
Anyway Shawn's taking it pretty hard. We haven't seen him like this since Dana.
Cory convinces his best buddy that Jennifer is all fake, from her personality to her nose. This inspires Shawn to go tell her off, saying that he thinks she's conceited and that he's over her. Jennifer wants to know where these insults came from. Shawn initially resists, but after a big long kiss, he admits it was Cory. I don't fully understand what happens next, but either out of spite toward Cory or revitalized attraction to Shawn's new assertiveness, or both, she decides she wants to date Shawn again. He agrees, because he's fifteen and she's pretty.
At Chubbie's, Cory explains why this is a bad idea. He lists some choice adjectives for Jennifer, or "Zathrak the Undead" as he's taken to calling her, but because this is television she's standing right behind him. As a result, Jennifer pulls Shawn aside and does a him-or-me thing. Again, Shawn initially resists, but, again, fifteen.
Cory's expression is priceless.
I dunno guys, this just doesn't seem possible. She's not even that pretty, and it's not like there's a shortage of girls who want to make out with Shawn.
At home, Amy and Alan return from the theatre and regale Eric with the details. They saw a one woman show, where she "sat on a stool and told the remarkable story of her life" to a sold out theatre. Naturally, Eric decides to write his own.
This is great. We've jumpstarted Eric's quest for meaning and fulfillment. He's been on the back-burner since he started working in his father's new store, but now he's on the... back-in-action-burner.
That was a joke. Thanks for coming.
It's even right there in the title of the play. Eric wants to feel validated.
The phone rings, and we get an adorable split-screen conversation between Shawn and Cory. They say a bunch of hilariously romantic stuff, like "I was just listening to the sound of your voice" and "you can't let her come between what we have". The delivery in particular is spot on. Ultimately they agree to meet in the library the next morning.
In the library, Jennifer shows up unannounced, causing problems for the boys' plan. It seems that Shawn has brought a cinnabun as a gift for Cory, but has to give it to Jennifer to avoid suspicion. Topanga comes by and tells Shawn there's something he might be interested in over in the Classics section. It is there that our heroes converse in cautious tones through a tall bookshelf, in the same romantic style as the stuff they said on the phone. Fun fact, the banner at the top of this blog is from this scene. Although, it was either cut footage or a publicity picture, since that exact shot never occurs. It's a great picture on its own, but in context it's magnificent. As is the scene itself, it's one of my favorites.
I love how completely unafraid they were of writing this. Bromance to the max.
Jennifer comes up expecting to find Cory, but he manages to dodge out of the way. The scene ends with Jenny dragging Shawn off to class. It's halfway through the show now and I feel like I haven't done much reviewing. There really isn't much to say. Almost everything so far has been for the sake of humor on top of a basic premise. And while the humor has been fantastic, there just isn't much to talk about story-wise.
Later that night, Eric needs some help from the only person capable of giving it.
I plan on having every Feeny Call in a gif by the end of this.
Eric wants Feeny to read through his play and give him advice, but the old man claims to want no part in this. I'm just impressed that Eric managed to write that much in less than 24 hours. Feeny relents and reads a few sentences, and they suck, and then he reluctantly agrees to try to sell some tickets for Eric's show.
Inside, Cory's maintaining a lavishly prepared dinner for a late and unnamed dinner guest, whom his parents assume is Topanga. She arrives with a pie, and we learn that the dinner was in fact for Shawn. Sad to say, it doesn't seem like he's coming, but Topizzatopping insists that he will show up eventually.
I like everything about that. The writing, movements, body language, and tone are all amazing.
Just then, the phone rings and Shawn is on the other end in a hilarious country club tennis outfit with a sweater draped around his shoulders. It's the same sort of bit as before, as well as the revelation that Jennifer found Shawn's "box of cinnabun receipts", so she's been on extra high alert lately. Shawn apologizes and Cory insists that he's not hurt.
Again, I'm not sure what to talk about here. This is the third time they've done this bit, and while it's still completely hilarious, there's nothing to say that hasn't been said.
Topanga gets an idea and tells Cory to be at Chubbie's in an hour. Some sort of surfer rock guitar riff plays us into Eric's premiere of Look At Me, Look At Me. There's a shot of the sign outside, and because I paused it to write this I noticed that this is taking place at a bowling alley, but it's really easy to miss otherwise since there's no indication of it inside. The shot only lasts a few seconds, it's definitely one of the more subtle jokes I've seen on this show.
The moment Eric begins, a baby in the audience starts wailing, which is a fantastic touch.
It's not going well. The woman sitting behind Feeny is trying torturously to hide her laughter. And I can't blame her.
At Chubbie's, Topanga brings Shawn into the back room with the pool table for a secret meeting with Cory. WOW, TOPANGA. THAT WAS YOUR PLAN? Your plan for getting Cory and Shawn to meet is to bring them both to the same place, you are basically Tesla.
The boys decide to shoot some pool, but before they can start, Jennifer arrives to find them fraternizing. Apparently she received an anonymous tip to come here. Now Topanga re-enters, I guess she only left before so that she could make a dramatic re-entrance, so that's kinda vain.
Topanga explains that she set this up like it was some great feat, I don't even know where she got Jennifer's cell number, and then Jennifer gives Shawn another deep-kiss-ultimatum. So what was the point of the first ultimatum that started all this? I don't think she understands how these things work. Shawn chooses Cory this time, even though nothing has changed from last time, not even the location. And... that's it. It's really not clear why she wanted to get back together with Shawn in the first place. Or why she dumped him in the first place. I don't think it's out of spite because, in her defense, she does manage to show up only when Cory is talking shit about her. I don't think the dumping+undumping was really even necessary. That brought nothing new to the table.
During the credits, we see the ending to Eric's play and it is hysterical. Amy and Alan are asleep in their chairs and everyone else has left by the time he finishes. Eric sits down and finds that Mr. Feeny has joined him on stage to talk things out. Feeny explains that Eric still has many great years to make something out of himself, that his best moments lie ahead of him, and that a college education is a good place to start.
You're damn right they are.
Plot: 0.75 - There really wasn't anything special going on with Cory and Shawn, but Eric writing and performing a one man show? That's uniquely original and it was fun to watch. If we'd seen more if, I would have gone for the full point.
Character Development: 0.75 - As much as the writers may have intended it, Shawn did not earn most of that .75. In this episode, he thinks with his dick until he gets frustrated. There isn't any great moral ascension here. Similar to the plot, we have Eric to thank, as he has worked through an extremely common crisis for recent high school (and college) graduates. Again, full point if he had been the center of attention.
Humor: 1.0 - Eaaaaaaaasy full point. The bromance between Cory and Shawn is legendary, and it's in full force today. Eric and Feeny were also very funny.
Life Lesson: 0.75 - Bros before hoes, but only after you have enough content for an episode. More importantly, the time to regret your lack of achievement is not your early 20s. That is the time to start achieving.
3.25 out of 4.0. Eric's story deserves a lot of the credit, but even so, the entire thing was outrageously funny. Even without Eric it would still be worth watching, but he makes it considerably better. That pretty much describes the entire series.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:08:26 GMT
Episode 4x12 "Easy Street"
I am finally the top Google result for "Boy Meets World reviewed", and any other version of that. Feels damn good. Infinite thanks for supporting me, everyone.
We're in Mr. Turner's class where Topanga is finishing up a reading of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost while Cory and Shawn perform synchronized snoring in the back of the room. Feeny stops by for some reason, but his intentions are left by the wayside as he wakes our heroes up and explains the meaning of Frost's poem: the impact that our choices can have. To follow that up, he asks Cory and Shawn what kinds of choices they've made lately, and both report that they've recently decided to get jobs over Christmas Break to be able to buy gifts. Cory is a gopher at some restaurant, Shawn is working down at the docks.
What the fuck was that? This is a seriously extreme example of protagonist privilege right here. They're blatantly sleeping in class, but it's fine because Mr. Feeny came by to recap the entire lesson for them. Let's just neglect everybody else in the class, that's fine. And the jokes in this scene kinda suck, every punch line is followed by this eyebrow-raising nodding thing that I'm sure you recognize if you ever watch this show.
Cory is especially notorious for that move. The scene fades out after a punchline, so there's no stated reason whatsoever for Feeny to stop by the room.
Now we're at Alan's outdoor-equipment store. Recall that they hired Lonnie, the daughter of a walking-stick wielding mountain man, a few episodes ago and by gum here she is again, putting up Christmas decorations. She's telling Eric how great her family Christmases were back in "the mountains" and starts feeling homesick and crying. But Eric has a shoulder to do it on. He then promises to take her back home for Christmas, even though it's 500 miles away. Alan just sort of looks on with disappointment, and who can blame him.
Time to see Cory's part time job.
Yeah that looks safe. These two suits are talking in Godfathery Italian accents too, so Cory is the only person on Earth who doesn't see what's going on here. But I guess that's a prerequisite for the job. Just gotta put "oblivious" on your resume, under "skills". The one on the right is Mr. Fountain, played by Buddy Hackett, who was a big deal way before my time, including being a panelist on What's My Line?. To his left is Mr. Martini, played by Soupy Sales, who is also a big deal to old people and a panelist on What's My Line?. I doubted the mob presence in Philly, but boy was I wrong. The "Philadelphia crime family" was alive and well, under the direction of Joseph Merlino in 1995, but it doesn't seem like this episode is making any direct references to that.
It's unusual to get 4 minutes into an episode without laughing, but here I am. Ah, okay, they got me at 5 and a half minutes. Shawn comes over to Cory's at 8 AM, having worked at the docks since 3. He does a whole bit about how cold and miserable it was, in stark contrast to how cushy and lucrative Cory's job is. Shawn just can't seem to catch a break.
That barely gets a rise out of the audience, but I think it's hysterical. I've seen a lot of comedy in hundreds of different forms, and after a point it's hard to be surprised by a punchline. You usually have to rely on delivery for the humor, but this is the sort of punchline that you can't possibly see coming. Awesome.
Cory brings Shawn in to work to show him just how easy his job is. Right away, one of the suits gives Cory a $20 dollar "tip" to take an envelope to some specific mailbox. Cory's asking too many questions, but Shawn sees what's going on and steps in like "yeah he'll definitely deliver it, no problem" and pulls his friend aside. Shawn informs how bow-tie clad friend that he is, in fact, working for the mob.
This is a trip down memory lane. Shawn's street smarts are filling in Cory's innocent/naive cracks. That's some season 2 shit, and I kinda miss it.
Cory quits immediately, without any problems from the suits, and heads for the hills. Shawn steps over to the What's My Line panelists and basically says "hey he's not a rat, don't whack my best friend," and they're cool about it. Noting Shawn's strong sense of loyalty, they offer him Cory's old job. He does indeed take the job, and excels at it with his sharpened knowledge of criminal activity.
Speakin' of sharp, god damn, that vest. I wish I had more opportunities to wear a vest, every guy looks good in one of those.
Cory stops by to try to talk Shawn out of working here, but our vested hero insists that nothing bad is going to happen, and that he just wants a little money to buy nice gifts for his friends and family. This is slightly reminiscent of "Santa's Little Helper" in season 1, when Shawn was stuck with a sparse set of Christmas gifts, but now he's taking matters into his own hands. Right on.
Changing gears a little bit, we're with Eric and Lonnie on the turnpike driving to "the mountains" or wherever. Eric's saying some kinda creepy stalkery stuff here, completely devoid of the charm we're used to, and Lonnie starts talking about a "powerful feeling" she's getting. She tells Eric to pull over, and everything she says sounds like she wants to bang, and Eric's reactions are pretty funny, but what she's actually feeling is an imminent blizzard. Sure enough, they get trapped in the car.
For once, the Eric story is underwhelming. This is like season 2 Eric, honestly, just completely losing his wits over a girl. There's nothing wrong with it, we just haven't seen it in a while. This episode was written by Jeff Menell, who did write a bunch of episodes in season 2, so maybe I'm on to something. Eric tries to bust out of the car by slamming into the door, but he hurts his head and starts acting all loopy.
