Monday, February 16, 2015

Episode 7x18 "How Cory and Topanga Got Their Groove Back"

I was playing Cards Against Humanity last night with some folks I hadn't met. My "Hey I'm Sean" was met with "Oh yeah? I'm Cory." He was joking, but I appreciated it.

That most recent episode of Girl Meets World was good. Topanga was amazing.

I have no idea what this episode is.


Okay so we're at The Union where Cory and Topanga are anxious to return home, lest they miss 60 Minutes. The rest of the crew show up just before heading out to The Blue Room, a "loud" and "wild" night club. Jack has apparently been carried over from the previous episode. He's completely obsessed with his appearance and blah blah nobody wants to see this. Here we are, at the very end of the series, and they're still not sure what they want to do with Jack. Topanga comments that she likes dancing too, which is hopefully a display of the ability to remember previous episodes. If so, it is much appreciated.

Later, at The Dorm, Topanga's worried that she and her husband are boring now, since their own best friends didn't even bother inviting them out. Cory dismisses her concerns, and we learn that Cory likes to be the little spoon.


And there's nothing wrong with that.

Topanga's restless, and resumes the conversation. Cory doesn't seem to think that acting like an old couple is a bad thing, but as a loving, compromising husband, he decides to throw a big party at their dorm the next night.

My first reaction to this is that they've always been an old married couple, and I'm trying to think of an example, but maybe it was just Cory who always acted that way, mister poster-of-celery. Either way, it's clear that this episode's version of Topanga has her wanting to go out and do stuff, rather than being an old person.

Well this is weird. Eric has suffered a bump on the head, and now every time he sneezes he sees a vision of the future. Like That's So Raven, but not as sassy. After a few sneezes, Eric has a vision of the winning lottery numbers, but only the first three, setting Jack on a warpath to get the last of the numbers.


We're back to a classic season 1 and 2 formula here, Cory taking the main stage while Eric conducts an ultimately meaningless shenanigan in the background. Classic doesn't necessarily mean high quality, though. After all this time, it's still clear that Jason was better suited to these shenanigans than Jack. To be fair, Jack can interact with the other characters in a way that Jason never could, and ultimately that makes him a better addition to the cast, but in these particular situations where these two don't even see Rachel or Cory or Shawn for the whole episode, Jason was way better.


I just want to say that going back to find a good picture with Jason reminded me how much I love season 2.

Cory's handing out party invitations to everybody in The Union. A party with "cake, ice cream, games, and surprises." If they never deliver on those surprises, I'm going to be seriously disappointed.

But as EVERYONE knows, tonight is also Jerry Dervin's party, the "best party of the year," according to Rachel. Cory makes it abundantly clear that, by golly, he's gonna throw a super fun no-parents-allowed party, even better than Dervin's party. Shawn, in return, makes it abundantly clear that he has no faith in Cory's ability to throw a party, and honestly he's pretty mean about it.


Well SOMEBODY had to say it.

The showrunners are still trying pretty hard to make it look like Rachel and Angela are friends, but I'll never be interested.

Jack and Eric have found their way to a gas station or convenience store or something, some place you can buy a lottery ticket. Eric hasn't sneezed out the last few numbers yet, and Jack's doing everything he can to get them.


I'm 99% sure that last part was ad libbed. It's pretty unusual, but if we accept the uncomfortable premise that Jack is a heartless greed-monster, then this whole gag is pretty hilarious. I love that Eric has his name in big letters written on his helmet. It's the little things. This is weird though. Jack has totally lost his mind over the lottery. And believe it or not, this is The Last Shenanigan. The last team effort between Eric and Jack, this is it, and they're doing this sociopath Jack for some reason, above and beyond how he was in You Light Up My Union.

Eric has another psychic sneeze, showing him that someone is going to be in trouble, and Eric thinks it's his responsibility to help, so he heads out to find them.

This next scene is either incredibly sad or incredibly adorable, it's really up to personal taste on that but there's not a lot of middleground. Cory has decorated The Dorm with balloons and streamers, and now he's breaking out the board games. Topanga approves and pulls her quiches out of the oven. So yes, quite the rager they've prepared here. I bet the quiche at Dervin's party is store bought.

It seemed like Shawn as being an unusually bad friend earlier, but he dragged Rachel and Angela out of Dervin's party to come hang out with Corpanga. Shawn really is the best. And damn, could Rachel and Angela complain about it a little more? Two episodes ago they were crying about being excluded from the in-group and now they're too good to go to Cory and Topanga's party? Fuck that noise.

