Episode 4x19 "Quiz Show"

I just noticed, at the beginning of the theme song, what is this scene in the sky supposed to be? Shawn is playing a guitar and they're all singing and grooving. It's definitely not from the one where Cory and Shawn pretend to be in a band, so I have no idea what it's supposed to be.

A businesswoman is taking a very rude tone with Mr. Feeny on the set of a TV quiz show. The show features two teams of three, but only Topanga is here to represent John Adams High since "the bus broke down". Feeny must have driven himself here, and Cory+Shawn drove Topanga. So I guess they needed a bus for the other two people. Coulda just carpooled, Feeny, maybe give a shit about the environment? Anyway the John Adams team are going to have to forfeit unless they can find two replacements.

Feeny would rather forfeit than face this embarrassment, but the show must go on. It jumps ahead to the end of the match, and it's 20 to 0 in favor of the other team. Topanga answers the next question correctly though. So even if the other two guys had been here, it doesn't seem like our girl would have contributed very much. Either way, Cory and Shawn are being very theatrical and enthusiastic about their team's single point, and the game in general, which elicits a response from the crowd not normally seen on this boring ass quiz show. Hm, that's going to be confusing. If I use the word "show" in this post, I mean the quiz show, and "episode" will refer to Boy Meets World. Same with "crowd" and "audience", respectively.

Some guy with "Oahu Beach Face Saver Pads" comes out of absolutely nowhere and tells the businesswoman/set manager that he would spend a lot of money for advertising space if she can keep the show as interesting as it's been with Shawn and Cory. Fueled by greed, she gives the show's host a new set of questions targeted toward Shawn and Cory.

Shawn and Cory give a detailed and thorough tag-team answer, which probably isn't allowed but whatever. The crowd goes crazy again, and even Topanga starts to ham it up a bit. A quick scene at home has Cory informing his parents that he's the new champion of High School Quiz, and then we're back at the next taping of the show, which has been renamed "Knowledge Fever". The rest of the Matthews family are in the crowd and Amy asks her husband how their dumb ass son could possibly be on this elite show. Alan doesn't know, but maybe Feeny does.

Definitely one of my favorite lines in the series.

The show is completely overrun with advertisements for Oahu Beach Face Savers (they make acne treatments). Shawn answers the first question about Pamela Anderson on Baywatch as soon as he hears that the question is about Baywatch, the guy doesn't even have a chance to ask the question. It's pretty funny, but I'm once again forced to ask why Boy Meets World is so intimately related to Baywatch. The show has to take a break for a "word from our sponsor, because that's the way the world works" after the very first question, so we're definitely seeing some themes about "the money people" corrupting a tv show's artistic integrity. Do you want to make High School Quiz Show or Knowledge Fever? Firefly or Jersey Shore? There's no objectively right answer, but it sounds like Michael Jacobs is a fan of artistic integrity.

The "word from our sponsor" is some dancers with signs for Oahu Beach and some weird rap about acne. It's annoying, but I guess that's the point. After that shit, Shawn and Cory tag-team another question about some cartoons of the 90s, raising their score from 1 million to 3 million points. The host announces that this wins them the game, even though it's only been two questions. They could have easily given us a fadeout/in to make it look like time had passed, but they didn't even try.

I guess John Adams is going to play against another school after a commercial break. The set manager comes over and asks the our three heroes to make things more interesting for the folks at home. She wants Cory to scrunch up his brow and look unsure, Shawn to put on his "thoughtful pouty sexy lips", and Topanga to flirt with the camera. Topanga doesn't like the idea and preferred the show how it used to be, but immediately falls under the spell of conveniently timed cheers for her from the crowd.

We're at the ten minute mark now and I am wholly uninterested. I'm totally down with the theme about creative integrity, but this has been so poorly put together. Every single scene at the quiz show is just fuckin sloppy, it's like they had a 10 dollar budget and 30 minutes to film the whole thing. It's funny, but not any funnier than other episodes that are actually interesting.

In class, Feeny is teaching about Gutenberg's printing press, which was certainly a revolutionary invention. But nobody gives a shit. Cory and Shawn are signing autographs for girls in the class. Shawn tells Feeny that it doesn't matter if Gutenberg invented the printing press, since pop culture knowledge and good looks are responsible for his newfound fame and success.

Well, Cory does have some practice at being a clown, from back in season 1 episode 6.

So now a sort of debate begins. Cory and Shawn argue that they're absorbing the right types of knowledge since they're the reigning champions of Knowledge Fever, but Feeny says they're merely the champions of a generation whose "verbal and mathematical skills have sunk so low when you have the highest level of technology at your fingertips". I looked up average SAT scores over the years (this episode aired in '96), and the average Verbal score definitely went straight down the toilet from the 70s to 1996, but Math scores stayed about the same.