Back at home, Shawn's brought a gift for Cory. It's an expensive watch, and Cory says he can't accept it because of where the money came from. Shawn convinces him to keep the watch, but he tries his best to get Shawn to quit the job. It's kinda preachy, but what did you expect. Anyway, Shawn doesn't quit, citing "easy money", but promises to be back the next night for Christmas Eve.
Over in the living room, Lonnie arrives at the door with a dazed Eric in tow.
Apparently they just waited in the car until the plow dug them out. I know dick and less about blizzards, so I'll reserve comment. When Amy and Alan leave the room, Lonnie informs Eric that they actually almost died out in the car, but Eric was unconscious for the whole thing.
No, what she did was strip the two of them down and embrace for warmth inside a sleeping bag. Eric is extremely distraught at having been unconscious during those proceedings, and makes that squeaky cry of anguish that I vividly remember from an earlier episode which, as it turns out, was in season 2. (Episode 15, if you care.)
Maybe I know too much about this show.
Aaaaaaanywayyy Eric starts crying, and Lonnie is trying extremely hard not to bust out laughing, and I can't blame her. It's hilarious. Aside from that, the entire story here is "they were gonna go but then they came back."
At the Italian restaurant, the suits have one last job for Vest Man. He's gotta go stand in some desolate location with a package, and wait for a car to come by for it, which is where the next scene starts. Shawn's standing there all alone in the cold when... Cory shows up... I'm sorry, what? How the hell did Cory get here! What is this, Chubbie's?
Shawn explains that he's never had money like this before, and that he doesn't want to walk away from good, easy money. Cory starts to be more aggressive in his protests, and it really feels like one of those YOU'LL DIE IF YOU SMOKE WEED programs, it's just not the tone we've come to expect from this show. Cory's taking the preachy route here, like "you're probably delivering drugs and that's bad", rather than something logical like "you'll most likely die or go to jail eventually", and it isn't working for me. Directly quoting Cory here: "I didn't see this coming at all. I mean, I thought the devil was supposed to be some guy with horns and a big tail." What the fuck are you talking about Cory? That's completely non sequitur, who wrote that.
They keep trying to reference Frost's The Road Not Taken, talking about choices in life. Shawn says "maybe no matter what I do, this is where I end up, like that poem says." Cory tries to correct him, suggesting that the poem means that "every choice you make matters." If you don't already know this, it might blow your mind, but Shawn is actually right. The Road Not Taken is probably the most commonly misunderstood American poem ever. Frost himself admitted that he was actually mocking the idea that single decisions would change your life. So, unfortunately, this time the inspiration from literature is backwards from what the literature was really saying.
They both say some more nonsense and decide to take the package back to the mobsters. That's dumb. Even if they're ethically opposed to delivering this package, a guilty conscience is a lot better than telling the mob "Nah man, I know I said I was gonna do it, but Robert Frost and stuff happened, you kinda had to be there. I'm not gonna do it though, so peace out."
Hah! We've all been there. Transitioning to Christmas as an adult is rough.
Lonnie informs Eric that her story about naked cuddling wasn't actually true. So... that subplot was even less interesting than before. Feeny and Turner are also there because who cares it's a sitcom, and then they take a picture, which turns into a greeting card, because who cares it's a sitcom.
Fuck that shit, I care. I expected better from you, Boy Meets World.
Plot: 0.25 - Shawn and Cory randomly start working for the mob. And Eric's story was totally worthless. Like I said, kinda felt like a season 2 episode for all the stuff I pointed out, as well as the literature inspiration which was done pretty frequently back then. Except they screwed up the inspiration and wrote the worst version of Eric in the series.
Character Development: 1.0 - I guess this is the one where Shawn officially decides not to turn to a life of crime for money, and like I mentioned before, it's good to see him (and Cory) taking the initiative to work for some extra money.
Humor: 1.0 - I feel like I've given this badge a lot. Season 4 has been really funny.
Life Lesson: 0 - Misinterpret famous poems to fit your current needs.
2.25 out of 4.0. If you're looking for an episode to watch just for fun, I guess this might work, but it's really forgettable. Why does "forgettable" have two t's? Whatever.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:09:07 GMT
Episode 4x13 "B & B's B 'N B"
Eric's going off to a camping-store convention... thing... where I guess a bunch of store owners get together and talk about tents and fishing poles and stuff. Alan's not going though, since someone has to stay and watch the store. I'm scared of what might happen if Eric's gone for an entire episode. Feeny barges in, running from Shawn, who follows moments after. Apparently Shawn wants to drop economics as he is struggling with the current assignment, which actually seems like a reasonable problem to bring to the principal until it starts to sound like Feeny is the one who gave the assignment. So I guess he's the economics teacher now too.
Is that easier to read? I raised the font size from thirty... to thirty five...!
The assignment is to create an imaginary business and then write a paper about running it. And this is causing Shawn to want to drop the class. This is a new level of laziness. Like a good teacher, Feeny tells Shawn to sit down and shut up so he can talk to Amy. He hands her his house keys since he's going away for the weekend, where he'll be staying at a "lovely bed and breakfast". Amy mentions offhandedly that B 'n B's can make pretty good money. Most of Feeny's instructions are about maintaining his plants, which Amy quickly delegates to Shawn and Cory as soon as the old man is out the door. You usually gotta call out the parents on these shows for opening the floodgates for the kids' antics, but this time I really can't fault her. What could they possibly do with plants? Start a pot farm?
We get our first inside look of Mr. Feeny's home, and it's pretty snazzy. Shawn runs upstairs to jump on Feeny's bed, then comes back down impressed by the multiple rooms and large bathroom. Inspired, he runs off to begin his economics project.
Oh good, we get to see Eric after all. He sits down at the bar at his hotel in whereverland and starts (successfully) flirting with the bartender. But Professor Cockblock is on the scene. Yes that's right, Mr. Feeny is at the same bar, which is weird considering that he said he was staying at a Bed and Breakfast. Ah okay, he's meeting a woman here to "have dinner in the hotel", yeah I'm real sure you're havin dinner Feeny Feen, and the menu ain't suitable for a family sitcom. Even so, the bed and breakfast thing still doesn't make sense, but we've gotta roll with it.
Mr. Feeny tells Eric a lovely story about how he meets up with this woman a few times a year for dinner, and they trade off asking the other to leave their jobs and move to their respective city to get married, and the other person always declines, as per the tradition. Eric is at his most mature during this conversation, which I like to think is the direct result of his mentor speaking to him like an adult. It's these subtle flashes of respect from Mr. Feeny that really define this show, even when they're not toward Eric.
Back in Philly, Cory finds Shawn in Feeny's house, where he's "working on [his] economics project". Apparently the rules of (American) grammar say that the period goes inside the quotation marks no matter what, but fuck that noise, that doesn't make any kind of sense. I'm siding with the rest of the world on this one. Anyway...
What's his project? Well Cory wants to know too.
You can see this show's signature raised-eyebrow-nod at the end of Cory's line there. I mentioned that a few reviews ago, but it's been going on since at least season 3. It's all over the place, seriously.
Okay, so the project is, you guessed it, a bed and breakfast inside Mr. Feeny's house. The assignment explicitly said to make up a business, but... okay... Shawn's put a lot of effort into this thing (not that that justifies it) by getting it all set up and advertising at the airport with fliers. Choosing the air port for advertising is either pure genius, or nonsense. It makes sense on the surface, but have you ever traveled without already having accommodations in place? Maybe it happens. Either way, it happens in the Boy Meets World universe, seeing as Shawn's already got some guests, who come downstairs just then. They're a Dutch couple, the Timmers, while the Mooreparks are upstairs in the "honeymoon suite", and the Hecks show up at the door soon after. Gloria Heck is played by Dena Dietrich who isn't too famous as far as I can tell, but Arnie Heck is played by Len Lesser. He was a pretty awesome old dude who I mostly know as Uncle Leo from Seinfeld.
Gloria Heck wants to go shopping, so Shawn calls down the concierge, a role played by our very own Topanga Lawrence. Her boyfriend asks how she could possibly get mixed up in one of Shawn's crazy schemes.
Homegirl gettin mad cash off those retirement-money tips, yo.
Shawn's apparently bribed a cab driver at the airport to tell old couples that all the hotels are full and to then bring them here, which is pretty clever. This is the same kid who blew up a mailbox? Maybe living with Turner actually did some good for him. He tells Cory that they're both going to get in trouble for this even if he gets caught alone, so Cory decides he might as well join the party. I keep wanting to say how ridiculous this is, but, for whatever reason, the writers decided to cover all of their bases this time. This is actually more plausible than City Slackers, and that's one of my favorites, so I shouldn't dwell on the realism too much.
Back at the hotel bar, Eric's flirting with the bartender again, and it is working. This is a huge departure from the Eric that fumbled around with Lonnie in the previous episode, and I like this Eric better. The bartender asks Eric to have "dinner" later after her shift ends, so dinner is just gonna be a euphemism for sex this whole episode, and our boy is game. She's cute, but she looks a lot older than him.
She actually kinda looks like an older Rachel, from seasons 6 and 7. Maybe Eric just has a type.
Buuuuuuuut Professor Cockblock wanders in with a pensive appearance and a glass of wine. Eric really wants to have a kiss and a cuddle with this girl, but they both accept that helping Mr. Feeny is more important. The bartendress heavily implies that she would have rocked Eric's world in the sack, causing him to whimper, and then he takes a seat with his mentor.
Feeny laments his romantic tradition, in particular the notion that they don't care for each other quite enough to take the plunge, and confirms that she did indeed say no. The two men have another emotional and mature conversation about love, and Eric comments that if Feeny really loved this woman he would be willing to risk everything. The old man observes that his risk taking days might be over, but Eric points out that it's never too late, and suggests they hit the town, or, as Feeny puts it, "cruise for chicks".
THERE IT IS. THEY'RE FRIENDS. THEY SAID IT. IT'S CANON. SHOW'S OVER EVERYBODY, WE GOT WHAT WE CAME FOR.
Seriously though, I love this scene! Eric has just given a life lesson to his mentor. That's huge. What a fantastic character arc. It is the epitome of Hollywood magic that they both ended up in this hotel bar, but if we accept that then this is amazing. Imagine how little we would care if this had just been sprung on us. But because of the way this relationship has been built over the last two seasons, it's a fantastic payoff. Mr. Feeny sees just how much Eric has grown under his guidance, and Eric finally gets the respect he's been working toward. There's 8 minutes left in the episode but I really don't care. This scene should have been the end.
Back at Feeny's house, the guests are going to sleep and the boys realize that they don't have any food to serve for breakfast the next morning. So they forgot half of "bed and breakfast", but fine. When the time comes, Cory fixes that particular problem by telling his parents they should pray before eating.
Even with a successful breakfast, they're not in the clear. Feeny comes home and there's a long bit where the departing guests almost get caught a bunch of times, but in the end it seems like the boys are actually going to get away with this one, much to Cory's disappointment. He thinks they should get caught, because they always get caught, and I guess that's a self-aware sort of funny.
Alas, Feeny's cab driver recognized his address (recall that Shawn bribed him to bring people to the B 'n B) and blew the whole operation.
The boys offer Feeny the money they made, which appears to be quite a bit, but they're not in too much trouble. Mr. Feeny comments that he happens to have a soft spot for risk takers at the moment, due to his earlier conversation with Eric. Further, he's going to give the money back to Shawn once he's in college, adding that Shawn is going to be fine out there with his evident business savvy. Shawn takes this assurance to heart and says, half-jokingly, that he doesn't have to be a criminal. I thought we learned that in the episode immediately before this one.
During the credits, Feeny tries to get that honeymoon-suite couple to leave his house by talking to them through his bedroom door. I guess they were still there, which sort of destroys the "almost got away with it" scene from earlier. Eventually they do come out, and they're like 90 years old, which is a throwback to Eric saying that it's never too late to find love. It's a lot nicer if you forget that these newlyweds just spent the last two days having Viagra fueled honeymoon sex on his bed.
