Episode 2x19 "Wrong Side of the Tracks"

If you missed the review of 2x18, I'll fill ya in. The gifs pulled from the show are now in much higher quality. If they're going slow, just let them finish the first cycle, and then they should be fine.

Shawn's made a date with a girl named Jill Howwlijjdadger. That's my best attempt at her last name, Cory just sort of mumbles it out. From her outfit, we're supposed to pick up on the idea that she's wealthy, or snobby, or at least comes from upper middle class, and they actually managed to do that one right. And look, she's even got a real backpack, we're making great strides here today.

Her face honestly kinda looks like Shawn's... Lemme just... real quick...

Can't even tell the difference.

Since this is the only hallway in the school, Eric and Jason are also here. They tease Cory and Shawn a little, but all the jokes miss pretty hard. A pretty girl named Valerie in Eric/Jason's age group walks past and Eric jumps at the chance. She's interested in Eric, but she claims to spend all her time at the ice skating rink. Jason chimes in and wingmans the shit outta this, dropping a few bold lies about Eric's ability to skate and sets up a date for them to go skating. You shouldn't be insecure about being bad at skating, Eric, since Valerie is bad at acting. Either way, Jason's not too worried about it.

Turner has assigned the students biography reports, and asks the students who they've chosen to write about. Topanga has chosen Katie Couric, which is pretty cool, and Cory has chosen Captain Kirk, which is pretty dumb. Picard is the obvious choice. Turner doesn't feel like putting up with Cory's shenanigans today, and reminds him that the report can be about anyone, alive or dead, as long as they're real. 

At lunch, Jill breaks off the date with Shawn, and he's pretty broken up about it. Cory asks Jill's friend Mindy, who is also dressed to convey her affluency, while Shawn listens in from the shadows. Mindy explains that Jill's parents would never let her go out with a guy like Shawn since the two are from such different "circles". 

And her face... kinda looks like Cory's... WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS EPISODE.

Shawn gets all mopey like "what was I thinking, a high class girl would never date trailer trash", that kinda thing. It skips ahead to later in the day when Cory and Shawn are at Cory's house working on their biography projects. Recounting their pasts brings up all the differences in lifestyles between the two, with a focus on the nice things that were never available to Shawn. 

At school the next day, Shawn is up to no good. He's apparently flooded the library somehow, causing thousands of dollars of property damage that he almost certainly won't be held accountable for. A perfectly legitimate response to being rejected by a snobby girl, the same way that serial arson is a perfectly legitimate response to coloring outside the lines.

Shawn tells Cory that this is about "being who I am", and goes to ask Harley Keiner if he can join his gang of thugs. I'm not really sure who this actor is, but he doesn't even try to do the Harley-voice and it's honestly kind of embarrassing trying to pretend that this future Hollister model is Harley fucking Keiner.

From now on, if I'm making up the words on a gif or image they'll be red, and yellow if it's the actual dialogue. It may not have been obvious, but all of the text on the gifs from 2x18 was the actual dialogue.

The bell rings and Turner comes into the hallway telling Cory and Shawn to get in the classroom. Cory tries to stop Shawn from going with Keiner, but our working class hero storms off like a god damn 5 year old.

Time for an update on the Ericlogue. Jason has dubbed over his mother's "lose weight while you sleep" tapes, transforming them into "learn to skate in your sleep" tapes. Eric comments that he doesn't want to "skate in my sleep", and Jason has the gall to question Eric's intelligence. I'm preeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure you don't get to talk right now Jason, what with dubbing over fucking weight loss tapes and actually thinking it's going to work. They fire a few more blanks from the joke gun, and we're back to Shawn and Cory. 

It's essentially the same exact scene as the last one. Shawn's running errands for Harley, and Cory tries to snap him out of this bull shit with no success. Shawn spews some whiny garbage about how he and Cory can't be friends anymore since he's poor and has no future, and he storms off again. 

Look at those two gifs and tell me you're not rolling your eyes. God this is frustrating. I'm going to do the full explanation of why this is stupid at the end of the review.

Turner isn't happy and tells Keiner to quit corrupting Shawn. In turn, this lecture makes Keiner unhappy, and he plots revenge against Mr. Turner. 

And nowwwwwwwww we get a dream sequence. Nancy Kerrigan, one of the best ice skaters in the world back in 1994, teaches Eric how to skate while he's sleeping/listening to Jason's dumb tape. That in itself is neat, Nancy Kerrigan is and was a pretty big deal, but this scene is so bad.

 It's three minutes of Eric's stunt double skating far enough away from the camera that we can't see his face. I'm not exaggerating, the faceless stunt double spends more time skating than Nancy Kerrigan. It's a complete waste of time. But who can blame them? This whole episode is pretty shallow. Like I said, they did the exact same scene twice, so they're just throwin as much time away as they can.

Well we're at school the next day, in the teachers' parking lot. Harley's revenge is to have Shawn bust up Turner's motorcycle. 

This picture is rife with symbolism. The bat represents this episode's writers, and the motorcycle represents the script.

Before Shawn actually does any damage, Cory shows up, then Turner arrives, and they give Shawn a good talking to. Honestly, it's the best thing to happen so far in this episode because Anthony Tyler Quinn (Turner)'s you-better-fucking-listen-to-me voice is just spectacular. I love every scene where Turner gets angry. When Turner means business, he commands the entire scene. So that's really good here, even if the whole situation is a little contrived. It also adds some more to Turner's role as a father figure for Shawn, which is important. 

Okay. So. Nitty gritty time. Why is this episode bad?

Well let's see if Shawn can tell us.

The entire season so far

THE ENTIRE SEASONNNNNNNNNNNNNN

has been founded on Cory not knowing who he is, while Shawn serves as the cool headed, "dude it's not a big deal, relax" sort of guy. WHERE DID THAT GO? Out of absolutely nowhere Shawn is a completely different person, just because some nobody girl thinks he's too poor. This side of Shawn has definitely been seen before, back in the Christmas episode of season one, but it was far more subtle. I really liked that episode because we were getting a peek at another side of Shawn. This was not a peek. This was some guy in a trenchcoat flashing you on the subway. This episode could have been amazing if they'd built up to it, you know? Like, if we'd seen some cracks in Shawn's armor throughout the season, slight moments of self doubt that finally get to be too much in this episode. But there was nothing like that. In the first 18 episodes of this season, Shawn hasn't had a single personal problem. It just doesn't work.

And then there's some lame conclusion of the Ericlogue where Jason steals the ice skating girl. It's a little funny but that hardly matters at this point.

Plot: 0.25 - Pity points for what could have been.

Character Development: 1.0 - For Papa Turner. If I were in the habit of giving negative points, Shawn would have brought it down a little.

Humor: 0.25 - Not even Eric and Jason could save this one.

Life Lesson: 0.25 - I'll give you a life lesson. Chill the fuck out, jesus christ.

1.75 out of 4.0. Check out the last scene if you wanna see some awesome Anthony Tyler Quinn action. Not gonna find much else here though.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday.

All images used under Fair Use.