Episode 5x03 "It's Not You, It's Me..."

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Mister Feeny's class is coming to a close as he's just finished explaining to Shawn how babies are made. He also offers a quick reminder that next Friday is "college recruitment day", and that Cory's meeting with the Standford folks has been rescheduled. I'm not really sure when Cory stopped being a terrible student, but he's clearly left Shawn in the dust. And Shawn's not happy about it. Cory's looking at a lot of colleges that Shawn can't get in to, but Cory insists that he doesn't know what his plans are yet.

I talked a lot in the previous two episodes about Shawn's annoying whining, but his whining today is actually in good humor. We're bringing back the bromance today. 

They both decide that they should make new friends because they'll eventually end up at different colleges, but I mean there's no reason to think that these new friends will be at college, so this doesn't make a ton of sense. But that's love, I suppose. 

In class later, Shawn has found a new friend, whose name is Andy, to sit in Cory's desk. 

Cory proceeds to make friends with a guy named Lionel at the front of the room. Lionel offers Cory some grapes to celebrate their new friendship. It's pretty funny. Not much else to say.

At the apartment, Eric is apparently post-haircut. It is a drastic change from the previous episode, and nobody even mentions it.

They make a big deal about his haircut at the beginning of season 7, but this one passed without any notice. In episode 3.  It's strange timing. Had to check and make sure I was watching the right one.

Eric and Jack have 10,000 word papers to write. Eric can't think of anything and Jack's is mostly lies, so Eric comes up with the plan of making friends with "the dean" to make their college lives easier. Which dean exactly? There are a lot of deans. I don't think this is a very good plan, you guys.

At home, Morgan makes fun of Cory for being dumped by his boyfriend. Alan comes home and wonders why he didn't see Cory at "Pink's" around lunchtime, since Shawn was there (with some other people). What the fuck is Pink's? It doesn't even matter, I'm just amazed that they mentioned a restaurant in this show that isn't Chubbie's. Anyway this information just makes Cory feel worse.

So this next scene is exactly what the comments have been talking about so far. Eric's trying to get Jack in on his crazy scheme, and Jack is just like "come on man", "this is a bad idea man", "I don't wanna do this man". And eventually Jack caves in. The dean's office door just says "Office of The Dean", so we're just gonna have to roll with that. The Dean is a real jerk to Eric, essentially the Anti-Feeny. 

Now we're at Chubbie's with Corpanda and the guy who gave Cory grapes earlier. Topanga pulls her boyfriend aside and Shawn is just afraid of losing his best friend. But then Shawn shows up with three new friends, and Cory can't help lashing out.

It's all pretty silly, but there's nothing new for me to talk about. Next, Cory and Mr. Grapes go to Shawn's apartment to collect the stuff Shawn's borrowed over the years, and it's already waiting for him in a cardboard box outside the door. Inside, Shawn's throwing a party, and we get the same conversation that's been in every scene so far.

It's still funny, but I mean, of course it is, because it was funny the first two times. 

I mean, this episode a direct line from point A to point B. They're obviously going to make up, it's just a question of how many jokes we make in the meantime. 

It's night time now as Eric and Jack arrive at The Dean's home. I don't know how they got his address. They do the exact same shtick as before, where Jack doesn't wanna be here but Eric says enough nonsense that Jack sticks around.

Everything else aside, Jack is actually really funny here. Due partly to the fact that babka is just a silly word.

Next, these two hooligans are at the Matthews-Feeny backyard, where Eric Feeny-Calls his mentor out to them. Eric introduces Jack and COMPLETELY FORGETS TO ADD THAT HE'S SHAWN'S LONG LOST BROTHER, something Feeny would proooooobably want to know. Mister Feeny assuages their fears, and suggest they use their fear and anxiety as a topic for their paper, which Eric says is an "open assignment", so the topic can be anything. 

 The next day at school, Shawn and Cory show up at Feeny's office under false pretenses. Turns out, Topanga set this up to deal with their silly fight.

The first time they did the "gasp Topanga" was at the end of 4x11, and it might be even funnier this time, if you can believe it. That was actually the other bromance episode too. Interesting.

 Shawn and Cory are both reluctant to try to reconcile, but Topanga insists that Mr. Feeny make an effort to fix this. He responds with one of my favorite Feeny lines ever.

Hilarious.

Now for something I didn't expect. Shawn claims (yells, really) that Cory decided he was too good for Shawn the day they met. Honestly Shawn has yelled almost every line in this episode, it's really annoying. The flashback zooms out on some sort of zoo, accompanied by that one stock sound of children laughing, you know the one. It's the cringiest goddamn thing, these children are so terrible, and child Cory has glasses for some reason. But anyway, Shawn saves Cory after he falls into the llama pen.

The only remotely acceptable thing about this scene is that Topanga is here. They ACTUALLY decided to include a minor detail for the sake of consistency, albeit the consistency of a retcon. I've complained about the lack of those details so many times, so this instance is much more refreshing than it ought to be. You can tell they were fuckin DYING for content in this episode.

Woah okay, gotta draw the line there. I'll hug my best friend all god damn day, ain't no Topanga gonna tell me I can't. The audience thinks it's fuckin hilarious, but I'm not crazy about it. If we compare this episode to 4x11, which was the first time we did the "haha they're boyfriends" thing, this episode has been a lot less cool about it. Like, this episode wants us to think that there's something wrong with Cory and Shawn to be like this. I didn't mention that until now because I was trying to ignore it, but this "stop it, you're boys" really rubs me the wrong way.

And now the conflict is over. 

How bout you chill the fuck out Topanga? Jesus Christ.

During the credits, Jack and Eric have broken into The Dean's office. Jack's ability to speak Chinese buys them an extension on their papers. Yeah I can't explain it better than that.

Plot: 0.25 - It sucked. It could have been good, but it sucked. There was a beginning, and an end, but nothing in between.

Character Development: 0.25 - I guess we saw how Shawn and Cory met, which was new information, and Jack settles into his position as Eric's lackey.

Humor: 1.0 - Yeah it was pretty funny until Topanga's little outbursts.

Life Lesson: 0 - You can fuckin hug your friends if you want to.

1.5 out of 4.0. This episode sucks. 

I'm moving all the way across the country next week, so I won't be posting any reviews for a while. Maaaaybe the 6th for the next one. Sorryyyyyyyyyy

Thanks for reading! 

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