Plot: 0.75 - The most interesting thing to happen with Cory and Shawn was the moment where we learned what they were doing. But then they just sort of... did it... killing time until Feeny came home. But as usual, Eric and Feeny came in for the save. Feeny's story about his tradition with this unnamed woman is wonderful. And even though the setup is next to impossible, the proceedings between him and Eric are spot on.
Character Development: 1.0 - ERIC AND FEENY ARE FRIENDS. WHERE IS THE EMMY. Also, it was nice to see Feeny express confidence in Shawn's potential at the very end.
Humor: 0.5 - Underwhelming, unfortunately. All of the guests at the B 'n B were really old, and the audience seemed to find them hysterical, but they didn't do anything for me.
Life Lesson: 0.5 - You're never too old to find someone special. Doesn't exactly resonate with the target audience.
2.75 out of 4.0. - Watch it just for the scenes with Eric and Feeny. No idea what the "B & B" in the title stands for. Boy and Boy? Bizmuth and Bilgewater? Am I just oblivious? I've never understood that one.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:09:34 GMT
Episode 4x14 "Wheels"
So I realized the other day, we're just over halfway done! Woooooo... ooo... oo...
Topanga, Cory, and Shawn are at Chubbie's. Cory turns 16 tomorrow and they're all excited about a road trip to Atlantic City, with Cory driving his father's car. So we reflexively predict that Cory will either fail his driver's test and start lying to people, or crash his father's car and start lying to people. I hope I'm wrong. Not much else to say here, except that they make a few dumb jokes.
Gee, did Cory raise his eyebrows and nod after his punchline? I don't believe it.
The next morning, Alan explains to his wife that he's got a "Matthews Men's License Day" tradition ready for Cory, starting with taking him to the DMV for his driver's test. Except it's NOT a tradition. Alan blatantly lies to us about performing the tradition with Eric, since we already saw Eric take the test with Jason in 1x18 (Thanks to an anonymous comment for pointing that out). Morgan bursts into the kitchen and informs her parents that Cory's arrived in the driveway, behind the wheel of a car. He's apparently already passed his driver's test, so that's one overused plot out of the way. But Alan's having trouble feeling excited since his plans are now ruined. I'm getting flashbacks to 1x11 "The Father Son Game" here. A sad Alan is an Alan that no one wants.
So Cory tries to make sure his dad is okay, and then asks if he can drive his car. Alan agrees, thinking he can still spend the day with his son.
With the saddest tone ever, Alan offers to give Cory the keys in a couple hours after he runs a few errands, and Cory agrees. You guys know I love Alan, but I'm having trouble sympathizing here. He never explained these plans to Cory, and it's pretty insane for Alan to think that Cory wouldn't already have plans for his sixteenth birthday. I understand why he's upset, but it's really his own fault.
It looks to be late afternoon when Alan finally comes home, having taken significantly longer than "a couple hours". Cory's pissed, and the two have a passive-aggressive argument ending with Cory leaving to pick up Topanga and Shawn. Alan's being pretty damn childish, just deciding to break his deal with his son for selfish reasons, but Cory's not blameless either. These two are both pretty stupid for not telling the other about their plans before today. Alan decided to stay home from work today to do stuff with Cory, but what if he hadn't? Cory wouldn't even be able to borrow the car, so both sides of this really needed to communicate ahead of time here.
Cory is about to head out with the keys when Alan reminds him to be back in time for his birthday dinner at Chubbie's in 45 minutes. Cory is reasonably pissed off and doesn't even bother taking the keys.
Eric comes home from working at the store and offers his Season 2 style of insult-advice.
Ain't that the truth.
Eric explains to Cory that he's their father's last son, and is now "old enough to drive away and leave him alone with Morgan", who goes to art class and ballet. That's... A little bit sexist, honestly. Alan and Cory haven't really done anything together in a long time, so I'm not sure what Alan is trying to hold on to, but whatever. We waste some time with the next scene as Cory tries to teach Morgan to play football and how to box so that she can be Alan's "third son".
We jump ahead to the party at Chubbie's where Cory gets another clown burger. Things get really heated between Alan and Cory, and it's honestly kinda scary. William Russ is fuckin terrifying when he's angry. Alan disapproves of Cory taking his friends to an R rated movie, so Cory's like "I really don't care where we go, I just want to go." And then they go.
This whole thing feels ridiculous. They decided they wanted to create a conflict between Alan and Cory, which is fine, but they went with "they're both upset because they expected the other person to abide by plans that they never told them about". It's not even that funny either. Too much effort is going into being serious. How are the remaining folks going to get home from Chubbie's?
Now the gang's cruising to Atlantic City at 18 miles per hour, since Cory's terrified of crashing. His passengers are both insisting that he speed the hell up before they die of old age. It's a really weird shot because it's at night, and you can't see the inside of a car at night, so it looks like their solution was just to have the actors hold flashlights between their knees.
Cory speeds up to 26 miles per hour and comments that he's breaking the law, so I guess this is one of those 25 MPH interstates. Anyway a cop pulls them over almost instantly. So yeah, I was wrong, he passed the driver's test and he didn't crash the car, that's a victory in itself.
The next scene opens with everyone at the police station and I am at a loss. Did the cop walk up to the car window and say "okay just follow me down to the station where I'll write your ticket"? I have no idea how this happened, but we're here. For driving one mph over the speed limit, Cory can either pay the $200 fine, or plead his case before "the judge". Cory responds to each of those statements with disbelief, to which the police officer replies "this is a speed trap". Whatever. Topanga tells Cory to call his dad, but Cory doesn't want to talk to that old jerk, and decides to take his chances with the judge. Nevermind that he could also call his mother for help, who's been sympathetic to Cory's plight this whole time. So today we've learned that daughters and mothers aren't as cool as sons and fathers. I don't think I'm real happy with this one so far.
Next is something awful.
It's some old home movies of Ben Savage with William Russ's voice added over it. It's not even very well done, and it lasts way too long, and this dramatic acoustic guitar is playing in the background. Alan is watching these "home movies" on the couch, looking all nostalgic. I mean, come on now, all Cory did was get his license. This is a HUGE overreaction from Alan.
Woohoo, is that the end of the episode? That should be the end, that's all that needed to be said.
In the backyard, Feeny joins Alan and reminds him of all the wonderful things that come with having kids, even though it sucks sometimes. Buuuuuuut he also says that he's just received a call from Cory, who is currently on trial. As far as Feeny talks go, this is bottom of the barrel. Alan didn't even understand it. Back at the fantastical instantaneous trial, Cory's having a real rough time. But he shouldn't have expected anything else. He already blatantly admitted to speeding, so I don't even know what the fuck we're doing here.
For some reason, Cory explains to the judge why he's mad at Alan. The judge gives Cory a balloon-sword and gives Topanga a balloon-hat.
Yes. The judge is also a balloon artist. Because fuck you.
Then Alan shows up. He and Cory argue some more. Cory doesn't want to have to go to his father every time there's a problem and wants Alan to treat him like an adult. Alan is upset that Cory would ever be afraid to come to him for help. So we still haven't made any progress at all. The judge bangs his gavel and calls the two Matthews men up to the bench. I wonder if the judge is going to settle all of this episode's problems in the next 30 seconds. First, he sentences Cory to two more years of "being a kid", and as for Alan's sentence...
Are you fucking kidding me right now? Who even is this guy. The only person who's allowed to say shit like that is Mr. Feeny. What were they thinking? This is just some random judge/balloon artist in a speed trap. I can't believe they actually put pen to paper and said "yeah this fine".
After the sentencing, Cory and Alan look at each other apologetically and it fades out with that gentle guitar music. During the credits, the Matthews guys watch some more of Ben Savage's home movies, and then they have like a... wrestling tickle fight or something on the couch. Couldn't make that up.
Plot: 0.25 - Points for not doing the fail-the-test-and-start-lying (although they did do that shit with Eric a while back), as well as not having Cory crash his dad's car. So yeah, pity points for "it could have been worse". There just wasn't anything interesting. Cory and Alan had the same conversation six times, and it was only resolved when a balloon artist gave them some advice.
Character Development: 1.0 - Yeah fine, Alan has to accept that Cory's growing up and Cory learns that he isn't quite the adult he thinks he is.
Humor: 0.25 - I think I laughed once, maybe.
Life Lesson: 0.25 - It's a good lesson. Parents letting go of their kids (or rather, their sons, since it was established that Alan doesn't care about Morgan) and kids not rushing to grow up too fast. But the presentation was awful. You can't delegate the lesson to some one-off character in the last 30 seconds of the episode.
1.75 out of 4.0. Well it had to suck eventually. This was a lot worse than I remembered though. There's just nothing redeeming at all. It's weird, because this was written by Jeff Sherman, who also wrote Shallow Boy, which was amazing, as well as some other great ones. I don't know what happened.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:10:37 GMT
Episode 4x15 "Chick Like Me"
Somehow I missed the fact that the judge in 4x14 played the dad on Wonder Years. That puts things in a slightly different perspective, but overall that episode was still the worst this season.
Cory's protagonist privilege has netted him a column in the school's newspaper, which is fine, since no one reads school newspapers except the reluctant parents of the kids who write the damn things. He's writing a "humor column" where every sentence starts with "Is it just me..." and Shawn doesn't think it's very funny, because it's not. In fact, Shawn thinks Cory should write about something more important. I admire that, Shawn, but you need look no further than the news media of 2014 to see that nobody gives a shit about what's important when it comes to the news.
Topanga walks around the corner toward Shawn and Cory, accompanied by a girl named Debbie. Debbie tells Toboomerang the story of her date with some guy who's probably named Brad. He was a real sweetheart, buying her an expensive dinner and acting like a gentleman, and then at the end of the date felt that his previous actions entitled him to her body. Topanga agrees that's real shitty when guys basically put on a show to earn their "reward" at the end of the night. Right on, a lesson for more than just teenagers.
Debbie is played by Katie Wright, who isn't in anything else.
We get a really genuine exchange up next. Shawn asks if Debbie is completely uninterested in making out on a date, and she says "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but it shouldn't be expected just because I went on a date." Shawn follows with "Then how are we supposed to know if it's okay?" Debbie says that the girl will let the guy know, Shawn claims that the "letting them know" is never very clear, and Debbie claims that it is clear, but guys are "too busy planning your next move to hear her say no". I really, really liked where that was going until Debbie's last line. I mean, she's not wrong, but Shawn was talking about how to know it's okay to start making a move, and Debbie ends up talking about how he should know to stop. I think that would have been really interesting, especially for teenagers, talking about the signs that tell you to make a move. Or at least, Shawn could have said "how are we supposed to know it's not okay", then it all would have been consistent. Alas, it looks like this is a "no means no" episode, but that's still important.
It's time for class now, and Feeny's talking about the book Black Like Me, written by John Howard Griffin in 1961. Griffin actually artificially blackened his skin to experience life as a black man at a time when race relations in America were particularly strained. That in itself is pretty rad.
If the title of the episode is any indication, this book is going to inspire our heroes to take action. Oh okay, that was literally the next line after I paused it. Shawn suggests that Cory dress in drag and write about it for his (convenient) newspaper column. Cory agrees after hearing Feeny describe the worldwide success Griffin achieved after publishing Black Like Me.
We haven't seen Lonnie since Christmas, but here she is again at Alan's store. I'm genuinely surprised she's lasted this long. Lonnie sells something to a guy who looks like he's 30, and then asks her on a date. She agrees, and offers to cook him a "big 'ol dinner", and then go "eel grabbin" in the river after dinner. Silly Lonnie, you have to wait a while after eating to go swimming. That must be why the guy bolts out the door, he doesn't wanna get a stomach cramp.