To be fair, the party isn't going well.


The next scene is just Cory and Topanga fighting about what exactly caused this party to fail so completely, each blaming the other to hilarious effect. To my great surprise, Topanga totally steals this one away, she's way funnier than Cory here. That... that never happens. Mark this one down in your Boy Meets World Notebooks boys and girls. Also note that Topanga insists that she wants to "go out" and have fun and be wild and that sort of thing. The argument escalates to a giggling food fight, which, of course, ends in sex on the floor.


We find Eric and Jack in some back alley near a dumpster, apparently the location of the person Eric needs to save. Jack's patience runs out, so he starts... bashing Eric's (helmeted) head against the lid of the dumpster.


Eventually Eric sneezevisions the last few lottery numbers for Jack, but then a hobo comes out of nowhere to help the boys learn a lesson. It's very odd. He and Eric together realize that Jack is the person Eric needed to save. Eric thinks he got these psychic powers to save Jack from his overwhelming greed, but that greed wouldn't have existed in the first place without these powers, so it's kind of cyclical. I appreciate that this ties in to the Playswith Squirrels future, that perhaps, even without the lottery, Jack's greed would eventually overwhelm him and turn him into the guy we saw in that future. So the fact that Eric is saving him now wraps that all up nicely.

EXCEPT JACK DON'T GIVE A SHIT. The emotional guitar plays while Jack realizes he's become a monster, but he quickly dismisses the realization and goes to buy the lottery numbers. So there really wasn't any development here at all...

Hm....

Back at The Dorm, we see that Shawn's recruited a horde of people from Dervin's party, including Dervin himself (even though he's credited as "Punk" so I had to guess at the spelling of his name), by promising them each 20 dollars if they spend an hour at Cory's party. I said it already, but man, Shawn is the best. Cory won't ever know about it though, because when Shawn opens the door he sees Corpanga wrapped up in the Twister mat on the floor, clearly not looking for company.

Topanga tells Cory they should never go out, and it kind of looks like Topanga never got what she wanted here. She stated very firmly that she wanted to try to go out more, and now in a mess of hormones she's tossing that aside. I don't know, I'm probably thinking about it too much.


Everyone goes back to Dervin's party, except Shawn and Angela, who realize that they're sort of jealous of how much fun Cory and Topanga are having together. Rachel was also jealous but she just walked off camera. I'm sure she'll be fine, she can take home any guy at Dervin's Party.

At The Apartment, they don't win the lottery for sitcom reasons that aren't even worth explaining.


During the credits, Cory and Topanga love each other.

Plot: 1.0 - The lottery half of the episode is nonsense, but I like how we can tie it in with the Playswith Squirrels future. The Cory and Topanga half is a fun idea. They've always been like an old married couple, so it's nice to see Topanga try to challenge that. Like I said earlier though, it's disappointing that she completely abandoned it by the end.

Character Development: 0.5 - There was almost development, but then Cory and Topanga reverted back to how they've always been. Jack was... sort of development, but he didn't even seem to care that he was acting like a sociopath.

Humor: 1.0 - There's enough to hold it up.

Life Lesson: 0 - Uhhhhhh.

2.5 out of 4.0. - The only thing left I want to do is reiterate how bull shit it is that Rachel and Angela don't want to hang out with Cory and Topanga after what happened in The War and Seven The Hard Way.


Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.



12 comments :

  1. I like to think that Topanga just realized she liked being with Cory no matter where they were or what they were doing, their friends may have cooler, exciting lives but it isn't what SHE really wants but who knows..

    I never thought about how rude Angela and Rachel were about having to miss Dervins party and never remembered how much of a big thing they made it when they felt "left out" a few episodes ago, so yeah, right there with you on the screw that.

    I've said many times they have never known what to do with the character of Jack. Rachel and Angela suffer with this a little bit as well but I think Jack suffers a lot because they really wanted to make a sort of Cory/Shawn lite with Jack and Eric and I don't think they ever found that right kind of magic. There was a a brief little bit at the end of season 5 but then the show brought Rachel in and I think that messed things up and totally changed the friendship, but that's just my opinion.

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    1. You're right, it was starting to smooth out as season 5 ended, but they completely ruined it with The Rachel Competition. Like could you imagine if Cory and Shawn had been competing over Topanga? Awful awful.

