Episode 2x03 "Notorious"

The Notorious B.I.G. based his name on this episode's name. Prove me wrong.

Eric's giving a neck massage to some girl who writes the school newspaper. Why? Because he's helping her write her article on Mr. Feeny, who as you'll recall is the school's new principal. This is one of those girls who acts with her eyelids. You know what I'm talking about.

Hate that shit.

Cory and Shawn show up with some rats for a school project on natural selection. The rats scare Eyelids away and Eric chases after her. Our heroes decide to mess with the newspaper by changing "Feeny" to "Weeny" in the article's title.

The janitor came in to collect some trash while this happened. That's important later. So what's the point? Well, apparently Shawn thinks this is a way to make a name for themselves, to be something much greater than they are. So the papers get printed like that and distributed throughout the school. Aren't there like a thousand checkpoints in the publishing process to prevent this from happening? Couldn't they have not distributed the papers once they were printed with a big typo? Remember that bull shit tabloid from a Pup Named Scooby Doo? The National Exaggerator? That shit had a higher production value than this school's newspaper. 

The worst part is that people actually think this is a big deal. All the girls are getting hot and bothered over the mysterious, rebellious, daredevil risk-machine who changed one letter in the newspaper. Even Harley Keiner has taken notice.

Okay let's take a step back. This story is nonsense. 0 points for plot. I'm not going to talk about that anymore. Let's move on.

Eric shows a copy of the newspaper to his parents, and for some reason Morgan is in the room. This is the single worst Morgan scene to date. It honestly makes me want to delete every post on this blog and smash my head with a hammer until I forget everything about Boy Meets World. It's my journalistic duty to share it with you, but I urge caution.

There's really only one person in the universe who can salvage this shipwreck of an episode, and by gum here he is in the very next scene with his million dollar grin.

The scenes with these two actors are consistently fantastic. The dialogue here wouldn't even be funny if they were any other actors. Thank you for making me smile today, Jason Marsden+Will Friedle. So anyway Eric bumps into some girl with giant hair and a heavy southern drawl who decided not to wear a bra today. Go ahead. You can look. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Here's a clip because fuck it, it's funny, and I am all about small victories right now. For context, in the wake of that newspaper girl dumping him, Eric has commissioned Jason to prevent him from falling in love with any more "bags of misery". 

                                      

The janitor from before IDs Cory as one of the two people he saw at the newspaper computer. Cory pleads innocent and Mr. Feeny gives him an ultimatum: give up the person responsible or be suspended, and he has 24 hours to decide. Frankie and Joey make their own edit to the newspaper to impress their leader, Harley Keiner.

Eric and Jason have a spat over how pussy whipped Eric has become.

Let's talk about Desiree. Her voice is jarring and despicable and she's turned Eric into her lapdog, doing serious harm to his friendship with Jason. Tell me you don't hate her. But that's awesome! She has done a thoroughly supreme job of making me want to strangle her, like Joffrey on Game of Thrones. Watch her delivery in that clip, and then scroll up and compare it to the gif of that newspaper girl. One is good acting, and one is not. As far as high school villains go, Desiree is pretty spot on. She's played by Sydney Bennett, who has had small roles in TV pretty consistently since 1994, and even a few bigger roles in B movies. Also she's ridiculously good looking these days.

We don't see any more of the Desiree story in this episode. What a cliffhanger! I'm not sure if it's the next episode, but this situation does come up again, which means we're guaranteed to see Jason Marsden at least once more. And that's worth living for, god dammit.

I've been staring at that picture for like five minutes. Anyway, Cory is having his meeting with Mr. Feeny to either rat out Shawn or be suspended... Just... just watch it... 

                                    

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!??!!

What the fuck am I supposed to take away from this! Fucking nepotism?! "Grow up next door to your high school principal and you won't have to rat out your best friend." Congratulations. 

Ultimately Cory gets a week of detention instead of suspension. Okay so I was right, nepotism is the life lesson. Good. That's good. Okay.