Awwwwwwwwwwww. Intelligent Eric is appearing in this episode, apparently. He uses Lonnie's experience with hunting to compare men to the types of critters she tracks in the woods, suggesting a calmer approach, being sure not to scare them off.
Imagine we're sitting at a bus stop together, just you and I, and I tell you that there's an episode of a sitcom where a teenage boy dresses up like a girl. Then I tell you to list the top five most obvious jokes to put in the script. All five of those jokes are in this next scene: Cory comes home with Shawn and some bags of freshly bought female clothes, and explains their plan to his parents. So yeah, the jokes write themselves. They even do the one where the audience laughs at the mere SIGHT of a bra. It's really lazy and easy humor, but I guess there was no getting around it. Regardless, even with Topanga's help, it doesn't go very well.
The 2nd and 3rd buttons from the top on Cory's dress are unbuttoned, and I can't tell if it's intentional or not, but it's pretty distracting and no one comments on it. Not only does he not look the part, Cory can't really act it either. Shawn however, displays quite an aptitude for femininity as he tries to explain it to his struggling best friend. This gives them the idea to have Shawn take on the role instead. At school the next day, he's all dolled up, and it's honestly pretty convincing. He's turning the heads of men and women alike as he walks with Cory to their lockers. After meeting up with Topanga, we learn that Shawn has decided his new name is Veronica.
Just then, the same guy Debbie went out with comes around the corner. He is apparently their "target", and his name is Gary. He's played by Ryan Bittle. Bittle didn't really do anything special after Boy Meets World, but he's currently starring on the soap opera All My Children, so take that how you will.
So I guess their plan is to hook Gary up with Veronica so Shawn can see exactly what Debbie was talking about. Cory introduces Veronica as "Veronica... Wazboyski", and you can actually hear a slow crescendo of audience laughter as they start to puzzle out that joke. Gary is THIRSTY as fuck, and immediately sets up a date with Veronica for Saturday. There's only 7 minutes left, so that's two thirds of the way done and almost nothing has happened. They really put all their eggs in the "how many crossdressing jokes can we make" basket, and they haven't been great. Certainly not offensive, and I definitely respect that, but not particularly funny either.
It's nighttime and we're at the store. I guess Eric and Lonnie waited until after closing to do this. Eric's teaching her how to come on a little (a lot) less strong, and it goes well until she gets too handsy trying to see what brand of shirt Eric is wearing.
You wanna know why this is awesome? This Lonnie story is perfectly placed in this episode. Sometimes the Eric stories are weirdly independent of the rest of the plot, but this is one is perfect. They're showing us that it's not just guys who can come on too strong and disregard the other person's boundaries. She even says "I never woulda thought that bein friendly could drive people away, but I guess friendliness is just different between men and women." That's an awesome line. Eric is enjoying it since he already likes her, but that guy who ran away in terror at the beginning was a fantastic touch.
We jump over to the end of Veronica's date with Gary at Chubbie's. Gary's bein a super swell guy, all polite and well mannered. Apparently they still haven't eaten, so Gary calls for a waitress, which is honestly like having a waitress at goddamn McDonald's or something, this place is like 5 cubic meters, but whatever. The waitress turns out to be Cory in drag, using a voice like he smokes eight packs a day.
This is actually pretty funny because Ben Savage is selling the hell out of it. After Cory, now Corra, takes their orders, Gary goes into mega creep mode. Veronica's lines are written pretty well here. I'll just use the first one as an example. For coherence I'm going to use "she/her" to mean Veronica. Gary puts his arm around her and asks if she's having a good time. Veronica replies "Little trouble breathing... You're crowding me a bit." So it's believable, right, that blend of "I don't want to be outright mean, but I don't want him to do this". Sadly, Gary keeps putting on different moves, and Veronica responds the same sort of way each time. This calls back what Debbie said in the beginning about the guy being too preoccupied to hear "no". Let's stop for a second to be clear that there's nothing wrong with making a move, but if the other person ain't okay with it, ya gotta throw in the towel.
Oh I guess they're not going the subtle route today, eventually Veronica directly quotes that Debbie line from earlier. She goes over to Corra and explains her discomfort, and makes the grand realization that this is what she's been doing to girls for far too long.
I thought Shawn learned about this in the Dana episode last season, but I guess some habits aren't so easily broken. It's interesting if you think about this episode like Shawn experiencing his first date with Dana from Dana's perspective. Veronica wants to bail, but Corra insists that she stay for the sake of the newspaper column.
Gary comes over and apologizes, and takes Veronica to play foosball. Corra comments that her hosiery is bunching. Gary tries to get all up on Veronica again, in the guise of teaching her some foosball techniques, and it's reaaaaally creepy, but realistic at the same time. He makes a comment about how Veronica is dressed, which basically amounts to "You're asking for it", and she says ".... I just wanted to look nice..." and that is that REAL shit, folks. Just because a girl looks nice, that doesn't mean she's saying "I brought these things for you to enjoy", it's not an invitation to start grabbing whatever you can see. Damn, this is turning out really well. Gary is relentless and ultimately receives a hard punch in the face from Veronica.
That joke gets me every single time.
During the credits, everyone at school is thoroughly impressed with Cory's article. Holy shit, the boys actually pulled off one of their crazy schemes. Nothing even went wrong this time, that was exactly how they planned it. Incredible. "Everyone" includes Debbie, and after hearing Shawn explain what he learned in the ordeal, asks him for a date and he agrees. Cory comments that his hosiery is still bunching.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED WITH LONNIE? That last scene in the store ended on such a cliffhanger! (heh... cliffhanger... in a store for outdoor gear...) OH GOD THAT WAS THE LAST EPISODE WITH LONNIE. WE'LL NEVER KNOW. Damn, that is gonna kill me.
Plot: 1.0 - I liked it. It's the first cross-dressing episode of a sitcom I've seen that actually tries to do something important with it. The only real event was the date with Gary, and that only took up about four minutes, but the setup leading to it was solid. And the scenes with Eric and Lonnie were spot on.
Character Development: 1.0 - I feel cheated for giving this point to Shawn back in the Dana episode, since I'm now giving this point for an extremely similar development, but whatever.
Humor: 0.5 - It was lacking, but I still laughed enough to be satisfied, especially when Cory became Corra.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - Pretty much everything at Chubbie's. Especially "I just wanted to look nice." That one hits you right in the gut. Rider Strong did a fantastic job in that scene.
3.5 out of 4.0. It's pretty much everything you could ask for. And hey, if nothing else, Cory and Shawn are wearing dresses. Don't miss this one.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:12:23 GMT
Episode 4x16 "A Long Walk To Pittsburgh Pt. 1"
We're at the one and only Chub Chub Chubbie's and Eric has just arrived to spot a very distraught Topanga being comforted by Shawn in the back room of the restaurant, out of earshot. Shawn's brand of comforting includes a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, so Eric assumes an affair is afoot while the sad guitar music plays. The scene fades out and back in at our boys' kitchen. Eric brought home an extravagant meal for Cory, which Cory perceives as one of those death-row-inmate-dead-man-walking kind of last meals, and so he braces himself for the bad news.
Oh Eric. He's never been able to directly help his brother, he always has to make a big show of it, and it's really funny this time. I hope we don't spend too long on the "I wonder if she's cheating, even though we in the audience are 99% sure she's not" thing.
In the living room, Eric mimes suppuku to give Cory an idea of how serious this news is, and then Eric finally describes what he saw at Chubbie's. Cory receives this news very poorly and tries to call Shawn on the phone, but no one answers. At lunch the next day, Shawn and Topanga are eating together. Cory walks up and they look about as guilty as humanly possible.
They look really shocked to see him here at lunch. Were they planning to just never see Cory again? I dunno. And I guess Shawn has some sort of cartilage piercing now?
Cory asks to speak with his girlfriend, but she gets up to leave saying that she has to get to "Feeny's history class". What the shit kind of excuse is that? We've seen her and Shawn and Cory together in Feeny's class on many occasions. Why didn't she go to the bathroom, or really anything else in the world that we can't instantly disprove? That was not a smart move from Toboggan.
Once she's out the door, Cory tries to get the truth out of Shawn. Shawn explains that Topanga had a fight with her parents and ran off to Chubbie's, like any reasonable person would, and that he just happened to be there at the time. Maybe Topanga's a stress eater, I don't know why else she would go there. Anyway Cory accepts Shawn's explanation, and later at home he accuses Eric of jumping to conclusions. Eric excuses himself to go tussle with Shawn.
Good thing Shawn lives at Chubbie's now or the first half of this episode wouldn't have happened.
I am definitely a fan of Cory's aggressiveness in this episode. Back in 2x07, regarding Topanga, I talked about how anger was a better emotion than sadness, because it motivates you to act, and that's exactly what we're seeing here. Cory is taking CHARGE of this shit, instead of moping around like he does sometimes. When it comes to Topanga, he ain't messin around. Shawn refuses to give any real details and insists that Cory go talk to Topanga.
The sad guitar music whisks us away to Topanga's bedroom where Cory is knocking on her window from outside. I guess he took a page out of the Shawn-playbook with that one. He gives her a deep kiss and explains that the two of them have always been able to talk to each other, which apparently breaks down her defensive wall.
Yeah? Even the time you broke up? I'm glad she acknowledges that it's childish and stupid, but I guess we all felt that way in high school right?
Danielle Fishel does a great job getting her tears up here. I don't talk about her very often, but I should. She consistently nails her lines, and this scene in particular is very well acted. It's hard to gauge Ben Savage in this one though, since he has such a silly voice. He's doing his best to sound sad, but it's not really working.
Anyway Topanga finally reveals that she's moving to Pittsburgh "the day after tomorrow". But they both agree that their relationship is strong enough to survive the long distance.
I usually like to use the gifs/pictures for jokes, but there really haven't been any jokes so far.
The writers have impressed me even further by not spending too much time on the fact that Topanga didn't want to tell Cory about her move. She was just scared, so they're not going to linger on it, and that's smart. This episode could have written itself if they decided to that route, so I respect the decision not to.
At home, Cory's mapping out the route from Philly to Pittsburgh, trying to come up with an effective plan for him and Topanga to still see each other. His parents look on with worry, and Amy tries to talk about how "sometimes things happen for a reason", which makes me want to throw up. Cory doesn't listen though, and continues forging his plan. He's essentially in denial, so maybe we'll do a Five Stages of Grief thing.
Don't worry, the audience laughs at that. So it's a well placed joke about how a lot of teenagers completely misunderstand that story.
Later, Cory's reading Romeo and Juliet in the backyard. Mr. Feeny joins him and tells him to flip ahead to the end of the play.
Mr. Feeny explains that he believes Cory and Topanga have something special, and that they won't go wrong if they follow what's in their hearts. It's a nice sentiment, and the emotional clarinet music is playing, but that's kinda what got Romeo and Juliet on the wrong side of dead.
Inspired by Feeny's words, Cory runs over to Topanga's and does this whole silly marriage proposal thing. It's pretty funny, and ultimately the couple agree to write letters to each other and visit on weekends. They also talk about how they're both afraid of the other meeting new people they want to date, so this is all fairly realistic, which is cool.
Now Cory is at Chubbie's with Shawn, because that's where Shawn lives now. Shawn explains that the main thing he's learned from watching television is that, in situations like this, the girl or guy never actually moves away, so he's confident that Topanga won't actually move. WHICH IS BULL SHIT CUZ HE DEFINITELY DIDN'T THINK THAT WAY WHEN HE KISSED HER. But fine, he's had a change of heart. Cory is skeptical though.
So that's pleasantly self-aware, a quick jab at the folks at home who think Topanga isn't actually going to move.
Even when she shows up at his house on the eve of her departure, Cory insists that she's not leaving. But with a kiss and an "I love you", she's gone.
The best kind.
During the credits, Eric tries unsuccessfully to console his younger brother. This was awesome, a very real and thorough examination of a strong teen relationship being torn apart by factors outside of their control. Nothing can ruin it now.
