Episode 2x14 "I Am Not a Crook"

ROUUUUUUND THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Whenever I read the word "versus" I think of that voice from Epic Rap Battles of History.

If you're anything like me, you've done some Boy Meets World math over the years, and there's one thing that seemingly doesn't add up. Cory starts 7th grade in season 2 and graduates from 12th grade in season 5, so we'd be missing two years somewhere. Well, the mystery just got a little less mysterious. Cory and Shawn are trying to find a club for Cory to join, but none of the ones on Shawn's list are appealing. Cory remarks "Here I am going into my 8th year of public education, and who am I, really?" You're a little young to be having an existential crisis, Cory, but that line blatantly serves to inform the audience that we've jumped ahead to 8th grade. Neato.

Turner's class begins, and he informs the students that it's time to elect an 8th grade class president and asks for nominations. A guy named Alvin nominates himself, 

and Shawn nominates a reluctant Cory.

Why did Cory walk to the front of the class? A simple "no" would have worked. Thankfully, neither the students nor the audience cheered or clapped at the end of that, because otherwise I would have snapped my laptop in half. I hate scenes that end like this. What happens between the fade-to-black and the start of the next scene? Cory is just standing there awkwardly, how can he possibly follow that up? Does he wait until Turner's like "Hey Matyoos, put da flayg back in da holster, huh? I need ta teach a clayss heeee." 

*audience laughter* 

"Oh, right, sorry Mr. Turner, but there's never a bad time for patriotism." *Cory shrugs, grins, and raises his eyebrows*

*audience erupts*

Did you guys see Turner's handwriting on the chalkboard? How can someone write that badly?

Cory's still not happy about running for president, since he's just an average guy, but Shawn understands that that's exactly what makes him appealing to a majority of the students.

You can see The Spectre on the right of the frame there, with another new boy toy to extract the life essence from. She knows I'm on to her, and since cutting her hair in the last episode didn't work, she tried dying it here. But I'm no fool. And what the fuck was that face she made at the camera?

Seriously, who the fuck does this girl think she is? Who keeps letting her on the set? Is she blowing somebody? 

The next couple minutes are Shawn filming a campaign commercial for Cory, and it's really just the opposite of entertaining and involves Eric having terrible lines. I think we've still got a ways to go before Eric gets interesting and it's becoming painful.

Somehow Alvin has rallied like 15 students in the lunchroom to go over his campaign platform. Cory shows up and reciprocates by making the same bull shit campaign promises in every school-election episode of every show since Shakespeare. "Less homework", "shorter school week", "get rid of Feeny", blah blah blah. There's nothing inherently wrong with a school-election story, it's just that Boy Meets World isn't bringing anything new to the table here. The protagonist is compromising his integrity to try to win the election. Yippee. Will he be able to go through with it or will his conscience overpower his pride in the end. I can't even begin to try to guess. At least it's time for Feeny to throw the gauntlet at Turner's feet.

Alvin has some girl dressed like Alice in Wonderland to give a testimony. Allegedly, Shawn once said, as a child, that "all girls are icky". This shouldn't really affect Cory, but it gets the students in frenzy. It's really hard to watch this entire scene. They're constantly trying to make 10 people seem like 100. They're not loud, they're not threatening, and they're not enthusiastic. Yuck. At least Arya Stark is in this scene.

Of course it's not really her, but look at that face. 

The mob chant for Cory to fire Shawn, and he does, because these 10 votes are absolutely critical to his success. Shawn's pissed. Why aren't these kids in class?

Later that night, Alan talks with his son about all the nonsense promises being made in the course of this campaign. Alan tells Cory about running an honest campaign and not screwing over his friends and stuff. It's the exact same shit that every other character in the show has said to Cory, but for some reason it sticks this time and the sad music plays while Cory looks introspective and guilt-ridden. I guess an honest evaluation of the political process would just be too edgy for 1994. 

So now we're at the debate and boy does Alvin piss me off. His voice, his delivery... maybe that's just good acting. Shawn mosies on out of the woodwork to announce that he's running for president too.

Point Feeny.

Shawn and Cory start to argue, but as soon as Alvin slings some mud on Cory, Shawn jumps to his defense. Intimidated by his opponents, Alvin drops out of the race. Shawn and Cory get all unreasonably sentimental and shit and both ultimately drop out of the race too. Topanga walks up on stage from the audience and wins over the crowd. The King is dead, all hail the Queen.

My GOD this episode was bad. The obvious first point is protagonist privilege, an expression I just made up to describe when the entire universe bends its will to focus everyone's attention on the protagonists. Cory said at one point that there are over 400 students in their grade, but the only nominations were him and Alvin? How is that possible? Second is the inconsistency. Why did anyone think Cory could ever be a good school president? He has literally never done any work at school before. There was a scene a couple minutes long where Feeny disciplines some student and Cory's like "hey, I'll get rid of Feeny if I'm elected". Why even bother having that scene? It was never mentioned again. Third is the bull shit ending. A presidential debate in 8th grade? What the fuck could they possibly debate? The way that Shawn and Cory just start feeling sorry for themselves and completely disregard how much of everyone's time they're wasting makes this entire episode completely worthless. 

It was written by Steve Young, who didn't write any other episodes in the series, thank goodness.

0 points for everything except humor which gets 0.5 I guess.

On that note, the site's readership is consistently declining and I'm losing motivation, so I need to take a break for a week. This review was bad and I apologize. These things take at least four hours, and I do have a regular 9 to 5, so putting three of these out every week is draining. As always, I really appreciate all the support, and I love that people are starting to leave comments. Hopefully I'll be back in top form in a week.