Episode 3x12 "The Grass is Always Greener"

We open on Topanga and Amy Matthews watching a chick flick together on the living room couch, and they're on the verge of tears. Cory's asleep on the edge of the couch though. I'm genuinely curious, have any of you been in a situation like this before? I kept my high school girlfriends as far away from my parents as possible, but I guess this is no ordinary couple we're talking about. One way or the other, Eric comes to spirit his little brother away to watch the Superbowl with him and their father.

Eric sets him down in the kitchen, and unleashes some animosity toward the trends of Cory's relationship with Topanga. Apparently they've been doing old-married-couple stuff like this frequently.

We're in dire straits tonight, folks.

At school, Cory tells Shawn the story of his old-married-couple weekend. He mentions that just he and Topanga "went to the mall" on Sunday, and the audience fuckin "wooooOOOOOOOO"s louder than I have ever heard in my life, and I just do not possess the cognitive ability to figure out why. The mall? How is the mall a sexy place? I am at a total loss here. Both of our heroes admit that Cory is in a bit of a slump.

That is a well written joke. Simple in concept, clever in execution. What's also interesting is who's giving the punchline. We've seen a lot of jokes this season coming from Cory, directed at Shawn. Shawn's lack of intelligence has been brought center stage recently, so it's refreshing to have it going the other direction. What's more, didn't Cory become "the most dangerous guy I know" to Shawn back in season 2's "Danger Boy"? Is that the old dangerous Cory?  How many times is Cory gonna go through these transformations?

Anyway, Shawn invites Cory out to a party with students from some other high school that night, but first Cory is going to have to cancel his plans with Toplamingo.  Ah, what a stroke of fortune, Topanga cancels the plans first, saying she's having a girls' night out, and then departs after a quick cheek kiss. The audience loses their shit again. Seriously this must be the most sheltered group of homeschooled Amish kids they could find, they'll go crazy over anything remotely intimate.

That is a real show. If you didn't know that, I apologize for destroying your faith in humanity.

It's Eric's turn now. First Turner reminds him that his essay on Of Mice And Men is late, Eli reminds him his journalism project is late, Feeny gives him an F on his Joan of Arc report, and (wow really?) that chemistry teacher from earlier in the season is here too, telling Eric to just blow something up at home and bring it in. WHAT ABOUT HIS MATH TEACHER? DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT MATH AT THIS SCHOOL? Seriously though, all four of them just show up. Seconds after each other. I think we all would have been happier with four different direct cuts to different places, but we got this instead.

At Turner's apartment, Cory is having self-image issues, so he borrows a leather jacket from his best bud to be a little less himself at the party. Then we jump back to John Adams High, still at night, and Eric is wandering near Turner's classroom. We overhear the same four teachers pictured above playing poker, looks like 5 card draw, and Eli tells Turner that he "cannot check-raise", to which Feeny agrees. I put up with a lot in these reviews, but YOU CAN'T FUCKING FORBID CHECK-RAISING. I am disgusted.

Eric wants to play cards with them, and offers to go home and study as soon as he loses. I'm assuming he means until he loses all his chips, which, in general, can take a pretty long time. But the teachers agree regardless.

I.... don't really know why Eric was at the school in the first place. If that isn't addressed at some point...
*EDIT* I didn't bother talking about an earlier scene where Eric wants to study, but his mother points out that he doesn't have his textbook. So he is in fact back at school to retrieve his textbook from his locker. Thank you Anon for pointing that out. That scene wasn't funny so I just completely forgot about it.*END EDIT*

We're at that other school's party or dance or whatever, and a miscommunication at the door leads to everyone thinking that Cory is the legendary Shawn Hunter.

Being Shawn Hunter has its perks.

Now, see, this is interesting. It's almost meta. We spent the entire second season watching Cory try to pick up traits from Shawn. Shawn has quality X, Cory wants it, and by the end Cory either has it or decides he doesn't want it. But now, now he has actually BECOME Shawn. He is now all of those things, and we're going to see what he can do with it all.

Back at the poker game, Eric's full house beats Feeny's set of Aces. Poker is just one of those things that gets hideously embellished in Hollywood. It's like hacking, or medical dramas. Five Card Draw is a terrible game. Anyway, the teachers are still set on getting Eric to lose, but he's been doing very well so far. There isn't really a development here, it's just like "yeah, this game is still going on."

At the dance, real Shawn informs Cory-Shawn that some allegedly hot French girl is at this dance, so Cory-Shawn goes to find her.

Poker time again. Eric wins the hand with Jack high. Alright I take it back. That's actually not embellished at all. Good for them. The teachers are convinced Eric is cheating somehow. Because... Jack high reeks of cheating..?

Hey, a Rain Man reference. There were 246 toothpicks in that Rain Man scene though.

So Eric has savant powers, apparently. The chemistry teacher ends up quitting his job and invites Eric out to Atlantic City to count cards. You can't really count cards in poker, that's a blackjack thing, but at least they tried. They've still got my approval from that Jack high hand.

At the dance, the French girl is finally located. Cory bastardizes the French language and Shawn completely forgets that he previously laid claim to the one-per-series savant allocation, which allowed him to speak perfect French. That seems like something you would remember, but neither of them mentions it.

Wuh oh. The French girl is Topanga. Which would probably be pronounced in French as Teh-PUHN-gehhhhhh~~~

Apparently her group of friends thought it would be fun to come to another school's dance and pretend to be other people. Cory's unhappy, but another girl comes up and calls him Shawn, so both members of our happy couple are revealed to be in disguise.

Thus the two move their conversation outside and they both comment that they haven't actually had any fun together in a long time.

Solid advice! And then they break up. Enjoy this moment, this is the most rational interaction between these two for the rest of the series. They walk off in different directions, apparently leaving their friends at this dance to fend for themselves.

During the credits, some sad music plays while they look at each other in Turner's class and have, like, flashbacks to earlier seasons when they did stuff together. At first I was like "Oh this is camp! It's a parody, that's funny and self aware!" But the audience never starts laughing. It's actually serious. We're actually supposed to feel sad because of this montage of flashbacks. Yikes.

Plot: 0.75 - It was cool seeing Cory fully adopt Shawn's persona since he's been doing it in little parts for a while now, and I was actually pretty surprised that Topanga turned out to be the "French girl". But Eric's poker story was pretty bad. And nothing ever even came out of it. No lessons, no wisdom, he just won at poker until everyone else quit. What a massive waste of time.

Character Development: 0.25 - Cory and Topanga work through some identity issues, and Eric is a savant...?

Humor: 0.25 - Again, the poker story failed to deliver. Shawn had the most consistent laughs, but he's had better.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - That gif of Topanga up there. That's good stuff for adolescents. Real good stuff. And for adults.

2.25 out of 4.0. Enjoyable, but largely forgettable, save for the breakup scene. You should watch this one just for the credits, maybe someone out there can tell me what the fuck the writers were thinking.

Thanks for reading! That marks the halfway point, so I'm going to take my mid-season break next week, and then come back and power through through the rest of the season starting on April 7th. See you then!

All images used under fair use.