He goes on to say that Gutenberg's generation thirsted for a new book every sixth months, while modern times get a new web page every six seconds, and that they use this amazing age of technology "to beat King Koopa". To ice it all off, he glares at the entire class and spits a rock hard "Shame on you, you deserve what you get", and then walks out on his students. You can watch the full clip here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIRuytyuzoY

I completely agree with the notion that people care way too much about pop culture stuff, but the part about technology is ridiculous. Mr. Feeny himself does gardening, paints, goes fishing, meets with some woman in Boston... Why does he do those things instead of reading literature and textbooks? Not every moment has to be some profound ascension of knowledge. No one spends every moment learning. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "beating King Koopa". There is no inherent superiority to, say, gardening, over video games or snapchatting or words with friends or whatever. Maybe I'm focusing on it too hard, but it just doesn't resonate with me at all and I think he seriously overreacted.

Now we're back at the quiz show, which is now named "Huh! That's Cool". John Adams are playing against Einstein Academy, the same school they faced on Knowledge Fever, but with different students and different school uniforms (re: sloppy). The old host has been replaced with a woman named Kiki. She introduces Einstein Academy and the crowd boos, and then she introduces John Adams High with new nicknames.

Kiki asks John Adams where the moon is located, and they just point at the ceiling. That's the correct answer and it earns them "800 million points".

But the scoreboard says 8 million trillion points. The "million trillion" part being glued onto the side is tongue-in-cheek, I think, which is funny on its own, but it doesn't match the script! It would be extremely easy for the script to actually match what's going on, but they just didn't bother. Next, Kiki asks Einstein Academy how much the moon weighs, which is a fucking bullshit trick question. The kid gives the correct mass of the moon, but mass and weight are different, and he probably should have known that, so fine. Shawn gives the correct answer of "it doesn't weigh anything, because if it did it would fall on us", raising their score to 16 million trillion points. It's supposed to be funny, and it definitely is, but it's honestly a better answer than Einstein Academy gave. Then Einstein Academy get attacked by some guys with spears.

Nothin weird about that. Once again, the show goes to a commercial break after 30 seconds of actual show, but maybe that's supposed to be meta commentary. The businesswoman/set manager approaches our heroes with the Oahu Beach Face Savers guy, and informs them that they'll be needed on location in Oahu for six weeks to film some shit for the show. That is not how things work. That is not how anything works. They don't want to miss six weeks of school, and ask for some time to think about it. Is this over yet? Christ.

At the next taping for the show, our heroes demand that some "intelligent questions" be asked at some point. The set manager ominously replies "We were prepared for this." The show begins and Kiki introduces John Adams, and then their very special opponents all the way from Malibu, California, "Viper Jones, Surfer Girl, and Moon Dogget".

The crowd loves these hair-beasts. So was this the contingency plan for when the John Adams team didn't want to win anymore? Were these kids just like, locked in the basement in case of emergency? If Malibu were going to be their opponents anyway, what was the point of saying "we were prepared for this"? Whatever.

It skips ahead to the end of the game, where the score is tied.

So they've both answered one question correctly? Why did it go by 8's before? I realize that we're not supposed to be paying attention to these details, but it really doesn't seem like they tried at all. Apparently this last question is for Shawn only, and of course she asks who invented the printing press.

Shawn's had that cartilage piercing this whole season, I think it looks pretty cool.

But yeah! We haven't heard that in a while! I've talked about that core theme in the past, but on those occasions it was Cory who said it. "I don't know anything," or some variation of that. Definitely one of the most important themes in this show, and I really like the transition from "I know everything that matters" to "I don't know anything".

The three stooges show up early to Feeny's class the next day and ask him to teach them something. It's sweet.

They waited until the last 30 seconds of the episode to do it, but they got me.

Plot: 0.25 - It sucked. Boyyyyyyy did it suck. Almost all of the episode was spent showing us matches on the quiz show. It was really slow and static, I just felt no reason to keep watching. Compare that to 4x18 where I couldn't stop watching.

Character Development: 0.75 - I like where Shawn ended up. Cory just sort of silently made the same change after Feeny walked out on the class, but I would have liked to see it in more detail, like they did with Shawn.

Humor: 0.75 - Eh.

Life Lesson: 0.5 - Get a good education, I guess. Maybe try to pay a little less attention to pop culture.

2.25 out of 4.0 - Maybe I'm just in a mood today, but I didn't really enjoy this one at all. I'd watch 4x18 three times in a row before I watch this one once. It felt sloppy and poorly developed. There was a good idea buried deep in there, but it just didn't come out. Is it a coincidence that this boring episode had almost no Eric? Hmmmmmmm......

No badges. Thanks for reading. See you next week to finish season 4.

All images used under Fair Use.