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.

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