Episode 5x18 "If You Can't Be With The One You Love..."

Then grow the fuck up cuz you can't always have what you want.

*Edit* Thanks to the anonymous commenter, I now know that today is the 21st anniversary of the premiere of Boy Meets World! The series is 21 years old on the day I review the episode about drinking. What the hell are the odds? That is just fantastic.

Shawn and Cory emerge from Feeny's classroom after a lesson on feudalism, and for some reason it's made Shawn very angry. I dunno, I think feudalism is kinda cool. As Topanga passes by, Cory wishes her a good weekend, and she returns the gesture, but she's clearly not suffering the way that Cory is. Shawn explains that she's handling the breakup "with dignity", and then adopts this grizzled accent to say "while you, Norton, are a train wreck." Google has given me no aid in deciphering this message. It must be a quote since he put on that accent, but I can't figure out where it's from. The audience laughs, it must mean something. Help me out.

See, Cory's being a real Debbie Downer after this breakup. Almost everyone has been invited to Kimberly Sussman's "new nose" party tonight, but not Cory, as Shawn points out. He's just too depressing to be around, and even Shawn is getting sick of it. For the record, that sounds ridiculous, but I actually did know a girl in college who threw a "new nose party". They do exist, I'm afraid.

That's pretty harsh. Just before we cut to commercial, Cory comments that he doesn't like himself either, and that "I'm done with me."

We cut to Kimberly's party, where the hostess herself asks Angela if she can dance with Shawn. Angela tells Kimberly she can do whatever she wants, "but he'll be going home with me~." WooOOooo sounds like Shawn might be dying in a horror movie pretty soon! Angela actually looks fantastic in this scene, I don't know why her hairstyles are so hit or miss.

And now Cory Matthews crashes the party. He's oozing with confidence and doesn't even flinch when Kimberly namedrops Topanga, so she invites him in. We fade over to Cory regaling the partygoers with the story of First Girlfriends Club, which, let's be honest, is the perfect story to tell at a party. Topanga shows up and Cory doesn't give a shit. Clearly something drastic has taken place. As soon as she sees Cory having a good time as the life of the party, Topanga bails. It... grrrr, it makes my blood boil. What the fuck is her problem. A song starts playing that I recognize from another episode, it took me a minute but it's the song that plays at The Boom Boom Room near the end of Last Tango in Philly.

Well we didn't have to wait long to solve the mystery. We now see Cory taking a swig of whiskey in the bathroom. Shawn comes a-knockin, apparently Cory's been in there a while, and Cory invites his best friend to have a drink with him.

You know why anti drug and alcohol programs don't work? Because the message is always "it's terrible, you'll hate it and regret it and suffer the consequences." And then people try it and think "Wow, this is great, I feel awesome, those programs were lying to me." So what's Boy Meets World doing right? It's starting off by showing us the allure, it's not some popular kids pressuring a high horse protagonist (see: Full House and every other 90s sitcom), it's Cory fuckin Matthews offering a drink to his best buddy. It's liquid confidence! Cory is relaxed and confident and he left his broken heart at the door, all thanks to a little whiskey. So now it's a question of whether the bad outweighs the good, which is exactly the direction that I think school programs should be taking. Scare tactics do not work and Michael Jacobs evidently knows that.

UNFORTUNATELY, we'll never see anything like this with Girl Meets World, since Disney Channel banned this episode from being shown on their network. And that's ultimately why I think Girl is doomed, but we'll just have to see.

Shawn and Cory continue taking swigs of whiskey, with their own little sound effects after each gulp. Very funny. Very relatable.

The party's over after the commercial break, as Cory and Shawn wander down some street in a drunken stupor, discussing how they peed on the roof of cop car number 72. Public urination is a common joke on tv when it comes to drunkenness, but like, I've been pretty damn smashed in my days and yet I have never had the urge to whip my dick out and let loose outside of a bathroom. I'll never understand that one. Anyway, the boys offer some cash to some random guy to buy them beer, and he does, but shortly after that cop car 72 pulls up with lights flashing to arrest the boys.