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    2. While Jack is better than Jason when it comes to intermingling with the rest of the cast, the thing is they never actually exploit this. He's Shawn's half-brother, but I don't think we ever see him talk to Cory about "Insert Plotline concerning Shawn" here after the first three or four episodes of Season 5.
      He wasn't given much of an arc either--the Peace Corps is nice, but the alturism (sic) comes a little out of nowhere. If they bring back Jack for GMW (which I doubt, but hey, they brought back Harley) it may be interesting to see him have made a life of out the Peace Corps, having given up wealth BY CHOICE and is happier as a servant of the world. Considering Cory's daughter's character is essentially Nosy Do-Gooder, a Peace Corps Jack may make a nice foil.

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    3. Yeah, it's like they had the right idea with this deeper character of Jack, and then they just didn't actually explore any of it.

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    4. Get cozy, ConfidenceKBM, this is a long one:
      That's what really matters when it comes to writing characters, from my perspective.
      Characters need to interact and if they're foils, then they need to interact one-on-one.
      Look at Feeny. For Cory, Shawn, Topanga, Eric, Minkus to some degree, and in one of the more impressive scenes this season Jack, he was a mentor-figure. And the best lessons were when he was a foil--Teacher's Bet, Eskimo. For Alan, he was a foil, an adult who had never children, but was a teacher and had to put responsibility over affection in all circumstances. For Mr. Turner, he was a foil in being an embodiment of the ways of the past. For Professor Stuart Stewart, Feeny was a foil in being what a teacher SHOULD be.
      George Feeny and Alan Matthews are two of the best adults on family programming in history--role models without being caricatures.
      For all its faults "Boy Meets World" nails this. And apparently, Cory being a lousy teacher on "Girl Meets World" is deliberate--the writers have reported that Cory's teaching abilities are meant to be part of an arc, and considering we see Feeny and Alan again next season, we can put two and two together.

      Another thing when it comes to characters. I wanted to mention this last week but never got around to it: Foils, if used properly can make for excellent schisms. That's why "The War" is so weak--because Jack has a stunted arc and Rachel and Angela have never really been important outside of being love interests, We don't get nearly the emotion that the writers expect us to have. Has Rachel ever actually spoken to Cory one-on-one. "BMW" is not alone in this regard of not-so-well-written schisms--even Avatar: The Last Airbender (Which is insanely awesome and whatever its faults, of which there are several, remains probably the best Hero's Journey in Western Animation) has lousily written schisms in its Comic Trilogies. A note to potential writers: Don't use "Poor Communication Kills" as a plot device, especially for a fight between Traveling Companions, especially if said Companions have known each other for a long enough time for them to know each other's backstories.
      As it happens, the best schism I've ever seen in entertainment is probably "Kingdom Hearts: 358 Days/2."

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  2. This bit is sort of a retread, considering they already did the 'Cory's the shut in' thing when he's being a hypochondriac, and Topanga has to learn that she married him so she should stay in with him and enable his pretend illnesses, or something. Like, it's sweet that they're happy together and all, but a little sad that at twenty or so, they have to be 'boring' because they're married.

    I like this episode though, mainly for the hobo's reading of: 'He's reaching out to you, Jack. Trying to SAVE you' in the incredibly deep voice.

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    1. "Like, it's sweet that they're happy together and all, but a little sad that at twenty or so, they have to be 'boring' because they're married." That's pretty much the abridged version, you are exactly right. At first it seems like Jacobs is saying "Hey it's okay to have a simple life," and I'm down with that, but then at the end we're supposed to believe that Rachel and Shawn and Angela are all jealous? Ehhhhh

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    2. Yeah, especially since Shawn and Angela are way more sexualised as a couple than Cory and Topanga, where the jokes about them tend to be based around Cory at least, not being great in bed.
      Rachel I'd get being envious, since she was single at that point but I seriously doubt Shawn and Angela would be 'o_O' over some married missionary sex with food.

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  3. I was reading this in the library and that last gif of eric eating the ticket made me laugh out loud. But to your point about Jason, whenever I watch a lot of season 7 then watch one episode of season 2,3 or 4, it makes me realize how great those seasons were. I watched the series from beginning to end a few times and whenever I see the last episode, the flashbacks make me want to start all over. The high school years are definitely when this show was in it's prime in my opinion.

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    1. Yeah, I definitely agree. S2-4 are by far my favorite years of the show, followed by 1, then 5, 6, 7. I'd like to see a season ranking on this blog after the last review, maybe with a top 10 episodes kind of thing!

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  4. Here we are, at the very end of the series, and they're still not sure what they want to do with Jack gotepisodes

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  5. yes i liked jason marsden in season 1 and 2 kind of wish they kept him on for longer him and will were friends in real life at the time they still are :) i wonder if jason will make an appearance on girl meets world

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