Episode 4x09 "Sixteen Candles and Four-Hundred-Pound Men"

Sixteen Candles was a movie in the 80s with Molly Ringwald. Anthony Michael Hall was in it too, in a minor role, and then a year later they were both starring the Breakfast Club. But that's probably all unrelated to what's going on in this episode.

A miracle has occurred. Frankie Stachino is in Turner's class with Cory and Shawn. I can't begin to explain this, but I should know to stop trying by this point. Cory's reading poetry to the class, and I googled the verse, to no avail. Either way, Turner tries to get Shawn's opinion on the poem but he's slightly too unconscious to provide it.

Turner's actually got a professional haircut now. Looks like he finally broke down. Unsurprisingly, Frankie gives a very emotional and thorough analysis of Cory's poem, explaining that it's about reaching closer and closer to an unattainable love. After class, Cory asks Frankie "why the sad puss oh king of poetry", and he's all, "the poem is just like my life." Then Turner's like "hey Frankie you're awesome at poetry maybe you can teach Cory and Shawn to not be shit". So the boys bargain with The Enforcer, offering to help with his unrequited love problem if he helps them with poetry. What a completely non-contrived and reasonable setup they've thrown together in these first two minutes.

Arite I guess we're at Frankie's trailer now, remember he lives in the same trailer park as Shawn, and after only seconds Frankie's father, known mostly as Vader, the wrestler, comes home from the gym with The Enforcer Jr, Herman. As always, Herman gives his lines in a I-need-my-face-punched way, and we learn hat Vader doesn't like Frankie's poetry interests, and is all around disappointed in him. And in Cory, for encouraging his behavior.

But Cory displays some quick wrestling knowledge so now they're bros. At school we get some more shoehorned plot structuring as Topanama invites Cory to her sweet 16. And then that's the end of the scene. Real clever stuff today. Back at Frankie's trailer, which is blatantly the same set as Shawn's trailer, Frankie is trying to teach poetry crap to our inattentive heroes. Isn't this the second time we've done this story? "Cyrano", in season 2, where the boys help Frankie with some girl he loves, except this time it's his dad. Whatever.

Vader comes home, announcing with gusto that he's got a rematch with "Jake the Snake" for a shot at "the belt". The boys use this opportunity to coach Frankie as he talks to his dad about wrestling. Pretty much exactly like they did in "Cyrano". It... is surprisingly effective...

I think I've said this before, but it's cool how good of an actor Vader is. Then again, pro wrestling has a lot of elements of acting. Either way, he's a ton of fun to watch. Herman is really the weak link in this family.

At school the next day, Frankie requests Cory's ringside coaching at his father's match the next day, since he himself still knows very little about wrestling, while Cory's never missed any of Vader's matches. But wait! Cory's got to go to Topanga's sweet 16 that night. Maybe Shawn can help?

Shawn cannot help. At least, not with this.

Frankie goes emo for like 10 seconds, and then Cory reluctantly agrees to help him.

Topanga arrives on the scene, and Cory tries to get out of going to her party. It doesn't work, and he ultimately promises to be there.

......Really? The "has to be in two places at once" trope? That's what we're doing today? Nah, I uh, I'm not doin that. This isn't the fuckin Flintstones, or the Jetsons, okay, this is Boy Meets World and I am not doing that bull shit.

There's even a TV Tropes article on this. That's how you know we're in the Detroit of storylines here. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoTimerDate
"Hilarity allegedly ensues." Oh TV Tropes, I wish I was as funny as you.

Oh, wow, this is interesting, Shawn brings a tape of that exact Flintstones episode to Cory's, and explains how to use the same strategy as Fred Flintstone. Does this count as meta? A parody sort of loses its edge when it directly acknowledges the thing it's parodying. Shawn's plan is to learn from Fred's mistakes in order to carry out the scheme successfully, so I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's meta or not.