Not much else comes out of that scene, except that Cory does some emotional-drunk talk about how Shawn is more important than Topanga. Alcohol is basically truth serum, so I'm going to go ahead and declare that this is the canonical answer. Cory loves Shawn more than Topanga. Done. It's done.

We're at home after the commercial, and Alan is pissed. He claims that "the charges" have been dropped since they're minors with no priors, but I'm not sure what the charges were exactly. I guess the cop saw them peeing on his car earlier? Maybe open container laws? Whatever, the point is that Alan is being a typical parent right now, thinking that his child can do no wrong. He's convinced that bad bad Shawn convinced sweet sweet Cory to steal his whiskey and drink it. That's real as hell, so many parents are like that, refusing to see their child's mistakes. We're pulling out all the stops in this episode.

Shawn decides to play along with Alan's accusations, just as a favor to his best friend, so Alan keeps saying some pretty hurtful shit. Amy doesn't want to jump to conclusions though, and pulls her husband into the other room. Shawn explains that it's just easier this way since everyone expects the worst out of him, but once Amy and Alan return, Cory comes clean anyway. Alan gives Shawn a serious apology for what he said, and it's honestly really moving. At the end of the scene, Cory and Shawn agree not to drink anymore, but there's still eight minutes left so that's probably not gonna work out.

Indeed it did not work out, as Shawn has a full blown outburst in Feeny's class, evidently the result of drinking. They still managed to make it funny though. Ultimately, Feeny kicks Shawn out of class and excuses Cory to go make sure he's okay. Cory follows the drunk Shawn back to The Apartment, where Shawn grabs another beer from the fridge. Jack comes home and we learn that old Chet Hunter was a pretty abusive drunk. Further, that's actually the reason Jack's mother left Chet in the first place.

This got weird really quick. Like, we were on a nice sightseeing tour and then drove straight off a cliff. Somehow we got to Shawn activating his alcoholism genes. I'll go on record here saying that the first thirteen minutes were great, ending with the agreement not to drink anymore. What I do like about this scene though is when Cory says "I thought we agreed to stop drinking." It's not a fear thing, it's not "remember what my dad said", they made the decision themselves. That's good stuff.

Anyway, back on track, Shawn isn't happy about Jack insulting their father.

The events escalate, Topanga and Angela show up, Angela doesn't want Shawn to drink anymore, and so he shoves her into the door, a callback to Chet being an abusive drunk. Holy shit dude. Realistic or not, it convinces Shawn to stop drinking. He apologizes to Alan, then to Feeny and Topanga, and finally to Angela.

And that's... how it ends... The credits are just some guitar music over the show's logo.

ERIC WASN'T IN THIS EPISODE.

Plot: 1.0 - The first thirteen minutes were a compelling look at a relatable high school student getting drunk at a party. The main characters, high school students, made the choice on their own to get drunk. That shit never happens on TV. Never. Where does it happen? In real god damn life, that's where. It was as not-preachy as a show can possibly be while still maintaining the message. I'm impressed. And then that last eight minutes, I don't even know what that was. The writers clearly just threw it together after using all their good ideas in the first part.

Character Development: 1.0 - Cory was actually interesting in this episode, very real. And I guess Shawn dealing with his family's alcoholism is meaningful.

Humor: 0.75 - It's hard to get that full point without Eric, but it was still pretty funny.

Life Lesson: 0.5 - Drink responsibly.

3.25 out of 4.0. It's actually pretty good. MUCH better than I remember. I've said most of what I want to say already, I just want to reiterate how strange that last eight minutes is. Like why did they even bother doing the "Cory is the bad one this time" thing if Shawn was gonna jump off the deep end for no reason?

Thanks for reading, see you Friday for an episode we're all excited about.

All images used under Fair Use.