Frankie and Joey face no consequences for a much more significant edit to the newspaper, so that's fine, and the rats from the beginning of the episode must have starved to death in Cory's bedroom or something because they were never mentioned again. 

Plot: 0 - DID I FUCKING STUTTER?

Character Development: 0.5 - Because Desiree, I guess.

Humor: 0.5 - "You're welcome." - Eric and Jason.

Life Lesson: 0 - Eat a dick.

1 out of 4.

You're killing me, Boy Meets World. You're supposed to be better than this.

See you Wednesday.

Fair Use? You mean like this? 

Episode 2x02 "Pairing Off"

Looks like Disney and ABC decided to bring down the hammer on Youtube. Pretty much every episode of BMW is gone from there. (I'm watching the DVDs but still.)

This episode kicks off with two 90s looking teens making out in the hallway. They are easily identifiable as such because the guy has a necklace and a giant sweater, the girl's blouse is made out of denim, and their mouths are smushing together. It lasts forever and Cory and Shawn voyeur the fuck out of it while some girl in the background is havin a grand ol' time talkin to absolutely nobody.

Our heroes see another couple tongue-dancing, inspiring Cory to find a partner for himself. Shawn is pretty neutral about it, which is intriguingly uncharacteristic. Topanga comes along and Cory turns on his 12 year old swagger. She plays the "let's not ruin our friendship" card, but she explains it in a not-bullshit way that actually made it feel refreshingly genuine. 

I just noticed that this season breaks to and returns from commercials with electric guitar riffs instead of the flute and trumpet from last season. Edgy.

Cory and Shawn are in "health" class, which is something new and exciting, but we'll never see it again. They've got a substitute teacher who is 90s-good-looking, I guess, so Shawn reverts back to the pussy hound we know and love. He's got real game for a 12 year old. The class begins a discussion about reproduction and Cory gives a wonderfully succinct overview of the process. 

                                    
That's actually the second time he's said "sperm" in this scene and neither was met with cheap laughs or immaturity. This is a massive change of pace from the first season when they used fart noises as punchlines, and I think we're all pretty happy about that. At the end of the scene, Cory asks the substitute how to get a girl to say hi and she just kind of chuckles and dismisses it.

Cory still doesn't understand how to attract women, so now he asks Shawn how to get a girl to say hi. Shawn's technique is to run his hands through his hair, and the girls come running. Topanga does something similar, causing a sasquatch with a mullet to come up and escort her back to his farm or bayou or whatever. I bet he plays bass or some shit.

At the Matthews house Morgan delivers her lines so badly that it must be intentional. Mrs. Matthews takes Morgan to soccer and Eric takes his new girlfriend upstairs. The audience makes it very clear how they feel about that. Shawn and Cory show up, Shawn ditches Cory to go meet girls, and Cory walks in on Eric making his way to second base with his girlfriend. This is taking place in their parents' room for plot reasons. Eric's got some absolutely ridiculous music playing, it's like what the Home Shopping Network plays when they're showing you all the display cases. Maybe things were harder back in '94. Nowadays you just throw on some Owl City or The Postal Service and it's a god damn guarantee.

We're about halfway and it's worth mentioning that this episode's got a Humor Badge for sure. Really clever and smart jokes the whole way through. Too many to post, but you should check out the full episode anyway.

Now Cory asks his brother the question of the day, how to get a girl to say hi. Recall that Eric was being a dick for most of episode one, so this is his first "funny" scene of the season and he does not disappoint. Will Friedle is spot on as usual, and he's actually not wearing any denim on his chest for once. It's a funny, well written scene that lets us peer into some of the fresh dynamics of this brotherhood.

Eric's main point of advice was to make eye contact with a random girl, so Cory stares at this girl in class long enough for her to ask him what the fuck he's doing. Cory fumbles his way into asking her out and she says yes even though she's married. 