Oh okay, we didn't have to wait very long. Cory observes that time is compressed in a cartoon, and that the timeline can't properly be adapted to real life.

Okay so it's not meta or a parody, it's just self aware. And I don't really think that excuses it. The rest of this better be damn good.

The next scene opens on the beginning of Vader's wrestling match. As such, I just did a little research and there's some interesting stuff if you care. Vader is wearing his actual getup from the WWF (WWE as of 2002). Further, Jake "The Snake" Roberts is also a real wrestler, but the two never fought one-on-one like this as far as I can tell. This episode was filmed in summer-ish of 1996, and earlier in that year there was a 3v3 tag team match with Vader on one side and Jake The Snake on the other. Vader's team won the match when he pinned Jake The Snake, so that's probably what inspired this. I was expecting footage from that fight, but they've actually got the real Jake The Snake in this episode too, so that's pretty cool.

Now, this is an interesting set. I have no idea how they got all these extras, maybe they even came in on a real wrestling event, but there's no "live audience" here. The boys make a few jokes and, by golly, there's no "audience laughter". It's quite wonderful, to be honest, even if the jokes aren't particularly funny.

Anyway, the match begins and our heroes run off to Topanga's party. He arrives, as does the studio audience. The laughter's consistency usually lets the viewers tune it out, but here it's just kinda weird to only have it in half the scenes. It really breaks the immersion. Cory chats with the birthday girl a little bit and then makes a bullshit Flinstones-y escape back to the fight. Zzzzzzzz.

Jake the Snake looks really unsuited for this.

That guy was a pro wrestler for years after filming this. Now go pull up a picture of John Cena. Boy have times changed.

Cory gives Frankie some timely advice to feed to his father, and it helps, so I guess the plan is working so far. Back at the party, it's more cliche awfulness and I hate it. Topanga puts on her special birthday song just as Cory bails again, leaving her to stand alone in the middle of the dance floor looking sad. At the fight, Cory's all out of ideas for Vader, so why the fuck did he go back, and then Frankie tells his father that he'll love him whether he wins or loses. This revitalizes the bald wrestler and he goes and does good wrestling, finishing Jake The Snake with his famed Vader Bomb.

Is this over yet? The boys run back to the party, which by this point is empty except for Topanga. For Hollywood reasons, the wrestling match was on the TV at Topanga's party, so she saw the above picture as it happened. Topanga demands a good reason for this fuckery, and Cory explains that he was trying to help Frankie get closer with his dad. A quick glance at the TV shows Topanga that he was successful, and she... is okay with it... But she still wishes she could have had a special dance with her boyfriend. Shawn reminds them that Frankie owes Cory a favor, even though he doesn't since the deal was for him to teach them poetry, which somehow translates to Cory and Topanga dancing in the wrestling ring.

Plot: 0.25 - Literally on TV tropes. Why did they do it? Why? Also, the part about Cory and Shawn learning poetry from Frankie never turned into anything at all. I think the draft of this script was different, where they just do Frankie a favor (because of what Shawn said about a favor) and then the first half was rewritten with the poetry deal, without changing anything in the second half. But I might be talking out of my ass.

Character Development: 0.5 - Frankie got closer to his dad, which is nice, I guess.

Humor: 0.5 - The first ten minutes was good, and Shawn was consistently funny, but once the two-places-at-once cliches came rolling in I wanted to vomit. "Hilarity allegedly ensues" indeed.

Life Lesson: 0 - Have an extremely forgiving girlfriend so you can get away with dumb shit.

1.25 out of 4.0. - The first real disappointment of the season. I guess if you liked wrestling in 1996 this was probably pretty damn cool, but I don't and didn't, so it's not really doing anything for me. At least we got to see Frankie again, but he's honestly not as good without Joey around. Herman was actually listed in the credits this time, he's played by E.J. De La Pena, who, CRAZILY ENOUGH, hasn't had any real work since this.

No badges. Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.