Episode 4x17 "A Long Walk to Pittsburgh Part 2"

Some kinda James Earl Jones soundin guy introduces a recap of 4x16 at the beginning of the episode. It's pretty cool, honestly. The most interesting thing is that there's no TOTALLY REAL AUDIENCE LAUGHTER in the parts of the recap where someone says a joke. How can that be?

This one kicks off right away as we see Shawn Hunter vigorously making out with a girl on the couch in Cory's living room. Next to their hormone-saturated bodies is a very disappointed looking girl, while Cory sits nervously in a nearby armchair.

These girls have recently come to America from England, and you can almost see her accent in that gif. Even so, I have never heard the term "rushy boy" in my life, and I watch a lot of BBC. Shawn's girl is named Becky, and the other one is Rosie, and according to IMDB they are sisters, which I guess I should have figured out on my own. The actresses have both done almost nothing else in Hollywood, but Rosie was also in 1x04 and 2x15 of Boy Meets World, as different characters all three times of course, but I don't really remember her.

Anyway Shawn doesn't want to spoil the mood, so he drags Cory over to the couch next to Rosie, but Cory wants to talk about Topanga.

Well that's the first four minutes of the episode. There was a lot of giggling from Becky and Rosie, but not much else.

Cory explains to Rosie that he's been dating Topanga "for sixteen years" and that he "always thought [they] would spend the rest of [their] lives together", which is the most common complaint from fans of this show. He most certainly did not always think that, but the show's been shoving it down our throats for a few episodes now, so there's no use fighting the retcon.

The story makes both Cory and Rosie start crying while Becky and Shawn continue with their fun. The next scene fades in on Cory sitting against a wall in what used to be Topanga's bedroom, so I guess he just broke into the building. Eric shows up at the room's window to retrieve Cory for dinner. That was pretty fuckin weird.

Eric tries to cheer his brother up with a fake story about a girl named Francheska. Alan offers to drive Cory to Pittsburgh that weekend since he sort of needs to go anyway, but Amy is in a very different camp from the rest of them. She thinks Cory and Topanga should just have a clean split and move on, otherwise Cory will never stop feeling so shitty. Cory and his mother are clearly not on good terms right now, and I gotta say I'm siding with her. She's being completely reasonable. But that doesn't matter because we're throwing reason out the fucking window.

Welly, welly, well. This is the moment where you either go "awww" like the audience or "what?" like me. This is a point of no return, of sorts. We're no longer in the realm of harsh realities where this show has been before. We're in fairy tale land now, where "true love" makes nonsense happen. And the thing is, we're supposed to be okay with this. This is exactly why they've been hammering "we would have been together forever" and "we've been together our whole lives", this is exactly why they rewrote history. If we believe that they actually would be together forever, then we would be relieved when Topanga shows up here. If this were the first episode of BMW that I saw, this scene wouldn't be a problem. It's television. But after everything we've seen leading up to this, we know that the writers are way too clever to think this makes sense. They can't honestly expect us to take anything meaningful from this; it's nothing more than feel-good television. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you can get that anywhere. Watch Full House for that shit. That's not what I want from Boy Meets World.

If it wasn't already obvious, Topanga's parents don't know that she's here. When Alan points out that her parents are going to be worried about her, she says "Why would they be worried now? They weren't worried about me when they decided to move." Are you serious right now? She told us last episode that they moved because of her mom's job. It's shitty, but it's not her parents' fault. Amy wants to call Topanga's parents, but Cory's like "No they don't understand us, just like you don't understand us." Holy shitty shit, this is outrageous. Are we really supposed to be sympathetic toward Cory and Topanga right now?

Thank you Alan.

Amy goes ahead and calls Topanga's parents while Cory embraces her and promises that he won't let anyone take her away. Later, in the living room, Cory and Topanga talk about what they've been doing without each other. Shawn shows up, applauds Topanga's strategy of running-away, which really ought to set off a few alarms in her mind, and then he bails. Okay. Alan and Amy join the scene and once again Amy and Cory start to argue.

At least we have Eric's silliness to counteract the way-way-way-too-serious-ness from everyone else.

So Amy doesn't think that Cory really knows what love is, and says that after twenty two years of marriage with Alan, she's only beginning to understand what love really is. Cory counters by saying that, indeed, he hasn't been with Topanga for twenty two years, but he has been with her for sixteen. JEEEEEEEEEEESUS Christ I'm sick of this. Cory goes on to give a whole speech detailing how their relationship has grown over sixteen years, how he knew her favorite color and her favorite food when they were 2 years old, as if that's actually worth something. He is actually seriously comparing growing up with Topanga to his mother's twenty two years of marriage. It's absurd.