Or maybe it's one of those promise rings. Either way, tough break. Cory never addressed her by name here, so I'm going to assume he doesn't know what it is. Also, am I insane or does EVERY teenage female in EVERY tv show carry her binders like that? Is it for posture? I dunno.

Amy and Alan are having another one of their perfect scenes when Amy finds a cheap earring in their bed, left there during Eric's tête-à-tête. I went back to check, and indeed the girl was missing an earring after that scene. Regardless, this doesn't make sense. More than 24 hours have passed since that makeout session, so somehow Amy and Alan didn't notice the earring the night before, and the girl neglected to mention to Eric that she lost it. But whatever.

Anyway, here's the ending to that scene. It's beautiful, unlike Amy's pajamas.

                                     

So now the Matthews parents confront Eric. Cory joins the scene and tells his parents about getting a date. 

His mother asks what this girl's name is and Cory admits he has yet to find out. DO I KNOW THIS SHOW OR WHAT!

Now the super parents explain to their sons that Eric's method of asking random girls out is dumb and that Cory should get to know this girl before jumping the gun. At school the next day, Cory and that girl mutually agree that a date would be weird since they don't know each other, and agree to just have a chat. 

                                        

THERE YOU FUCKIN GO MOTHERFUCKERS. 

YOU WANNA KNOW HOW TO GET A GIRL TO SAY HI?

YOU SAY. FUCKING. "HI." THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE SECRET. LIFE LESSON BADGE.

Seriously, I wish I learned that shit when I was 12. 

Plot: 1.0 - I enjoyed this story. We were shown a lot of examples of Cory falling behind everyone else at school. He had a clearly defined goal and the episode was spent trying to reach that goal. Everyone (except Morgan) was directly related to Cory's pursuit of getting a girl to say hi. That's good story telling.

Character Development: 1.0 - This was a brilliant move by the writers. We've extinguished Cory's awkwardness and uncertainty in a single effective story. Now that Cory can talk to girls, we can focus on real interactions instead of spending an eternity watching him try to build up the courage to talk to that one special girl. Sooooo many shows do that shit and we're just completely avoiding it here.

Humor: 1.0 - Just another reason you should watch this episode. Good laughs for the entire duration. Not much more to say.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - Initiating conversation with someone you want to talk to seems pretty simple when you phrase it that way, but it's something that A LOT of people struggle with. But Boy Meets World seriously got it right here. Just go say hi.

4 points out of 4. This episode was written by Jeff Menell and Glen Merzer, so we'll have to keep an eye out for them.

Thanks for reading, see you Monday!

Clips and images used under Fair Use.

Episode 2x01 "Back 2 School"

That title is making me uncomfortable. Were they trying to be hip? Or is it because it's the 2nd season? Either way...

This episode functions as a prologue for the season, and perhaps for the rest of the series. Most of its duration is spent introducing new characters, updating the ones we've already met, and creating the foundations for their future interactions. So let's dive in.

Right away we get to see the new intro. It's only a few seconds long, which was a smart decision.

The first season's opening was two minutes long, but the total length of the episodes has not changed. So we've gained a solid two minutes of content here.

Hey I've got an idea..............

Made myself a fuckin logo. I'm glad I don't remember what time I started working on it. There are no fonts that look like the ones the show uses there, so I just picked some that are kinda close. It's good enough. Shoutout to Macromedia because this blog would suck ass without Flash.

Back to the show.

The first scene is set in the kitchen of the Matthews house. It's actually a very well crafted opening. Everyone's lines are written specifically to remind us who they are. Morgan fails at being snarky, Alan and Amy banter and give advice, Eric is the cool older brother, Cory and Shawn have come up with a dopey plan for their first day of high school, and Mr. Feeny is tired of putting up with these people and their shit. That's all in the first three minutes. The show's been off the air for three months and immediately they transport us right back to that state of mind we had at the end of the first season. Nice work. 