Oh, nevermind. That almost certainly means that Topanga's coming back in Part 2, which kind of destroys all the hard work we did in this episode.
I was about to start giving points, when I realized that it wouldn't really be fair. A lot of this plot was just laying the groundwork for Part 2, and setting up for the character development we'll see next time (read as: it would have been a bad score). It's a good episode though, and does what it's supposed to, so I'll give a score at the end of part 2 that applies to both parts as a whole.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:13:26 GMT
Episode 4x17 "A Long Walk to Pittsburgh Part 2"
Some kinda James Earl Jones soundin guy introduces a recap of 4x16 at the beginning of the episode. It's pretty cool, honestly. The most interesting thing is that there's no TOTALLY REAL AUDIENCE LAUGHTER in the parts of the recap where someone says a joke. How can that be?
This one kicks off right away as we see Shawn Hunter vigorously making out with a girl on the couch in Cory's living room. Next to their hormone-saturated bodies is a very disappointed looking girl, while Cory sits nervously in a nearby armchair.
These girls have recently come to America from England, and you can almost see her accent in that gif. Even so, I have never heard the term "rushy boy" in my life, and I watch a lot of BBC. Shawn's girl is named Becky, and the other one is Rosie, and according to IMDB they are sisters, which I guess I should have figured out on my own. The actresses have both done almost nothing else in Hollywood, but Rosie was also in 1x04 and 2x15 of Boy Meets World, as different characters all three times of course, but I don't really remember her.
Anyway Shawn doesn't want to spoil the mood, so he drags Cory over to the couch next to Rosie, but Cory wants to talk about Topanga.
Well that's the first four minutes of the episode. There was a lot of giggling from Becky and Rosie, but not much else.
Cory explains to Rosie that he's been dating Topanga "for sixteen years" and that he "always thought [they] would spend the rest of [their] lives together", which is the most common complaint from fans of this show. He most certainly did not always think that, but the show's been shoving it down our throats for a few episodes now, so there's no use fighting the retcon.
The story makes both Cory and Rosie start crying while Becky and Shawn continue with their fun. The next scene fades in on Cory sitting against a wall in what used to be Topanga's bedroom, so I guess he just broke into the building. Eric shows up at the room's window to retrieve Cory for dinner. That was pretty fuckin weird.
Eric tries to cheer his brother up with a fake story about a girl named Francheska. Alan offers to drive Cory to Pittsburgh that weekend since he sort of needs to go anyway, but Amy is in a very different camp from the rest of them. She thinks Cory and Topanga should just have a clean split and move on, otherwise Cory will never stop feeling so shitty. Cory and his mother are clearly not on good terms right now, and I gotta say I'm siding with her. She's being completely reasonable. But that doesn't matter because we're throwing reason out the fucking window.
Welly, welly, well. This is the moment where you either go "awww" like the audience or "what?" like me. This is a point of no return, of sorts. We're no longer in the realm of harsh realities where this show has been before. We're in fairy tale land now, where "true love" makes nonsense happen. And the thing is, we're supposed to be okay with this. This is exactly why they've been hammering "we would have been together forever" and "we've been together our whole lives", this is exactly why they rewrote history. If we believe that they actually would be together forever, then we would be relieved when Topanga shows up here. If this were the first episode of BMW that I saw, this scene wouldn't be a problem. It's television. But after everything we've seen leading up to this, we know that the writers are way too clever to think this makes sense. They can't honestly expect us to take anything meaningful from this; it's nothing more than feel-good television. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you can get that anywhere. Watch Full House for that shit. That's not what I want from Boy Meets World.
If it wasn't already obvious, Topanga's parents don't know that she's here. When Alan points out that her parents are going to be worried about her, she says "Why would they be worried now? They weren't worried about me when they decided to move." Are you serious right now? She told us last episode that they moved because of her mom's job. It's shitty, but it's not her parents' fault. Amy wants to call Topanga's parents, but Cory's like "No they don't understand us, just like you don't understand us." Holy shitty shit, this is outrageous. Are we really supposed to be sympathetic toward Cory and Topanga right now?
Thank you Alan.
Amy goes ahead and calls Topanga's parents while Cory embraces her and promises that he won't let anyone take her away. Later, in the living room, Cory and Topanga talk about what they've been doing without each other. Shawn shows up, applauds Topanga's strategy of running-away, which really ought to set off a few alarms in her mind, and then he bails. Okay. Alan and Amy join the scene and once again Amy and Cory start to argue.
At least we have Eric's silliness to counteract the way-way-way-too-serious-ness from everyone else.
So Amy doesn't think that Cory really knows what love is, and says that after twenty two years of marriage with Alan, she's only beginning to understand what love really is. Cory counters by saying that, indeed, he hasn't been with Topanga for twenty two years, but he has been with her for sixteen. JEEEEEEEEEEESUS Christ I'm sick of this. Cory goes on to give a whole speech detailing how their relationship has grown over sixteen years, how he knew her favorite color and her favorite food when they were 2 years old, as if that's actually worth something. He is actually seriously comparing growing up with Topanga to his mother's twenty two years of marriage. It's absurd.
That's actually a good conclusion to his speech, and in general I agree with that statement. But the problem is that I don't think it applies to Corpanga. When has Cory ever been a better person because of Topanga? Most of the time that Cory has character development, it's because of Shawn. If Shawn were moving to Pittsburgh and then ran away back to Philly, my heart would be BREAKING. But we just don't have the history with Topanga to buy what they're selling. I mean, this is the same guy who valued Topanga's sweet sixteen party the same as a goddamn wrestling match a few episodes ago. It's not the material itself that I take issue with, I can roll with the whole "soulmates" thing, but it's just not supported by everything else in the show.
Amy doesn't really know what to say now, but that's okay since someone knocks on the door. Apparently Topanga's parents have called her Aunt Prudence to come pick her up, so I guess her aunt lives in Philadelphia. Cory comments that maybe Aunt Prudence will realize "that we're Romeo and Juliet, that we belong together". CORY ARE YOU SERIOUS? We blatantly got rid of the whole Romeo and Juliet thing with Mr. Feeny in Part 1. Ugh. Either way, Topanga comments that her aunt hates the idea of true love and wouldn't even know who Romeo and Juliet were. The audience cheers at the sight of Aunt Prudence, so I have to look her up. Ah okay, it's Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Very cute, Boy Meets World executive staff, very cute.
By now, apparently both Amy and Alan have been convinced that Cory and Topanga actually love each other, because a one-minute monologue from Cory was more effective evidence than the entire sixteen years leading up to it.
Amy makes the case that Topanga's parents are being irresponsible by taking Topanga out of her home when she only has one year of high school left. EVEN THOUGH it's well established that her parents didn't just flippantly decide to move, they didn't really have a choice. Regardless, Aunt Prudence isn't exactly fond of her sister and brother in law, and is thus unexpectedly open to the idea that they are irresponsible. Prudence asks the kids to let the adults speak privately, so they go outside, where they of course get to talk to Mr. Feeny. He explains that love is really great and all that. Apparently Mr. Feeny believes that these two truly love each other, so I guess it doesn't matter what I think. I guess we just have to accept that history is not as we have seen it on the show, it is as they now claim it to be. I don't want to, but that's the only choice here.
The adults join us outside, and Prudence is like "Hey old man, don't give these kids any crazy ideas" and he's like "Hey fuck off, I'm Mister goddamn Feeny". Prudence is basically taking the stance Amy had earlier, while Mr. Feeny defends the romance of his students. It's quite the showdown. Neither gives any ground, and ultimately Prudence says that Feeny is "as verbose as you are snappy", which makes the audience go "oooooooo" like it's an actual insult or something.
They're totally gonna have hate-sex later.
So even though Prudence still doesn't condone "the intensity or exclusivity of this relationship", she also doesn't approve of taking Topanga away from the home she's had her whole life. So Prudence offers to let Topanga live with her until she graduates high school. And then the audience applauds like they didn't know it was coming. The credits play over a completely black screen with a pretty rockin acoustic version of the theme song.
Plot: 0.75 - In retrospect, I liked part 1. It was actually compelling to think that Topanga was leaving. There really wasn't a whole lot of story in part 2 though. She just came back, somehow. What it did have though was content. Lots of exposition, lots of discussion, so that's worth something. And the part at the beginning with the English girls was fun.
Character Development: 1.0 - Loathe as I am to accept it, Topanga and Cory are officially in True Love ©. From here on out, that is the perspective from which we will operate.
Humor: 0.5 - Really focused on seriousness and emotion, but Shawn and Eric were pretty funny when they were around.
Life Lesson: 0 - Let's talk about this. What are we supposed to take away? That you should travel 300 miles when you're sixteen to be with your boyfriend? Or that if you love each other as much as Cory and Topanga do, then it's okay to travel 300 miles? Well everyone in high school thinks they love each other that much. There is nothing in this episode that can be applied to real life, except what Feeny says about cherishing genuine love. But again, every teenager thinks that they have genuine love when almost none of them actually do. Everyone feels the way that Cory described in this episode, so there's really nothing special to take away from this except "Love is good", but we all knew that already.
