With the highly anticipated “Girl Meets World” coming this year, many children of the 90s are clamoring. Why? Because the cast of “Boy Meets World” will be alive again. This time in a likely water downed, stitled Disney amalgamation of a past hit and new age tripe. Was that sentence prentious enough to allow me to fan boy over this children’s show for next 900 or so words?
We’ll take this as a yes
I was 10 when this show ended. I’m now 25. Think about that old people. So the show was a little over my head. Luckily, lame Dave would come home from junior high a few years later and watch the Disney Channel for a about two hours. I mean how can you beat an hour of “Recess” then this? I used to play sports. I had a PlayStation. I don’t know how I also watched so much television. I must have stayed awake for 20 hours a day. Within the last, we’ll say two years (though I think it’s been longer) I have watched this series again. It has the famous plot holes and continuity issues, and perhaps I’m viewing from the ever popular nostalgia tinted lenses we wear these days, but I still very much enjoy the program. Let’s go ahead and just break it down in the “eras” of the show (like you can stop me).
Deal with it. Read on.
The first season is a good place to start. We’ve got two slackers in Cory and Shawn, flower child Topanga, lady killer Eric, precocious Morgan and still relevant Amy and Alan Matthews. That sounds pretty much close to what we get for the next couple seasons. I omitted Feeny because he’s the same thing the whole time. Ain’t no changing Feeny. Throw in this guy and we’re rolling with some 6th grade hijinks:
The stories were basic. Cory wants a water gun. Cory has “Jane Brady” syndrome. He wants to stay up late to watch baseball. It’s good stuff. Basic “TGIF” cornball stuff but good. It was based in something real unlike whatever Steve Urkel was doing.
Since Stewart Minkus disappears after this season though, I’m going to talk about him. He’s the necessary foil to our ambivalent protagonists. He sometimes gets comeuppance, but generally he ends up being right because we have to teach kids lessons ABC! His unrequited love of the hippy Topanga is fun to watch because being a nice mix of Cory and Minkus, I sympathize with both plights. Meaning, I wanted to play more baseball but I also couldn’t talk to people. If I only I met a crazy haired girl to kiss me when I looked like Don King.
Here, so you get the reference.
Most of the next 4 seasons is progressing some of the characters 6 years in time and others 5. It’s weird and off putting. Let’s move past it internet. Cory’s transition to “old Jewish guy” is in full swing. He’s like George Costanza in “Seinfeld”. He complains all through the first couple years of high school that girls don’t like him, but he’s dating a new one each episode. Throughout this time Shawn and Cory’s characters start to diverge. Cory’s youthful trouble making ways diverge from Shawn’s actually troubled past. That and Topanga gets normal. So while Shawn is being a tortured soul, Cory is off gallivanting around with his new chick. Cory’s family mainly stays the same in their screen roles except little sister Morgan gets grounded for like 2 seasons. Mainly because off camera they switched actresses yet use this one in reunion stuff. I don’t like it but I realize I’m jumping subjects like crazy. It’s too much to talk about. This is a review not an overview. Moving on.
WAIT! I’m not leaving early high school yet. Three antagonists arise. No longer is a smart kid our biggest worry. Bullies Harley, Frankie and Joey start tormenting our main characters and weirdly so does Vader.
Those bullies all eventually all go away. Characters don’t stay with the show for long.
Shawn’s parents split. They leave. He stays with cool new teacher Mr. Turner. He’s probably the reason I like this era of the show the most. This character really added something to the show. There were so many interesting and distinct authority/parent figures on this show. It really added to the much maligned sappiness of the genre. Sadly Mr. Turner crashes his motorcycle and ends up saving Shawn from joining a cult at the same time. Then he goes away too.
We now move on to we’ll say the last two years of high school. We get an equally broken soul in Angela to date Shawn. They go through a lot of turmoil and unlike the Cory/Topanga arc, ends years later in the way it realistically should: by ripping out everyone’s freaking heart. There. Now we’re done with high school.
In this time Eric takes a year off before going to college. I think at least. His timeline is screwed up too. This is the only way to explain how Eric got so stupid as the show went on. It’s really something. You want to “Flanderize” a character; this is it. It’s actually worse because being dumb wasn’t his main characteristic. Eric started as a savvy person but lazy. Then he became a jabbering mental patient. He moves in to start school with Jack who (shockingly?) is Shawn’s long lost brother. We’re going to pretend he didn’t already have one of those and a sister. Also a 7 foot tall red head shows up and kind of kills the dynamic of another best pal friendship. That’s pretty much where the show spins off the rails a little. Also a new Morgan shows up at some point but who cares?
This has nothing to do with the words surrounding.
Then we go to college. Everyone all goes to the same college, they all date each other and everyone lives together. It’s unrealistic and too much like “Friends” for my taste. Mr. Feeny, former 6th grade teacher and high school principal, eventually becomes a professor because I think he had money riding on Cory and Topanga getting married. He wanted to see it through. Cory and Topanga get married, Shawn’s sadness deepens and Eric moves to New York with all of them. Jack, Rachel and Angela move away because they’re kind of add on characters ya know?
I tried. I’m over 1,000 words and barely feel like I scratched the surface. I didn’t even talk about how Cory hooked up with a girl at a ski lodge or how Janitor Bud skipped out of work early that one time. The importance of those issues don’t match by the way. Go watch the show. It reruns on MTV2. It’s worth a look back
Here’s the cast recently. Just for fun.
I know its a little girl show but I’m looking forward to “Girl Meets World”. I think the people that made this classic show can strike gold again. People relate to this show still because it taught a lesson. If anything I’m excited to see if Shawn is still alive. I mean his dad died, his mom didn’t even come back for the funeral, his brother moved away, his girlfriend left the country and Mr. Turner must still be in a coma. I hope Shawn will be okay. The nation waits.
I think things may have gotten different for Shawn after all.