In the process of all this, Eric gives Cory a contract to sign, stipulating that Cory only refer to Eric as "Oh Great One" among other stay-out-of-my-way-at-school stuff. Oh Great One steals his father's breakfast.

Quote me on this, if I ever have a son and he steals my breakfast, I'm gonna make Abraham from the Bible look like Will Smith. 

Now we're at school and our heroes meet Frankie the Enforcer and Joey the Rat, played by Ethan Suplee and Blake Sennett, respectively. 

Fortunately John Adams High School shops at Dave's Conveniently Large Locker Emporium. 

I love Frankie and Joey. The exaggerated high school bully is an extremely tired concept, but these two actors rock the shit out of it. "There are no small parts, only small actors." These guys were given some bull shit standard characters and made them unforgettable. Blake Sennett helped to form the band Rilo Kiley in 2003. They were really awesome, but broke up in 2011. Here's some good stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXZR0rwhXvs Ethan Suplee has had a lot of acting gigs since Boy Meets World and lost about 200 pounds! 

So yeah. Frankie and Joey rule and I love when they show up. Next up to bat is Topanga Lawrence.

                                      

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Holy fucking shit. 

That was a testament to this show's lack of realism. Shawn and Cory should be fucking dead right now, like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of annihilated.

Damn. All right. Anyway. The bell rings and it's time for class. Mr. Turner's class, to be precise.

It's tempting to dismiss Mr. Turner as a transparent attempt at the "cool and hip teacher" stereotype, but I would argue against that. For the time being, he serves as the antithesis to Mr. Feeny. He has a polar opposite teaching philosophy, yet remains an effective educator. This gives the viewers two separate frames of reference for internalizing the show's themes regarding education. We see this right away when he assigns the students to compare the elements of heroism in The Odyssey to those in X-Men. That's a perfectly legitimate assignment and it comes up in a believable, realistic way. Another solid addition to the cast. 

Mr. Turner is played by Anthony Tyler Quinn. Quinn's had small appearances on a lot of different shows throughout the years. I checked his IMDB just now and he's listed as playing Mr. Turner in Girl Meets World, which is the best fucking thing I've ever read. Holy shit that's exciting. 

After Turner's class Cory finally meets Harley Keiner, leader of the thugs at John Adams High. Cory's plan is to befriend this fellow and live peacefully under his protection. 

Harley is an interesting beast and I've never been quite sure how I feel about him. He tries to sound sophisticated and that confuses me. Is his character supposed to be a well-spoken businessman-thug a la Al Capone, or a caricature of one? The audience doesn't laugh every time he says something so I'm leaning toward the former, but there's just something about the way his lines are delivered that prevents me from taking him seriously. He's played by Danny McNulty who hasn't had any roles since this one. 

Harley trolls Cory a little bit and gives him the nickname "Johnny Baboon", and so refers to Cory as "Baboon" for the rest of the series. Baboon and Harley get caught dicking around in the hallway by a pedophile disguised as a teacher who dabs his pen on his tongue and then clicks it out, which just doesn't make any sense.

The pedophile takes Baboon and Harley to the principal, who is none other than George "Tired of Your Shit" Feeny. 

Baboon gets a warning while Harley gets detention, so Harley lets the young boy in the Lakers colors know that he is going to "kill him" at 3 o'clock. 

At lunch, Shawn convinces Cory to seek advice on the "getting killed" problem from Oh Great One, Pussy Czar of Gaia.

Oh Great One's suggestion is to hide in the nurse's office. Cory does in fact seek refuge there, but he's not the only one. Ultimately Cory doesn't want to be a "coward" like the other guys in the nurse's office and decides to go face Harley. Standing up to bullies is generally good advice, but not wanting to get your ass brutalized isn't exactly "cowardly" in my book. 

Baboon confronts Harley and Oh Great One shows up to help his brother. They start to tussle and Mr. Turner swoops in to save the day. 