2.25 out of 4.0. The two biggest reasons people love this show is for its unique, clever sense of humor, and the powerful life lessons. I didn't get much of either of those things out of these two episodes. There's definitely a good number of fans who love the Corpanga romance, but I heavily prefer the bromance with Shawn, or the brotherhood with Eric, or the mentorships of Alan and Feeny and Turner. Or hell, even the one-off romances. Wendy? Remember Wendy? Fuckin blew my MIND that episode with Wendy, way more than this episode, for sure. If you love Corpanga then you'll love A Long Walk to Pittsburgh, but if not, you won't.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:14:17 GMT
Episode 4x18 "Uncle Daddy" Oh cool it's an Eric episode. The long-haired Matthews brother is on a date with an attractive woman at Chubbie's. It's established pretty quickly that she's a few years older than Eric, a fact complemented by her slightly-deeper-than-average, mature sounding voice. Thumbs up to the casting director. Eric starts to try to plan a date for the next day, which will be the third day in row they've done stuff, and she says "that's starting to sound kind of serious, how well do we really know each other?" I'm sold. Anyway, Eric says he wants to know everything about her, and she responds with an invitation back to her apartment. Eric is indeed a heterosexual male, so the scene jumps to the couple about to enter her front door (her apartment's front door, you animals). She (I still haven't heard her name yet) informs Eric that if he wants to have a relationship with her, he has to have a relationship with someone else as well. When she opens the door we see another very attractive woman waiting on the couch. All signs point to... the menage... Seinfeld? Anybody? www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6_pv_vRHKIUnlike Jerry, Eric is gung ho for the menage, but his dreams are crushed. The other woman is in fact the babysitter, and the woman's son runs out into the living room right on cue. Every male child actor in Hollywood has this haircut, the Zack and Cody hair, and it pisses me off, I fuckin hate looking at it, I don't know why. The kid's name is Ryan, and he's played by Justin Cooper. Cooper was in Liar Liar the same year that this episode aired, but that's about it. As far as child actors go though, I'm super impressed, he's doing a great job. We still haven't heard his mom's name, but I skipped ahead and it's Kelly, and she's played by Brittney Powell. Powell was on 78 episodes of General Hospital and a lot of small one-time roles, but nothing jumps out at me. Well, except a movie titled Stacy's Mom from 2010, which I have not seen, but from the name I can guess what it's about. And that is exactly what it's about. Powell plays "Stacy's Mom", the main character, and it looks like the plot is that some teenage guys wanna sleep with her. So it's basically the same role. That's kinda funny. Eric doesn't quite know what to say to this news, and the scene fades out and back in at Cory's room. Here, Cory and Shawn are doing some practice SATs. Shawn has a seizure after a tough question and flees through the window. Eric comes in and Cory asks him how his date with Kelly went. But Eric comments that he thinks he's ready for an adult relationship, and wants to continue seeing Kelly. On that note, the scene fades to Kelly's living room. There's a knock at the door, and it's none other than Eric Matthews with a bouquet of tulips or some shit, I don't know fuckin flowers, what do you think this is? Boy Meets Flowers Reviewed? Written by ConfidenceFlowers? Nuh uh. Eric says THE most romantic shit I've ever heard, and it's not even cheesy or anything. Kelly gets about as starry-eyed as I did after that, but Ryan "The Human Cockblock" runs in like "yo sup guys". He's nervous about Eric at first, but Eric buddies up to him like a god damn pro almost immediately. I always have a giant smile during this part. It's incredibly sweet, and genuine. This script was written by a guy named Steve Young, who didn't write any other episodes of this show, but he currently writes for The Late Show, and he's a Harvard grad, so this guy is definitely a quality writer. Eric takes them off to dinner at Chubbie's. They've just finished eating, and Eric gives Ryan some quarters to go play pinball. What's crazy is that the pinball machine has actually been there in past episodes, giving us a rare instance of background-continuity. No, not the quarters. To paraphrase, she wants to know how Eric can be completely perfect, a total fucking catch, and not be scared off by Ryan. Eric says her maturity and life experience are appealing, and that he enjoys palling around with Ryan. Cory and Shawn show up and Shawn keeps referring to Ryan as "the baby". Cory invites his older brother to see a movie with them, and Eric wants to go, but Kelly and Ryan have to get home. So Eric declines, and offers to read Ryan a bedtime story back at Kelly's place. OKAY LISTEN UP. If you are currently dating or are interested in dating a single mother, watch this episode of Boy Meets World and TAKE SOME GODDAMN NOTES. Holy CRAP he is on FIRE. Kelly is extremely pleased with this offer, but Cory looks a little concerned. We're in the living room at the Matthews house now, so it must be the next day, and Topanga has joined the boys for SAT prep. She asks Shawn a trigonometry question to induce a stroke, since she wants to be alone with Cory. Eric comes downstairs and talks about how his life is coming together. Cory suggests that Eric take the SAT again and try for a better score so he can get into college, but Eric's not too concerned about college now that he's got this steady, adult relationship. I guess I haven't done a lot of reviewing so far, but this episode is amazing. Eric has spent a lot of time searching for fulfillment, and it seems like he might have found it (without Feeny's help, I might add). He's got great chemistry with Kelly while also being hilarious, Ryan is significantly better than most child actors, and we're even having fun with this SAT sub plot. Overall it's been an absolute joy to watch the first half. So now Alan and Amy come home, and they're lookin pissed. Apparently Cory was the last to use the family car, and brought it back with almost no gas. His parents got about 3 blocks before it ran out, so Alan takes away Cory's car privileges for the next week. Eric follows his parents into the kitchen, and just then Kelly arrives outside, signaled by a honk of her car's horn. Amy invites her inside since her and Alan still haven't met this girl that Eric's so interested in. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut then they meet Ryan. Morgan comes in trying to go play Laser Tag with Eric, Kelly, and Ryan, thinking that Ryan is Kelly's little brother. Awkward, but she's just sayin what everybody else is thinkin. She even apologizes, and ultimately goes with them. Later, the date is over and Eric is in his room trying on a tuxedo in the same way that young girls wear princess dresses and imagine fairy tale weddings. Also in the room is Cory prepping for the SAT. I don't know where this work ethic suddenly came from, but here it is. Cory suggests once again that Eric retake the test and try to get into college, but Eric says he'll just skip college and jump to what the job he wanted to do after college. One of the funniest lines in the series, and it's a lot better if you actually hear it. This is great! Usually we've got Alan or Feeny looking out for Eric's future, making sure he doesn't do something stupid, but this time it's his brother. Actually, now that I think about it, it's almost like Shawn and Eric have switched places for this episode. Shawn is being silly and dopey and inconsequential, while Cory tries to help Eric make a tough decision. We've got brotherhood rather than bromance, and it's pretty awesome. Now Eric is in the back room at Chubbie's with Ryan, after evidently spending the whole day together. This kid is not getting a balanced diet. Cory, Shawn, and Topanga arrive because FUCK ME, I GUESS. I can't explain it anymore. Shawn still calls Ryan "the baby". They ask Eric to join them for some 2v2 billiards, which may or may not actually be a thing, and Ryan reluctantly tells Eric it's okay, even though he'll only be like 2 feet away. Ryan asks Eric for some ice cream money, which he gives him, and then Ryan runs off toward the register. However, a few seconds later, he is nowhere to be seen. It jumps to Kelly's apartment, where the dialogue informs us that Eric found Ryan pretty quickly at the curb outside, but then "flipped out" and yelled at him for running off. Kelly is totally cool about it though, saying that Ryan won't hold a grudge or anything, and she's definitely understanding toward Eric. She doesn't say it but she probably would have done the same thing. Eric comments that Ryan needs so much, and wonders how Kelly can take care of him every day. She gives Eric a very explicit, wide open escape route, saying that he still has a lot of options in life and that he should take advantage of those options, instead of trying to be a dad before he's ready. Eric insists that he's not "looking to get out of this". Seriously, this is the most compelling romance in the series. I dream of a future where these two are reunited. Every single scene is absolutely adorable. After the line in that gif, Ryan calls for his mother, and she heads to his bedroom after saying goodbye to Eric. Eric sullenly and slowly heads out the door. It is heartbreaking. At home, Amy and Alan are watching TV when Cory tries to sneak in through the front door. They know Cory took the car and raise his punishment to two weeks. Cory thinks his dad is being intentionally harsh on him, but Eric has also just come home and interjects. With what he learned from the crisis with Ryan, Eric explains to Cory that their father hates getting angry at him, and punishing him, but it's part of the job of fatherhood. Alan is impressed with Eric's insight, and comments that he might be ready to be a dad after all. I think that might be a quick conclusion to jump to there Alan, but I love what they were going for there. During the credits some bull shit happens, whatever. Plot: 1.0 - Eaaaaaaaaasy point. This story was wonderful. It flowed so well, there were no slow points, and I had trouble writing this review because I never wanted to pause it. Compelling, interesting, and exciting. An awesome take on a very realistic scenario. Character Development: 1.0 - Eric's been getting a little too complacent this season! Working at his dad's store has been comfortable and easy, he hasn't had any challenges for the most part. Just when he starts to think he's ready to be a full fledged adult, he gets a tough reminder of just how unready he is. Humor: 1.0 - Only Eric can single handedly pull in the plot and humor badges. If Cory's the main character, Shawn (or Eric) has to bring in the humor. If Shawn's in charge, Cory brings the humor (I know I've talked about that a lot). But Eric carried everything in this show. Shawn was funny too, but that's just an added bonus. Life Lesson: 0.5 - This one was tough. There's no single lesson that really got focused on. There are bits of "don't grow up too fast", "go to college", "dating a single parent and being a single parent are different", "being a father means being there for the good and the bad", and maybe some others, but I can't really say that any one of them was built up enough for the point. Maybe the last one. I don't know, who the hell cares about the scores anyway. 3.5 out of 4.0. Seen it a hundred times, will continue to see it a hundred more times. It's great. It has no faults from start to finish. Except eating at Chubbie's five times a week. A fantastic look at an adult relationship after the romantic train wreck in Long Walk Part 2. Eric and Kelly didn't try to "Romeo and Juliet" their way through their problem like Corpanga did. They acknowledged the problem for what it was, and dealt with it in the most responsible way, even though it hurt both of them. THIS is Boy Meets World. Eric is the best character. |
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:18:17 GMT
Episode 4x19 "Quiz Show" I just noticed, at the beginning of the theme song, what is this scene in the sky supposed to be? Shawn is playing a guitar and they're all singing and grooving. It's definitely not from the one where Cory and Shawn pretend to be in a band, so I have no idea what it's supposed to be. A businesswoman is taking a very rude tone with Mr. Feeny on the set of a TV quiz show. The show features two teams of three, but only Topanga is here to represent John Adams High since "the bus broke down". Feeny must have driven himself here, and Cory+Shawn drove Topanga. So I guess they needed a bus for the other two people. Coulda just carpooled, Feeny, maybe give a shit about the environment? Anyway the John Adams team are going to have to forfeit unless they can find two replacements. Feeny would rather forfeit than face this embarrassment, but the show must go on. It jumps ahead to the end of the match, and it's 20 to 0 in favor of the other team. Topanga answers the next question correctly though. So even if the other two guys had been here, it doesn't seem like our girl would have contributed very much. Either way, Cory and Shawn are being very theatrical and enthusiastic about their team's single point, and the game in general, which elicits a response from the crowd not normally seen on this boring ass quiz show. Hm, that's going to be confusing. If I use the word "show" in this post, I mean the quiz show, and "episode" will refer to Boy Meets World. Same with "crowd" and "audience", respectively. Some guy with "Oahu Beach Face Saver Pads" comes out of absolutely nowhere and tells the businesswoman/set manager that he would spend a lot of money for advertising space if she can keep the show as interesting as it's been with Shawn and Cory. Fueled by greed, she gives the show's host a new set of questions targeted toward Shawn and Cory. Shawn and Cory give a detailed and thorough tag-team answer, which probably isn't allowed but whatever. The crowd goes crazy again, and even Topanga starts to ham it up a bit. A quick scene at home has Cory informing his parents that he's the new champion of High School Quiz, and then we're back at the next taping of the show, which has been renamed "Knowledge Fever". The rest of the Matthews family are in the crowd and Amy asks her husband how their dumb ass son could possibly be on this elite show. Alan doesn't know, but maybe Feeny does. Definitely one of my favorite lines in the series. The show is completely overrun with advertisements for Oahu Beach Face Savers (they make acne treatments). Shawn answers the first question about Pamela Anderson on Baywatch as soon as he hears that the question is about Baywatch, the guy doesn't even have a chance to ask the question. It's pretty funny, but I'm once again forced to ask why Boy Meets World is so intimately related to Baywatch. The show has to take a break for a "word from our sponsor, because that's the way the world works" after the very first question, so we're definitely seeing some themes about "the money people" corrupting a tv show's artistic integrity. Do you want to make High School Quiz Show or Knowledge Fever? Firefly or Jersey Shore? There's no objectively right answer, but it sounds like Michael Jacobs is a fan of artistic integrity. The "word from our sponsor" is some dancers with signs for Oahu Beach and some weird rap about acne. It's annoying, but I guess that's the point. After that shit, Shawn and Cory tag-team another question about some cartoons of the 90s, raising their score from 1 million to 3 million points. The host announces that this wins them the game, even though it's only been two questions. They could have easily given us a fadeout/in to make it look like time had passed, but they didn't even try. I guess John Adams is going to play against another