Episode 4x08 "Dangerous Secret"

If you want to see someone try to do what I do, but fail at it, check this out. http://community.ew.com/2014/05/28/boy-meets-world-recap-minkus-arrives/

That guy gets PAID to write that. Sigh.

Also I tweeted my review of 4x07 to Chris Hardwick. He did not respond. If you haven't read that one, I recommend it. It's a thousand times more fun than this one.

Cory shows up at Shawn's trailer/tardis late at night with paper bags full of various provisions. Cory believes Shawn to be sick and wants to help take care of his best buddy. He even brought flowers. What a lamb. Cory wants to go plug in the humidifier he brought when A LIGHTNING BOLT OF TROUBLE STRIKES.

Ahhhhhh shit, it's one of the ones where they try to be serious.

Cory tries to make his escape, but Shawn follows him outside. Naturally, Cory assumes that Shawn and Claire are doing a little more than holding hands, and Shawn tells Cory to trust him on this one. Claire joins the boys outside and asks Cory not to tell anyone. So this all looks pretty racy to the audience here. Shawn is 15 or 16 right now, and given his history it's pretty believable, while still a little shocking, that he'd be sleeping with this girl.

At Chubbie's the next day, Cory's got his mind set on the whole Claire situation, and once again our hero feels like he needs to catch up to his best friend. Saying that he genuinely feels ready to go further than kissing with Topanga, Cory asks Shawn how to... get there.

Later that night, it's date night for Cory and Tobongos. He lures her up to his bedroom and makes the most awkward sexual advance in the history of Philadelphia. It's two minutes of accidentally playing Barney CDs and stuff. It's sort of unfunny and hard to watch. Eventually he gets the right music on. They start to make out and Cory shoves his hand up the back of his girlfriend's shirt. If Shawn's advice was to unhook her bra while her shirt was still on, I am seriously disappointed, but I guess there's not much else they could have done on ABC.

Topanga's a little weirded out by the moves being laid down and the whole thing blows up as Cory admits that Shawn had a girl stay over and that he and Topanga should be at least as intimate and Shawn and some random girl. "We should be at like ninth base by now", he claims.

So the brakes are thrown on and the night is ruined. I'm not entirely sure what to say about this. It stops being awkward once Cory makes his move, and is well written after that. Topanga doesn't freak out or anything, she's just like "you're clearly doing this for the wrong reasons," ya know? So it's a good scene for that reason, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure we're all adults here and I don't need to spend too much time discussing adolescent wisdom about sex.

 At school the next day, Mr. Feeny smells the smoke between Cory and Topanga and suggests that Cory keep the lines of communication open, regardless of hurt feelings. That's probably the most meaningful thing we're going to get out of this episode, that really is good advice. Alas, it doesn't help Cory as Topanga doesn't "know what to say" to him.

Cory blames everything on Shawn and tells him what happened the night before. Shawn's main takeaway point is that Cory told Topanga about Claire, even though he promised not to. They really should have paid more attention to the writing on this. Cory didn't actually mention Claire by name to Topanga, he just said "a girl", so there's really no problem here.

Later that night, Cory's lurking around at home, so his parents know something is off. They inquire, and our hero tries to distract them by initiating a group singing of Michael Row The Boat Ashore. A lot of shows try to do random-funny, and most fail, but this is random-funny done properly.

So now it's time for THE MATTHEWS BRUTHAS to talk sex in their room. Eric sticks to his classic insult-advice, but he's pretty much right on the money: "these things have gotta happen naturally", "sex is like a bike without training wheels, if you try it before you're ready you're gonna fall off and break your head". It's not the typical preachy stuff that circulated the "family friendly" tv environment of the 90s, and reminds us of this show's previous mature approach to sex in "Wake Up Little Cory" from season 2. Great stuff for the target audience.

Shawn arrives through the window as Eric heads back downstairs.