                                      

Pretty funny stuff. As always, I love when they reference their literature assignments in the story. We haven't seen much of Shawn this episode, but he does manage to squeeze in a teaser for his character arc at the end here. 

                                      

And that's the show. There's a little outro bit, but it's dumb so who cares. 

Minkus is gone. Goodnight, sweet prince. 

                                      

Plot: 0.5 - There wasn't much of a story but that's perfectly fine. They weren't trying to give us a real narrative here, and there was still a ton of content.

Character Development: 1.0 - I covered this extensively throughout the review, pretty obvious Badge.

Humor: 0.5 - Funny enough to stay entertaining, but again it was more about the characters.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - Standing up to bullies is important! 

3 out of 4. A truly masterful season-opener. We have a solid idea of everyone's character for this season and we're left feeling super amped for the next episode. I'm so glad season one is over.

Thanks for reading, and if I don't manage to pump out a review tomorrow then Merry Christmas!

Clips and images used under Fair Use.

Episode 1x22 "I Dream of Feeny"

You guys aren't going to believe this. Listen listen listen, check this out. Cory and Shawn are making something with a blender.

AND THEN THEY MAKE A MESS! AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

This kinda shit makes me so sad, especially since the audience fuckin loves it. I'm ready to quit, but let's try to keep going. Through the window Cory sees his mother about to open the door from outside. Cory says "back me up, I wanted to use the lid, I was Lid Boy." 

That's actually been going on all season, where Cory uses the context to make that pose and say "I am/was _____ Boy!", like they wanted to make it his catch phrase. I never mentioned it because I kept hoping it would just go away and I could pretend it never happened. Every time I thought "this has to be the last one, there's no way they'll do it again." But here we are.

Cory calls out to his mother that he's going to clean up the mess, but he and Shawn immediately abandon the mess and sit at the kitchen table to study for Mr. Feeny's geography test the next day. Cory says "I don't understand why we have to learn anything about geography." Really, Cory? That's how you wanna do this? In Mr. Feeny's social studies class this year, you've done math problems, discussed literature, put on a play, made up a future career, signed up for clubs... everything EXCEPT social studies. And now, now that you finally have to learn some easy ass geography to satisfy the syllabus, WOAAAAAAAAAAAAAH NOOOOO. Cory don't do dat, nuh uh. That's just asking too much. These punk kids, man... At least their jackets have sleeves today.

Anyway Cory wishes for Feeny to get sick so they don't have to take the test. Golly gee whiz, Mr. Feeny's out sick the next day. The substitute is going to have them read Beowulf and they act like that's a terrible way to spend a class. 

Seriously, do they just freak out in every class? What do they expect? Blowjobs? Christ.

The boys are talking about how Cory wished for Feeny to get sick, and Cory does the pose thing again. He's "Sick Boy", this time, with the power to make people sick. Shawn responds with "Yeah, it's working on me right now." So I guess we have to look to Shawn Hunter to find a functioning brain in this episode. Terrifying.

We learn from Minkus that Mr. Feeny is in the hospital and Cory's sad because he legitimately thinks he might be responsible or something. They actually managed to get a good joke in, so for sanity's sake here it is.

                                     

A brief respite, but now it's back to the trenches.

Dream sequence. A four and a half minute dream sequence where the ghost of a recently expired Feeny haunts Cory to make him feel guilty. It's a tremendous waste of time, and if I don't talk about it then maybe it didn't happen. 

What the fuck is the point of the dream? Feeny's not dead! It's not Cory's fault! He literally did nothing wrong here, for like the first time in the series Cory did absolutely nothing wrong, but NOW he feels bad. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Alan tries to give his dejected son a pep talk. He provides an anecdote to explain that Cory may one day need this school stuff that seems useless now, like geography. The problem is that Alan's story is an example of how math can be useful in the real world. Having a degree in math, I can verify that math and geography are slightly different subjects. I think that was supposed to be the life lesson too, I'm just falling apart here guys this is so bad. 

