Episode 4x05 "Shallow Boy"

So there's a girl playing cutesy lovey music outside Alan's store for tips. It's pissing everybody off. In fact, Alan would prefer the old sweaty smelly guy who spits on people. He sends Eric out to deal with her, but she flashes him a big old smile and ends up giving her his money.

Good old Eric. Alan has a stroke of genius as he suggests that Eric take her on a date, and then ask her to stop singing at their store while on the date.

In Mr. Feeny's class, they're talking about politics for some reason. Shawn and Cory fail to spark any interesting conversation, but Topanga posits that the most pressing issue of the time is the decline of the American family. Shawn takes this a little personally since his family situation is in the crapper. It's a fairly lackluster scene that's probably just setting some groundwork for future conflict. Topanga is wearing a shirt that's tied up in front for the third time in two episodes. In 4x04, she had one at the beginning, and then a different one at the damn funeral scene, and now this.

So I think it's fair to say that nobody in the production crew cares about Hair Today Goon Tomorrow. Again, this is not a comment on how women dress, just on consistency. She was supposed to be above superficiality, but now she clearly cares very much about her appearance.


In the hallway, Cory and his best bud make plans for a guys' night since Topanga's busy. But wait, she's actually babysitting, which Shawn points out is a great opportunity for some unsupervised late night intimacy. What it really means is that we're almost certainly going to have to endure a painful child actor giving Cory and Topanga a hard time.

Now we're at Chubbie's for Eric's date with the singing girl, whose name is Corinna.

She's played by Leisha Hailey, who has worked sporadically since Boy Meets World, including 70 episodes of some piece of crap called The L Word, and a smattering of voice acting on American Dad.

She can't stop singing during this date. She sings her answers to Eric's questions, sings about whatever she sees and whatever she's feeling, it's a nightmare and everyone at Chubbie's is appropriately annoyed. It's kinda like an episode of The Office, ya know? It's funny, but you're constantly trying to look away.

Cory arrives at the place where Topie is babysitting and promptly receives a Wet Willy from the kid who's supposed to be asleep. The red flags are raising, but it actually takes a fun turn. The kid, Billy, asks Cory if he wants to play his N64, which Billy calls his "Nintendo 64-bit". I mean, that's where the name comes from, but nobody in the history of space and time has ever said that, so I dunno. Anyway it's fun, because Cory is really excited to play video games, and really wants to do all the childish things that Billy wants to do, while Topanga insists that he go back to bed.

Naturally, this kid is terrible at saying his lines, his emphasis is all over the place, and his hair looks absolutely fucking stupid. How could someone let their kid go on cable TV looking like that? Whatever.

Cory continues to undermine his girlfriend's authority and she gets pretty angry. The scene ends with the two boys running off to watch TV against Topanga's orders.

Back at Chubbie's, Eric is dying. Corinna keeps going on about innocuous nonsense, clearly unable to pick up on social cues.

She starts singing another new song, and customers start running away. This scene is some of Eric's finest work. You can see him boiling up as he tries to sneakily ask for a waiter to bring the check, several times. Corinna says she's excited to spend the rest of her life with Eric, and then the cap comes off. Every single line coming out of Eric is hysterical, and the delivery is perfect. If you have two and a half minutes, I cannot recommend this scene enough. I will laugh at this scene until the end of time. You can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCDdKR_NmK8

It's about a thousand times better with sound.

Corinna gets angry and starts playing some minor chords and singing an edgy song about how Eric's a dick. It's called Shallow Boy, which holy shit, is the name of the episode. And this time, the people at Chubbie's are enjoying her music.

 At school, Cory requests the company of his girlfriend at the cafeteria for Taco Bar Tuesday. But she's off her rocker about somethin or other, starting with "YOU WOULD FEED TACOS TO OUR CHILD?" Apparently she's worried about the well being of their potential post-marriage child, but Cory is as confused as I am. Oh okay, "You'd rather be pals with our kids than a strong responsible role model," inspired by his behavior with Billy the previous night.

Well this is just ridiculous. Cory shouldn't have undermined her authority, but she is blowing this way out of proportion. I mean this is the exact reason why you're not supposed to have kids at 15, because you're still immature and shit. Give him 10 or 20 years Topanga, jesus christ, then worry about his ability to be a father.

Later, we're at the Camping Store. I need to come up with a consistent term for this place. Eric's listening to "Sounds of the Sleeping Sled Dogs" over the store's loudspeaker, and it sounds really damn weird. I can't justify it at all. Watch this scene, it sounds so weird. Shawn and Cory have arrived with Corinna's new CD for Eric to listen to. The first track is Shallow Boy, the one she was singing at Chubbie's, but that doesn't prove anything! This album could be about anybody.

Oh. It's even being played on the radio. What a pickle.

At home, Cory's reading a book about how to be a dad, and Eric comes home with the new title of "maladjusted woman hating loser freak." Yes, Corinna's got a new song on the airwaves, and Morgan comes downstairs singing along with that new tune on her pocket radio or walkman or somethin, Iunno. The last part we hear Morgan sing goes "I think he likes boys, if you know what I'm saaaayiiiiin."

There's not much to say about all this except that Eric is hilarious and Topanga is losing her mind. Alan comes home with a note from Corinna, she visited him at his store, requesting to meet Eric at, you guessed it, Chubbie's. Corinna arrives in a Steve Jobs turtleneck, and is basically trying to milk anger out of Eric so that she can write more songs. In a moment of convenient plot driven intelligence, Eric sees what's going on and starts to sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow to get Corinna back to her old self. In the end, she can't resist, and it looks like Eric's in the clear.

Again, not much to say, it's just funny. At home, Cory sends Morgan to bed on time, and Topanga is watching off to the side for some reason. Morgan's wearing her totally awesome cow slippers again, and she actually said her lines like a legitimate actor today, so everything except the convenience is decent. Topanga explains to Cory that by the time he is old enough to have a kid, she suspects he'll be a pretty good dad. What the fuck changed from when she was losing her shit earlier? Just implied off-screen insight? That's slightly unsatisfying. I guess we'll finally get to find out how good of a father Cory is later this year. This is actually the most pertinent background episode for Girl Meets World, which is interesting. We'll see if any of this stuff comes up again.

During the credits, the radio plays Corinna's latest single called "Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuv", and it's shit. I mean, all of her songs were shit, but now the radio guy thinks so too.

Plot: 1.0 - I love the Corinna story. It's unique, creative, and not entirely predictable. It might seem like it's going to end up like the Wendy story, where Cory ends up missing her, but indeed we have a completely fresh story here.

Character Development: 0.25 - Eric doesn't really change at all, and Cory, I don't know, he's planning on being more responsible or something?

Humor: 2.0 - I'm giving bonus points to humor to boos the score since Development and Life Lesson are lacking, and this episode deserves a good score.

Life Lesson: 0.25 - Some people are just crazy.

3.5 out of 4.0. This episode is thoroughly laugh-out-loud funny. Eric is amazing. What's interesting is that the main character for the first five episodes has been, in order, Eric - Topanga - Alan - Shawn - Eric. No Cory-centric stuff yet, and they've all been really strong episodes. Very interesting.

Double Humor Badge.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday!

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