Turns out, Shawnie's parents are back in town, so he wants to have Claire stay with Cory now. But whyyyyyyy what's the big secrettttttttt. Cory insists that he can be trusted, even though he demonstrated earlier that he cannot, and Shawn relents. Apparently Claire's father, a vice president of a bank, occasionally beats the crap out of his daughter. There's no mention of alcohol but it's sort of implied. And they can't go to the cops since their word ain't gonna mean shit against the VP of a bank. Damn, the 1%'s ability to avoid prosecution, that's some harsh reality that, as far as teenagers go, only the punk rock kids are gonna catch. Even without that, it's an unusually heavy subject matter. In the end, Cory agrees to call Shawn once his parents are asleep.

Claire arrives later that night and comments that the house reminds her of her aunt's place in Vermont. As Cory takes her coat, he sees some bruising on her arm.

Claire is played by Ariana Richards, who was actually Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park, which is pretty cool. JEFF GOLDBLUM and all that. She hasn't seen a whole lot of work since then though.

Anyway, Cory goes to get her a glass of milk, and returns to the living room to find her already asleep on the couch. It's almost an exact reproduction of when Shawn fell asleep at Turner's place right as Turner looked away for a second, back in 2x22.

I am so good at making gifs. Regardless, it's kind of an interesting parallel. Shawn was physically abandoned by his parents, while Claire's been sort of emotionally abandoned by hers. 

At school the next day, Cory insists to Shawn that they go to the police, but Claire overhears and explains that she'll just lie to the cops. She claims that her father just has a lot of stress from work and that she gets in his way. It's actually classic self-blaming, a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, and the reason why people all-too-often stay in abusive relationships. I'm impressed, Boy Meets World. That's real as fuck. Ultimately, Cory agrees to let her stay at his place another night. 

As always, there's a bunch of posters unrelated to English class on the corkboard of the English classroom in the background there.

Later that night, Cory shows up at Shawn's trailer with a very black-eyed Claire. I'd make the obvious joke, but it's probably in bad taste. Heh, bad taste. I guess I made a different joke on accident. Whatever.

Claire breaks down in the trailer and the sad music plays. I guess the boys decide to have Claire stay at Shawn's, since they go back to Cory's to retrieve the pillow and blanket she used earlier. But Cory's parents are lying in wait! They found one of Claire's textbooks that she left there the other night, and the boys spill the beans. Oh okay, they've bought Claire a bus ticket to Vermont to stay with her aunt, which is why the writers had her talk about it earlier (and why I mentioned it). It's a Happily Ever After ending, and it's honestly how I expected it to end, but I underestimated this show. It doesn't end there. Alan points out that there's nothing to stop Claire's father from just going to Vermont to get her back, that their solution is actually kinda shitty. Finally, Shawn accepts that the only way to stop this guy is to go to the police. 

During the credits, we learn from Cory and Boomeranga that Claire has in fact gone to Vermont and her father is in a therapy program. That is an incredibly progressive resolution, instead of "he'll be locked up for a long time". Fascinating. Cory and Topanga kiss and she suggests they "take a lead off of first". Scandalous.

When this aired on TV, there was one of those cheesy PSAs at the very end with a hotline for domestic abuse, but it is evidently not on the DVDs.

Plot: 1.0 - There's the very real question of why Claire even went to Shawn in the first place. He blatantly said that they aren't even dating, so there's really no reason for it. But if we accept that premise, it's a reasonable exploration of how these types of things play out, and the self-blaming was an excellent touch.

Character Development: 0.5 - Cory's goin to boob town.

Humor: 0.5 - There were some really funny lines, but overall it's kinda bogged down by the gravity of the main story.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - For 1996, this is decent stuff. And we're not talkin about Skins here folks, this is a fuckin ABC sitcom. All the stuff about sex is much more mature than we might have expected, especially from Eric, and then there's the whole "don't abuse your kids" thing.

3.0 out of 4.0. I definitely prefer the first seven episodes of this season. A good tagline for BMW is "lighthearted and funny, yet profound" but this episode's seriousness really breaks the rhythm we had established. Every series has to have a couple of these though, so for what they were trying to do it's pretty good.

Thanks for reading, see you Monday. 

All images used under Fair Use.