Cory goes to visit his teacher in the hospital. 

♫ THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MIIIIIIIIIIINE ♫

♫ I'M GONNA LET IT SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE ♫

Thank goodness. That is a fantastically meaningful exchange. But perhaps it's only meaningful in hindsight, having seen the rest of the series. If I had only seen the first season before this, I would think that Cory is speaking from the perspective of his father, that these geography tests might be useful in his life somehow. And that's kinda dumb. Did Michael Jacobs already know that Mr. Feeny would be imparting wisdom for years to come? Who knows, but I certainly hope so. Imagine, though, if instead of lying to his son about geography's usefulness, the conversation went like this:

 Alan: "Cory, there's so much more to learn from teachers than the silly things they test you on."

Cory: "No way, dad. Name one important thing Mr. Feeny can teach me about."

Alan: "Life, Cory. But it's up to you to listen." *clarinet music as Alan walks off-camera*

Something like that, right, so when Cory says that Feeny can still teach him stuff, we would be like "damn." That was an amazing opportunity. It's still a good scene, but it could have been profound.

It's the same kinda thing here. If Alan's conversation with Cory had been written like I wrote it, these last two clips would blow my fuckin mind.

So that's that. Everything up to the last six minutes was a train wreck. Cory was constantly flipping between feeling guilty and knowing it wasn't his fault, I'm not even sure where he ended up. The ending was good, worthy of being the season finale, but damn if they didn't make us work for it.

0 for plot, obviously. I want to give 0.5 for humor, but "lid boy" and "sick boy" are cutting it down to 0.25. I would give 1 for character development if Cory actually realized that the plant and the "proper gardener" were a metaphor for himself and Feeny, but he seemed pretty oblivious to that whole message so 0.5 for that. Now, life lesson, life lesson... I dunno, it was close, but the "learning important stuff from teachers" idea really isn't fleshed out very well. It would have been difficult to see that theme if I hadn't been looking for it so hard. Maybe it's not even there, maybe this episode was just a piece of shit. 0.5.

1.25/4 and no badges.

SoooOOoOOOoOoooOooo that's the end of season 1. *confetti* No more reviews this week. I'll start season two next Monday or the following Monday.

Thanks so much for reading and saying the nice things you say.

Clips and images used under fair use.

Episode 1x21 "Boy Meets Girl"

The title of this episode is a play on the name of popular 90s sitcom "Boy Meets World".

The class is watching an educational film about hormones and puberty stuff on one of those projector things. Topanga is WAY too pleased with this movie. But the guy next to her just knocked Game-Gear-Window-Sill Guy off of the Favorite Character throne.

Seriously, she holds that face for the entire scene. Cory makes a joke about George Burns. I don't know who that is but the audience thinks it's funny so it's probably not. The film ends and Cory explains to Mr. Feeny that hormones are for chumps and he doesn't wanna deal with it. Shawn and a girl brush hands as they reach for his dropped pencil and the sparks fly even though our boy is wearing a sleeveless jacket.

The Lonely Island have a song about what we just saw there.

Shawn discusses asking girls out with an oblivious Cory. Minkus suggests his method of reading Perky © magazine to understand how girls think. The girl from class makes the plot easy for us by asking Shawn out, who can only manage to giggle and nod in response. 

She exits by saying "See you later, Terminator" in the 12 year old version of a sexy voice.

....
....
See you later...

.....Terminator...?

That line is so horrible that it's actually almost clever, since the Terminator says "I'll be back."

Now Shawn's wearing different shirts so it's either the next day or his date went SUPER well, and he's regaling Eric with the details of his romantic rendezvous. Apparently they snuck into a movie and Eric gives his approval. That's pretty rad. Imagine if someone snuck into a movie on Full House or a Disney channel show. They would do a two-episode story about how wrong it is and at least one character would cry. Anyway, Cory comes in and doesn't like that he's being excluded, but he also doesn't want to talk about dating so it's quite the pickle.