That's actually a good conclusion to his speech, and in general I agree with that statement. But the problem is that I don't think it applies to Corpanga. When has Cory ever been a better person because of Topanga? Most of the time that Cory has character development, it's because of Shawn. If Shawn were moving to Pittsburgh and then ran away back to Philly, my heart would be BREAKING. But we just don't have the history with Topanga to buy what they're selling. I mean, this is the same guy who valued Topanga's sweet sixteen party the same as a goddamn wrestling match a few episodes ago. It's not the material itself that I take issue with, I can roll with the whole "soulmates" thing, but it's just not supported by everything else in the show.

Amy doesn't really know what to say now, but that's okay since someone knocks on the door. Apparently Topanga's parents have called her Aunt Prudence to come pick her up, so I guess her aunt lives in Philadelphia. Cory comments that maybe Aunt Prudence will realize "that we're Romeo and Juliet, that we belong together". CORY ARE YOU SERIOUS? We blatantly got rid of the whole Romeo and Juliet thing with Mr. Feeny in Part 1. Ugh. Either way, Topanga comments that her aunt hates the idea of true love and wouldn't even know who Romeo and Juliet were. The audience cheers at the sight of Aunt Prudence, so I have to look her up. Ah okay, it's Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Very cute, Boy Meets World executive staff, very cute.

By now, apparently both Amy and Alan have been convinced that Cory and Topanga actually love each other, because a one-minute monologue from Cory was more effective evidence than the entire sixteen years leading up to it.

Amy makes the case that Topanga's parents are being irresponsible by taking Topanga out of her home when she only has one year of high school left. EVEN THOUGH it's well established that her parents didn't just flippantly decide to move, they didn't really have a choice. Regardless, Aunt Prudence isn't exactly fond of her sister and brother in law, and is thus unexpectedly open to the idea that they are irresponsible. Prudence asks the kids to let the adults speak privately, so they go outside, where they of course get to talk to Mr. Feeny. He explains that love is really great and all that. Apparently Mr. Feeny believes that these two truly love each other, so I guess it doesn't matter what I think. I guess we just have to accept that history is not as we have seen it on the show, it is as they now claim it to be. I don't want to, but that's the only choice here.

The adults join us outside, and Prudence is like "Hey old man, don't give these kids any crazy ideas" and he's like "Hey fuck off, I'm Mister goddamn Feeny". Prudence is basically taking the stance Amy had earlier, while Mr. Feeny defends the romance of his students. It's quite the showdown. Neither gives any ground, and ultimately Prudence says that Feeny is "as verbose as you are snappy", which makes the audience go "oooooooo" like it's an actual insult or something.

They're totally gonna have hate-sex later.

So even though Prudence still doesn't condone "the intensity or exclusivity of this relationship", she also doesn't approve of taking Topanga away from the home she's had her whole life. So Prudence offers to let Topanga live with her until she graduates high school. And then the audience applauds like they didn't know it was coming. The credits play over a completely black screen with a pretty rockin acoustic version of the theme song.

Plot: 0.75 - In retrospect, I liked part 1. It was actually compelling to think that Topanga was leaving. There really wasn't a whole lot of story in part 2 though. She just came back, somehow. What it did have though was content. Lots of exposition, lots of discussion, so that's worth something. And the part at the beginning with the English girls was fun.

Character Development: 1.0 - Loathe as I am to accept it, Topanga and Cory are officially in True Love ©. From here on out, that is the perspective from which we will operate.

Humor: 0.5 - Really focused on seriousness and emotion, but Shawn and Eric were pretty funny when they were around.

Life Lesson: 0 - Let's talk about this. What are we supposed to take away? That you should travel 300 miles when you're sixteen to be with your boyfriend? Or that if you love each other as much as Cory and Topanga do, then it's okay to travel 300 miles? Well everyone in high school thinks they love each other that much. There is nothing in this episode that can be applied to real life, except what Feeny says about cherishing genuine love. But again, every teenager thinks that they have genuine love when almost none of them actually do. Everyone feels the way that Cory described in this episode, so there's really nothing special to take away from this except "Love is good", but we all knew that already.

2.25 out of 4.0. The two biggest reasons people love this show is for its unique, clever sense of humor, and the powerful life lessons. I didn't get much of either of those things out of these two episodes. There's definitely a good number of fans who love the Corpanga romance, but I heavily prefer the bromance with Shawn, or the brotherhood with Eric, or the mentorships of Alan and Feeny and Turner. Or hell, even the one-off romances. Wendy? Remember Wendy? Fuckin blew my MIND that episode with Wendy, way more than this episode, for sure. If you love Corpanga then you'll love A Long Walk to Pittsburgh, but if not, you won't.

Thanks for reading. I'm sure some people will be upset by my take on this one, and I'm sorry for being such a curmudgeon. I'm going on vacation for a week, starting this Wednesday, so the next review will be posted July 2nd. See you then!

All images used under Fair Use.