school after a commercial break. The set manager comes over and asks the our three heroes to make things more interesting for the folks at home. She wants Cory to scrunch up his brow and look unsure, Shawn to put on his "thoughtful pouty sexy lips", and Topanga to flirt with the camera. Topanga doesn't like the idea and preferred the show how it used to be, but immediately falls under the spell of conveniently timed cheers for her from the crowd. We're at the ten minute mark now and I am wholly uninterested. I'm totally down with the theme about creative integrity, but this has been so poorly put together. Every single scene at the quiz show is just fuckin sloppy, it's like they had a 10 dollar budget and 30 minutes to film the whole thing. It's funny, but not any funnier than other episodes that are actually interesting. In class, Feeny is teaching about Gutenberg's printing press, which was certainly a revolutionary invention. But nobody gives a shit. Cory and Shawn are signing autographs for girls in the class. Shawn tells Feeny that it doesn't matter if Gutenberg invented the printing press, since pop culture knowledge and good looks are responsible for his newfound fame and success. Well, Cory does have some practice at being a clown, from back in season 1 episode 6. So now a sort of debate begins. Cory and Shawn argue that they're absorbing the right types of knowledge since they're the reigning champions of Knowledge Fever, but Feeny says they're merely the champions of a generation whose "verbal and mathematical skills have sunk so low when you have the highest level of technology at your fingertips". I looked up average SAT scores over the years (this episode aired in '96), and the average Verbal score definitely went straight down the toilet from the 70s to 1996, but Math scores stayed about the same. He goes on to say that Gutenberg's generation thirsted for a new book every sixth months, while modern times get a new web page every six seconds, and that they use this amazing age of technology "to beat King Koopa". To ice it all off, he glares at the entire class and spits a rock hard "Shame on you, you deserve what you get", and then walks out on his students. You can watch the full clip here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIRuytyuzoYI completely agree with the notion that people care way too much about pop culture stuff, but the part about technology is ridiculous. Mr. Feeny himself does gardening, paints, goes fishing, meets with some woman in Boston... Why does he do those things instead of reading literature and textbooks? Not every moment has to be some profound ascension of knowledge. No one spends every moment learning. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "beating King Koopa". There is no inherent superiority to, say, gardening, over video games or snapchatting or words with friends or whatever. Maybe I'm focusing on it too hard, but it just doesn't resonate with me at all and I think he seriously overreacted. Now we're back at the quiz show, which is now named "Huh! That's Cool". John Adams are playing against Einstein Academy, the same school they faced on Knowledge Fever, but with different students and different school uniforms (re: sloppy). The old host has been replaced with a woman named Kiki. She introduces Einstein Academy and the crowd boos, and then she introduces John Adams High with new nicknames. Kiki asks John Adams where the moon is located, and they just point at the ceiling. That's the correct answer and it earns them "800 million points". But the scoreboard says 8 million trillion points. The "million trillion" part being glued onto the side is tongue-in-cheek, I think, which is funny on its own, but it doesn't match the script! It would be extremely easy for the script to actually match what's going on, but they just didn't bother. Next, Kiki asks Einstein Academy how much the moon weighs, which is a fucking bullshit trick question. The kid gives the correct mass of the moon, but mass and weight are different, and he probably should have known that, so fine. Shawn gives the correct answer of "it doesn't weigh anything, because if it did it would fall on us", raising their score to 16 million trillion points. It's supposed to be funny, and it definitely is, but it's honestly a better answer than Einstein Academy gave. Then Einstein Academy get attacked by some guys with spears. Nothin weird about that. Once again, the show goes to a commercial break after 30 seconds of actual show, but maybe that's supposed to be meta commentary. The businesswoman/set manager approaches our heroes with the Oahu Beach Face Savers guy, and informs them that they'll be needed on location in Oahu for six weeks to film some shit for the show. That is not how things work. That is not how anything works. They don't want to miss six weeks of school, and ask for some time to think about it. Is this over yet? Christ. At the next taping for the show, our heroes demand that some "intelligent questions" be asked at some point. The set manager ominously replies "We were prepared for this." The show begins and Kiki introduces John Adams, and then their very special opponents all the way from Malibu, California, "Viper Jones, Surfer Girl, and Moon Dogget". The crowd loves these hair-beasts. So was this the contingency plan for when the John Adams team didn't want to win anymore? Were these kids just like, locked in the basement in case of emergency? If Malibu were going to be their opponents anyway, what was the point of saying "we were prepared for this"? Whatever. It skips ahead to the end of the game, where the score is tied. So they've both answered one question correctly? Why did it go by 8's before? I realize that we're not supposed to be paying attention to these details, but it really doesn't seem like they tried at all. Apparently this last question is for Shawn only, and of course she asks who invented the printing press. Shawn's had that cartilage piercing this whole season, I think it looks pretty cool. But yeah! We haven't heard that in a while! I've talked about that core theme in the past, but on those occasions it was Cory who said it. "I don't know anything," or some variation of that. Definitely one of the most important themes in this show, and I really like the transition from "I know everything that matters" to "I don't know anything". The three stooges show up early to Feeny's class the next day and ask him to teach them something. It's sweet. They waited until the last 30 seconds of the episode to do it, but they got me. Plot: 0.25 - It sucked. Boyyyyyyy did it suck. Almost all of the episode was spent showing us matches on the quiz show. It was really slow and static, I just felt no reason to keep watching. Compare that to 4x18 where I couldn't stop watching. Character Development: 0.75 - I like where Shawn ended up. Cory just sort of silently made the same change after Feeny walked out on the class, but I would have liked to see it in more detail, like they did with Shawn. Humor: 0.75 - Eh. Life Lesson: 0.5 - Get a good education, I guess. Maybe try to pay a little less attention to pop culture. 2.25 out of 4.0 - Maybe I'm just in a mood today, but I didn't really enjoy this one at all. I'd watch 4x18 three times in a row before I watch this one once. It felt sloppy and poorly developed. There was a good idea buried deep in there, but it just didn't come out. Is it a coincidence that this boring episode had almost no Eric? Hmmmmmmm...... |
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:18:56 GMT
Episode 4x20 "Security Guy"
Eric fucked up. Bad. He arranged for a bear that's been on TV to come hang out at the store to draw in customers. Except the customers aren't allowed anywhere near the bear, i.e they can't actually come in the store. So Eric's effectively cost his father $5,000 and gained next to nothing.
That's the same guy that played Mark- sorry, Ranger Mark- in City Slackers. Eric gets fired immediately. The next morning at breakfast, Amy agrees with Alan's decision to fire Eric since he has a history of fucking up. She didn't use those exact words, but you read between the lines. But Eric comes downstairs ready to go to work, clearly oblivious to the fact that he was fired.
Buuuut Alan and Amy make it abundantly clear at this point that he is very much fired, leaving him speechless. This is a nice turn of events. At the height of 4x18, Eric thought he had all his ducks in a row, but then he lost Kelly, and now he's lost his job. Where will he turn next?
After an undisclosed amount of time, Cory, Shawn, and Topanga are in the living room continuing to study for their SATs. Man, 4x19 seems really out of place now. They probably should have switched the order of 18 and 19, so that we get more of a flowing story about the SATs and Eric's life falling apart. Anyway Shawn's talking about how he doesn't want to go to college, but Cory convinces him to take the SAT just to see. Shawn agrees under the impression that the test is only 10 minutes long.
In the kitchen, Amy and Alan are trying to figure out why Eric can't get his shit together. Amy explains that because Eric was their first born, they coddled him and were overprotective of him.
Wuh oh. Alan's in denial. This is interesting though. Usually it's the mother who's sort of overprotective, but Amy is definitely the reasonable one here. In fact, we've seen this dynamic before, back when Eric wanted to be a weather man and drop out of school. Alan was incredibly harsh on him, but Amy was more understanding. She's tried to let Eric find his own way, while Alan continues to think he knows what's best for Eric.
Amy suggests they get a second opinion about Eric from Mr. Feeny, which might be the smartest thing she's done in the series. Feeny comments that Eric could get passing grades in his sleep, and that, in fact, he did, which must be a callback to that sleep study he did back in 3x07.
So they're basically assigning the "lazy but smart" archetype to Eric here, which is probably a long-time coming. He's had a few brilliant schemes in the past, and almost always succeeds when he actually tries at something. And let's not forget the time he rolled over Feeny and Turner at poker.
But then Eric comes outside dressed as a security guard, his apparent new job. Both of his parents and Mr. Feeny all tell Eric that this stupid job is "the easy way out". Naturally, he doesn't take that very well, and tells his parents he's moving out before storming off to a round of "ooOOOoooo" from the audience.
At school, Cory and Topes fires off some super easy, fake SAT questions when Shawn is nearby to try to boost his confidence and inspire him to attend Feeny's SAT prep/review sessions. They then drag Feeny himself into the mess by convincing him to offer cake and a "carnival-like atmosphere" at his sessions to entice Shawn.
The whole scene is hilarious, and it's really sweet that they're all going the extra mile for Shawn.
Meanwhile, Eric shows up at Alan's store with his security guard partner Ronnie Patel. Ronnie goes to look around while Eric and his father hash things out. Alan tells the story of putting on these rubber gloves for safety purposes in the delivery room when Eric was born. And now, twenty years later, he's realized that he never took off those gloves.
Look at both of these actors. The scene is beautifully performed, and it's really powerful. Alan has pulled off those gloves and slapped Eric right across the face with them. We're getting down to the meat and potatoes of this father-son relationship and it's awesome.
Eric is left speechless, and the next scene fades in outside John Adams High, where Eric and Ronnie have been conveniently stationed this evening. Where were the security guys last season when this place got vandalized like twenty times? Maybe that's why they got security guards. Anyway, to pass the time, Ronnie asks Eric for help studying for the SAT, and pulls out a little study booklet. See, back in India Ronnie was an engineer, but America doesn't give a shit and so he has to start over. And he's willing to, saying that anything worth having is worth working hard for. He then comments how the US is full of opportunities to live out dreams, like how Eric is living his dream of being a "security guy".
OH SHIT!
OHHHHHH SHITTTTT!!!!!!!!
Damn son. What a great line. Eric tries to turn it back on him, but Ronnie's just like "Nah, I'm an engineer. And soon, they will know it." Ronnie is a fucking boss, you guys. I love this guy. And I think Eric is here like "holy shit, hard work really can get you pretty far". But before he has time to say it, they spy someone trying to break in to the school, but it's just Mr. Feeny. Feeny suggests Eric come inside for the SAT prep course, but Eric's like "come on man maybe I'm not someone who's supposed to go to college", and Feeny fires back with "Maybe you're someone who gives up too easily," and heads inside with a solemn "Who are you?" That line calls back what Ronnie said earlier, when he so energetically declared he is an engineer. And it's a good opportunity for the viewers to bring themselves in, and wonder if they can answer that question.
Time jumps forward to Eric wandering in front of the window to the classroom with Feeny's prep session. Some sensitive clarinet and guitar music plays as Eric looks in and pulls out the SAT booklet Ronnie was using, and starts to study in tandem with the class.
Ah, the well placed, appropriate humor in the heat of seriousness. That's basically this show's trademark.
Heads up, the show is about to start raining emotion on us. Like, three of the biggest bombs in the series are about to drop. First, after a 3-week time skip, Shawn, Cory, and Topanga arrive at Feeny's door having just taken the SAT. It sounds like they're angry with him, having made them work so incredibly hard for this one little test, and then...
Did anyone else's heart just grow three sizes?
Next, we're at Alan's store and Eric has another heart-to-heart with his father. Alan says that he still believes Eric can be whoever he wants to be if he works hard and doesn't take the easy way out. Eric replies that he tried as hard as he could and slaps the sealed envelope containing his SAT scores down on the counter top. Amy opens it up, and excitedly informs her son that he scored 200 points higher than the last time he took the test. Bomb number 2.
That shit chokes me up every single time. The gif doesn't do it justice, William Russ absolutely nails that line, it's completely perfect and all you want in the world is for Alan to be proud of you too. Eric finally sees what can happen when he tries as hard as he can. And it's a realistic score for him too, it was like 1120 or something (back when the test was out of 1600). Absolutely beautiful. It's a Top 5 scene, no question about it. Alan follows that up with "I knew you could do it" and Eric spills out "I knew I could do it too."
During the credits, Eric does the Feeny Call in the middle of the night. He wants his mentor's help choosing a college, and eventually Feeny caves and tells Eric to go put on some coffee. Bomb number three.
Jesus Christ. The staff were well aware of how powerful this, they made sure there wouldn't be any credits while Eric was saying that last line.
You really need to watch the last five minutes of this episode on your own, if not the whole thing. I can't even convey how incredibly powerful the end of this episode was.
Plot: 1.0 - It was wonderful. Convincing Shawn to come to the prep course was a great sub plot, and watching Eric struggle to tread water and find his way was fantastic. I honestly loved every minute of it.
Character Development: 2.0 - Fuck you, Eric deserves 2 points. "I knew I could do it too." And our gang of three heroes came to appreciate Feeny's teaching methods. It's all fantastic.
Humor: 1.0 - The subplot with Shawn and his cake was hysterical. Eric was mostly serious but funny sometimes too.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - Don't take the easy way out. Be Ronnie Patel.
