Episode 1x08 "Teacher's Bet"

The title is a play on the phrase "teacher's pet".

We're in the cafeteria before school because it's the only school set the creators could afford besides the classroom. Cory and Shawn are discussing Barry Bonds's 43 million dollar 6-year contract with awe on their faces. Taking drugs for a living, ain't that the life. Minkus points out how much bull shit that is, considering that Mr. Feeny only makes about 40 thousand a year. SOCIAL COMMENTARY. How can you not love this guy? I wish Lee Norris, the actor behind the little genius, was on Twitter or something so I could be like "yo, sup". Anyway, Shawn and Cory disagree with Minkus, citing that teaching sixth grade is dumb and easy. -PREMISE ACQUIRED-

Also Shawn apparently got dressed in the dark this morning. At least he's got that hair.

Topanga's back in class, maybe she'll get some lines later. Cory cracks jokes at Mr. Feeny's lesson, at the end of which he assigns everyone a book to read. After class they have a dialogue about which of them has the harder job. Mr. Feeny, as any good teacher would, suggests they swap roles for a week, which will include Cory administering an exam to the class. The wager is on whether more students pass or fail the test than usual. Normally sitcoms have children and their parents swap roles which is tired and boring, but this is a little different and might be fun. 

We're at the Matthews house next, and Eric has brought home girlfriend #3, an Asian with her shirt tucked in named Linda. Morgan makes a joke here, and I want you to see how it goes. 

                                       

That's a pretty funny line from a youngster to her mother, "you're just going to have to be more independent".  I like it when kids are too smart for their age instead of taking the easy "aww" route. I gave a good laugh after the word "independent", and you can hear a few brave renegade audience members laughing then too, but most of the laughter comes after the second half of the line. But the second half wasn't funny! The joke was the first half! There are a thousand things wrong with audience laughs/laughtracks and it's usually not worth talking about, but this really burns me.

Also what the fuck is Eric wearing. I couldn't even leave my apartment if my shirt and pants were the same color, and here he is acting like it's no big deal. And I think that's his jean jacket there under his arm too. Does anyone understand how this could have happened? Linda looks pretty good though. I'm a fan of that ponytail with the lower hair hanging naturally style. 

Cory tells his parents about the bet with Feeny, and we learn that the stakes are Cory's new bike and one fifth of Feeny's weekly paycheck. 

In class, Cory abolishes the dress code and the fascist no-hats rule, and ultimately loses control of the class. Fearing that he might actually lose his bike Cory starts to take things seriously, but it looks like he's pretty fucked.

At home, Cory's reading the book that Feeny assigned in order to prepare for class the next day. Eric and Linda show up, and Linda is sobbing.  "Some jerk at the mall called her a bad name", Eric tells Morgan, with the implication being that it was a racial slur. The first fifteen minutes of this episode seemed like typical switcheroo hijinx, but shit kinda just got real. 

This compels Cory to talk to his class about how prejudice is still very real, including the story of what happened to Linda the day before, and that it's shitty to be shitty to other people. If it were any other show I would expect the class to slowly come to order while nice music plays as Cory talks about this important issue. But that's not what happens. Nobody's paying attention except Feeny. Cory decides that he's a crap teacher and is about to walk out the door when his teacher gives him a look that honestly pierces straight into the core of my being. 

It's a look of sympathy, understanding, some "I know you just tried really damn hard and I'm proud of you", and a little "Don't give up just yet." 

Wow.

Then Cory goes H.A.M. 

                                  

There are a few things I really like about this. The first is that Cory actually says "wop". That's pretty ballsy for 1993. The second is something that most real schools actually fail at, which is showing the students how an issue applies to them. Assigning The Diary of Anne Frank and saying "prejudice is bad mmk" does absolutely nothing for suburban white children. They dismiss it. I dismissed it as a kid. So it's just awesome that Cory throws it in Shawn's face. The third is when Cory says "When someone calls someone else a bad name, it's not good that just that one person jumps up." That caught me off guard. Be honest, were you thinking to yourself "why isn't anyone else getting mad at Cory for saying that?" I know I wasn't. It's a damn good point to make and absolutely earns "Teacher's Bet" a Life Lesson Badge. 

That paragraph might sound awfully reminiscent of the end of my review of episode 3. Episode 3 also started out like a formulaic predict-athon, only to smash my face in with an awesome life lesson at the end. In fact, both this episode and episode 3 were written by the same person, April Kelly, who also co-created the show alongside Michael Jacobs. To my great dismay, this is the last episode she wrote for Boy Meets World, and she hasn't written for any other shows that I've watched. I might check out her episodes of Becker and Happy Days since those are semi-classics. I can only hope she works on Girl Meets World.

Back to the show, it's time to find out who won the bet. We can only assume that this exam was about The Diary of Anne Frank since the episode wouldn't really make sense otherwise. Who do you think won? This is a television show, and we just saw Cory give an impassioned speech about why the subject matter is important. Obviously this motivated the students to read the book allowing Cory to take Feeny's money.

NOPE. 

                                    

Dammit April Kelly, why are you so amazing? I wish I could talk to her about this stuff. 

During the credits we find out that Linda has become a cheerleader and then Mrs. Matthews does a cheer from her high school days. It's awful. I remember how intensely cringe-inducing it is from watching this episode however long ago, and I skipped over it just now. Linda shows up and does her cheer, which I skipped over, but now Eric is acting like Linda's and Amy's are the same. I take pride in having thorough reviews on this blog, so I'm going to have to watch the cheers to know for sure. Maybe I should have a beer first. 

God that was painful. They are the same cheer. I guess I'll put up the clip in case you haven't felt like dying yet today.

I like this episode. .5 for Humor, .5 for Plot, .5 for Character Development since Cory is starting to gain some real respect for Mr. Feeny, and 1 for Life Lesson.

2.5/4 with a Life Lesson_Anne Frank badge.

That's Anne Frank. See you Friday.

How many of you are about to go watch the "Anne Frank's Diary" sketch from Robot Chicken? Me too.