And then this.

                                   

Let me explain why that was genius. Everything up to this point has been telling us that hormones have commandeered Shawn and this unnamed girl, and that they dig each other. We've seen Shawn's reckless side and hey, they snuck into a movie. What's more, we've also seen and heard (mostly heard) about Eric's romantic exploits, and we know that Cory is still immature toward the whole thing. We've been primed, so when Shawn delivers his line perfectly and we see the absolutely priceless reactions of Eric and Cory, everything just collapses together and it's fucking hysterical. The Matthews brothers have the same reaction but for different reasons: Eric is impressed and maybe jealous, while Cory is just sort of awestruck. It's funny that they believe it, but it's funnier that we believe it. Then Shawn flips the table and says what really happened. It was a comedic bait and switch. A flawless comedic bait and switch. You can almost always see these things coming, but they got me this time because I was primed. Most of the time, this show uses punchline and commentary humor, as do most shows, but this joke was a work of art. Humor Badge.

At lunch, Shawn eats with the girl, who we now know is named Hillary. Cory is left feeling jealous and lonely, so he goes to Minkus for his Perky © inspired advice. Clearly Perky © is not related to Cosmopolitan since it's not completely fucking retarded. Minkus is perfect and the whole conversation is really funny. I would post it but you should watch this whole episode anyway, so I'll leave it at that. Cory goes on the hunt with his new tricks of the trade and walks past a bespectacled pirate to find Topanga. 

Cory suggests they go to Bob Stoopcheck's Burger World. We learned about Bob Stoopcheck's Pizza World back in episode 16, so this guy is some sort of interplanetary fast food mogul, which is awesome.

Topanga's a vegetarian though so they're going to International House of Sprouts instead. She says "It's a date", and Cory does the whole "who said anything about a date?!" thing. That's a depressingly predictable way to take things, but honestly they could cut to a Miley Cyrus album for the next 10 minutes and I'd still recommend the episode.

Back at home, Alan and Amy banter and it's perfect like always. Cory comes home and talks to his parents about everything. In doing so, his mother points out that he's only doing this to "keep up with Shawn". Wee woo, wee woo, red fucking alert. That's a central theme for the first few seasons, and adds to the already strong dynamic between Shawn and Cory. Character Development Badge. You know what would be interesting is if the title is actually referring to Shawn, rather than Cory.

I had to use Chrome's incognito mode to search for that Kardashians picture. You know. Just in case.

Cory chickens out and tells Topanga he has the flu, but she shows up with some smelly remedy for him to drink. He tells her the truth and then teaches her to play color-commentary-sock-laundry-basket basketball. It's actually pretty adorable. 

They hi-five and Cory gets the giggles. After some cute banter, she leans back on his hand he gets the giggles again. If you recall, Shawn got the giggles by touching Hillary's hand. COINCIDENCE??? I guess we're supposed to forget that Cory and Topanga already kissed in episode 4.

Later Eric and Shawn find Cory on the porch. Shawn had a second date and he blew it.

Don't feel bad Shawn. You were doomed the moment you decided to wear those crimes against humanity on your body. I'm pretty sure one of the Geneva Conventions outlawed that shit.

I just love it. Boy Meets World deals with dating brilliantly (well, until Cory and Topanga get serious). Try to tell me that's not part of why you love this show. It's messy and confusing and challenging, sometimes it's shallow, sometimes it's heartbreaking, and we'll be seeing all of that as we go.

This is a great episode. The story is enough fun for a Plot Badge and it already got those other two. There wasn't much of a life lesson though, except maybe "don't fall for a classmate named Hillary", which I can verify from personal experience. The outro bit does some pretty spot on foreshadowing. 

                                     

And the future looks bright. I really wish this had been the season finale. That clip just leaves you with a smile and a good feeling. 

3/4 with three Badges.

See you Monday for the season finale.

Clips and images used under fair use.