5.0 out of 4.0. The highest score yet. This might be my favorite episode in the series. This and City Slackers are definitely top 3. If you haven't caught on yet, Eric is the best character this season. By far. I've seen this episode many times, and it never loses the charm. This is everything Mr. Feeny has been working toward. This is the payoff. Everyone blossomed in this episode, even Alan. It's the perfect episode. It's perfect.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Jun 25, 2015 12:19:36 GMT
Episode 4x21 "Cult Fiction"
Wow, this post has more views than Security Guy and I haven't even written anything yet. I hope it's worth the wait. This is a difficult episode to review. Lots of room for discussion in the comments.
Hooooooooly crap, it's Turner's class. We haven't been here in a long ass time. Look at Turner, with his adult haircut. He's handing back some papers, and Shawn's paper was apparently "bad". The bell rings and Turner digs into his former roommate like "Shawn, why aren't you taking school seriously? Do you even want to go to college? I care about you, so don't blow me off." That wasn't a direct quote, but this is: "Tick tock, the clock is moving and you are running out of time to figure out your life." That is the biggest load of nonsense that's ever come out of this show. One of the most destructive notions of our time is that you're supposed to know what you want to do with your life as soon as you graduate from college, or in this case high school. Nobody needs that kind of pressure, Turner.
Okay so that's a little different, that's more of "what kind of person are you going to be", rather than "what are you doing with your life". And that mirrors what we saw between Feeny and Eric in Security Guy, Feeny asking Eric "Who are you?" So in both cases we've got these father figures asking their protege's what kind of person they want to be, and that's cool.
That girl in the orange sweater on the right is named Sherri, and Shawn greets her like we're supposed to know who the hell she is. She's played by Tamara Mello, who was on 43 episodes of a show called Popular in 1999, but only small gigs besides that. Do you think she carries her binders the same way as every other girl on this show?
That is her actual line. Someone wrote that on a piece of paper and handed it to this girl to say in front of a camera. In real life.
Anyway Sherri is like "Hey Turner was a jerk just now for judging you. Let's go on a date and I won't judge you." I missed the part where Turner judged Shawn. They lived together, I think he knows Shawn well enough to not be judging him at this point. Shawn goes along with it for some reason though, and agrees to the date. The date was for coffee, but the next scene opens on somewhere totally unrelated to coffee. Sherri presents it as "The Centre" (yes it's spelled that way) and everybody gives Shawn a big hug when they meet him. Sherri tells Shawn about "Mister Mack", a remarkable man who runs The Centre.
That's Mister Mack there on the left. He's played by Jerry Levine, who had a limited acting career, but he's done a lot of directing work over the years including five episodes of Boy Meets World in seasons six and seven. Betch'a didn't know that!
The first time I saw this episode I thought this was gonna be a long, drawn out ordeal, but that was before I knew about BMW's "doesn't talk down to the audience" mode of operation, so it was a pleasant surprise to see Shawn understand the situation so quickly. But then it sort of goes downhill. Mack points out that Shawn is "judging" The Centre, the same way his "friends and teachers" judge him. Shawn comments that he doesn't like being judged, even though the only person on this show who's ever "judged" Shawn was Dana, and that turned out okay. So Shawn agrees to get to know The Centre before judging it, and in return they'll do the same for him.
Later that day (they're all wearing the same clothes) Shawn and Sherri are studying at Chubbie's (still not getting coffee) with two other girls from The Centre. Cory shows up and Shawn comments how much he likes The Centre. Is Cory worried? Only totally. For some reason, Cory takes this opportunity to ask Shawn what he "believes in".
Does this make sense to any of you? It feels completely out of place. This could have worked at the end of season 2, like right after Shawn's dad runs away? That would be a perfect time to Shawn to get pulled in by a cult, or even at the end of season 3 before his dad comes back. But here? Looking back over the season, Shawn's made a TON of progress. Janitor Dad, Dangerous Secret, Turkey Day, Easy Street, B & B's B 'n B, and Chick Like Me all have Shawn making great strides out of his "troubled youth" persona of the past. But now all of a sudden he's back to his old ways. Anyway Shawn's cult groupies interrupt the conversation and ferry Shawn out of the restaurant.
Now we're in Turner's classroom for some reason, and Turner wants to know what the fuck The Centre is. I'm guessing Cory is responsible for this. Shawn tries to explain that it's nice to be accepted and not-judged by a such a large group of people, even though everyone in the school accepts Shawn and doesn't judge him. Like, this entire crisis is based on one ten-second encounter with Mr. Turner the day before. Regardless, Turner ain't buyin any of this shit.
First point of order, I love this dynamic. Shawn and Turner have always been a great team, and it's great to see Turner taking such an interest in Shawn again, after all this time. That aspect of this story feels very genuine and well founded. The rest of it? Not great. I emphasized Turner's line in that gif exactly how he said it, and it makes no sense. There was no mention at all of "belief systems" in this conversation before that, so I don't know why he said it that way. They should have led up to it somehow, like Shawn says "they have an inspiring set of beliefs that I agree with" or something. But as it is, in addition to Cory randomly bringing it up at Chubbie's, the whole "beliefs" thing is so overtly and blatantly shoehorned in here. The topic itself isn't the problem, it's just that it doesn't fit here. Like I said, Turner looking out for Shawn makes sense and feels right because it's been built up over the last three seasons. But "Shawn's beliefs" is coming out of nowhere.
Shawn bails out of the room with an angsty "I don't know who I am." Later, Cory and Eric show up at The Centre looking for Shawn. Eric comments that they're all con men and charlatans, but gets suckered in anyway by a pretty girl. It's just for laughs though. Shawn comes out and argues with Cory about whether or not The Centre is a fucking nuthouse.
That's actually a fairly eloquent explanation of how cult leaders work. Good for you, Cory. But doesn't it just feel wrong? The last thing Shawn has ever been is insecure. Cory is the insecure one. He always has been. Like, yeah, Shawn's got abandonment issues, and he's a part-time criminal and womanizer. But this shit? The only trigger for Shawn joining a cult was getting lectured by Turner the other day. If his dad left again, or something else that actually relates to his character, then I might be able to believe this. But as it is, it just seems foolish.
Then Mister Mack walks up to a podium that's in the room for some reason and officially welcomes Shawn into the cult. Everyone applauds and hugs him.
She's been making that face in the background for this entire scene.
In the backyard of the Matthews house, Cory, his parents, and Feeny are preparing to drive down to The Centre and drag Shawn out kicking and screaming. Apparently Feeny's been trying to get the place closed down for a while, so he's well acquainted with Mack's shenanigans. But just then Eric and Shawn arrive. Apparently Eric has been kicked out of The Centre for only being interested in the hugs, and Shawn was just bringing him home. He's about to return to The Centre, and everbody's like "woah no you are fuckin not goin back there." Shawn thinks they're all attacking his new "beliefs" and his search for "something to believe in".
So am I! Except that it's completely out of character. It's like if Security Guy happened without any prior mention of Eric wanting to go to college. Actually that's exactly what it's like. They're trying to do this massive character development without any buildup whatsoever. It honestly feels like they're making shit up just to be dramatic.
Oh and I was actually just wondering where the fuck Shawn's parents are in all this, but Alan said that "as long as they're out of town, you're our responsibility". Even so, this seems like something that deserves a quick phone call. Either way, the phone rings inside Feeny's house. He comes back out and informs everyone that Mr. Turner has been in a serious motorcycle accident and asks Alan for a ride to the hospital. I can't imagine why Feeny is Turner's emergency contact, but fine. Everyone heads out except Shawn who says he'll meet them there.
We're in the hospital waiting room now with Feeny, the Matthews family, and Topanga. Shawn arrives with Mister Mack shortly after. Does that cause some tension? Only totally.
It's awesome to see Alan being so protective of Shawn, but can you imagine if that was Chet instead of Alan? That would be so epic. I reaaaaaaaaaaally wish Chet was around for all of this. The adults argue over Shawn, and Mack turns to take him and get outta Dodge, but the kids are nowhere to be found. It jumps over to the room where Mr. Turner is in what looks like a full body cast and he's unconscious, while our three heroes look on.
Shawn doesn't like seeing Turner this way, and tries to leave but Cory turns the fuckin safety off and demands that Shawn stay and deal with the reality of the situation. He takes Topanga, leaving Shawn alone with Mister Turner.
Shawn starts talking to his unconscious English teacher, and it starts off really awesome. "Even when I was at The Centre, it was all the things that you taught me that made me wonder if it was the right place for me or not. But you didn't teach me enough." And that's awesome. Since the end of season 3, there have been almost no references to the fact that they literally lived together for a while. So it's great to see all of those feelings that seemed to be left behind coming back for one final hoorah. And, as you should recognize by now, it's awesome because it's founded on everything we've seen so far. But then things take an odd turn.
Let's pause for a moment. Pirates of the Caribbean is a great movie, right? I seriously doubt anyone came out of that movie saying "boy that sucked, cursed Aztec gold isn't real." When you watch the movie, you accept the premise that cursed skeleton pirates are real, and evaluate the movie from that perspective. Similarly, the viewer's belief or lack of belief in a god is a non-factor here, because in the Boy Meets World universe, God exists. That is the premise that we accept when we watch this scene, just like we accept cursed Aztec gold, and so that's the perspective we take to evaluate this scene.
Even so, I still think this is ridiculous. If Shawn had even remotely touched on spirituality at any point in the show before this episode, I would probably be okay with this development. I totally understand the appeal of a spiritual revelation, and this has the potential to be profound for a character who's been struggling with this journey for a while. But for Shawn Hunter, it doesn't make any sense.
At least now it's obvious why they used the word "belief" a thousand times leading up to this. And again, that would be fine if it were spaced out over the season. But it just doesn't work when it's all crammed into one episode.
Starting from the paragraph above that gif to the end of the preceding paragraph, that's the line of thought that made me want to start this blog in the first place. Fun fact. Anyway Shawn begs God not to take Turner away from him, in a sort of yelling-prayer, which I guess if Shawn is going to do some sort of praying, that's how he would do it. One way or the other, Rider Strong acts the hell out of this scene, another reason why I say "yeah this could work if it actually made any sense." At the end of the scene, Shawn grabs turners hand and we see Turner's hand squeeze back a little bit in response.
I think this scene would have been a thousand times better without the God stuff, it just seems so random. The ending of Security Guy? Yeah we saw that coming. You could even see Long Walk to Pittsburgh's ending coming (and we mostly all agreed that that ending was still ridiculous). So for this ending, that came out of absolutely nowhere, I don't see how you could honestly tell me that it works.
During the credits, Shawn tells off Mister Mack .
Plot: 0.50 - It's an interesting premise. Cults are interesting. Being lost and feeling along are interesting. Two seasons ago Shawn was lost and alone, but not lately. It could have been a cool story if it weren't such bad timing.
Character Development: 0.25 - Same thing as plot. It could have been cool if it actually made sense for the character. One thing I've always loved about this show is how Cory and Shawn give each other what they need. Shawn brings excitement to Cory's drudgery and Cory brings stability to Shawn's chaos, moreso in this season than any other, so why was it suddenly not enough? I just don't buy it.
Humor: 0.25 - Eric was funny, but 90% of this one was super serious.
Life Lesson: 0.50 - The only way out of a cult is to find spirituality? You can (and probably want to) make the argument that it's not about spirituality in particular, but rather about finding something to hold on to, to guide you and inspire you, to prevent all the shit that comes from feeling lost. And I totally dig that. But if that's really what they were going for, then why choose a God story? Shawn has a ton of other things he could hold on to. The only reason I can think of for ending this the way they did is if Michael Jacobs said "hey let's make this one a God episode". Why else would they do this for a character that has never even mentioned religion before?
1.50 out of 4.0. I'm sure some people are unhappy with that. The pleading the God probably resonates with some viewers on a personal level, and that's absolutely cool, but it doesn't make sense for Shawn.
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