Episode 5x07 "I Love You Donna Karan (Part 1)"

Donna Karan is apparently a fashion designer. She must be the designer of Angela's purse, otherwise I have no idea what the title means.

Back in 5x02, we met a student named Angela in "Mister Feeny's film class", who pointed out that Cory's project looked a lot like The Real World. I don't think we've seen her since then, so that was odd timing, but here she is again on a Chubbie's date with Shawn Hunter. Cory and Topanga watch from the sidelines, which should probably make them uncomfortable. Topanga mentions how great Shangela are, but Cory reminds her of Shawn's Two Week Rule. Apparently Shawn only ever dates a girl for two weeks, and that time has come with Angela. Angela's being extremely pragmatic about the whole thing, to Shawn's surprise, and it seems like he's having a harder time letting go than she is. Topanga thinks Shawn's Two Week Rule is stupid, and claims that Shawn is afraid of commitment.

Ahh the bromance. Love love love it. I'll ship Cory and Shawn over Shawn and Angela any day of the week.

Topanga reads Shawn the Riot Act, explaining how he'll spend the rest of his life alone, which is nonsense on its own since they're seventeen, but Shawn's already kissing some new girl off to the side.

At school, the boys find a purse that's been left in the hallway. They ask Mr. Feeny who runs the lost and found and, of course, he does. It's self aware though, as he points out that he also teaches history, english, and film. So that's funny. Not wishing to burden Feeny any further, the boys decide to just put up a notice for the purse, and then Shawn starts digging through it for a wallet or ID. What he finds instead is a book of sonnets with a ticket stub for a Van Damme movie. Shawn comments that he would "give her two weeks," and honestly, I've dated for less.

In The Backyard, Eric's looking for help with his studying from Mister Feeny, but the old man thinks it's time for Eric to do these sorts of things on his own.

Eric thinks it's "Kevin McDougal, the kid from the other side," which is hilarious, and also sort of self aware in the sense that we've always ignored the existence of their other neighbors.

Back at The Apartment, Eric's freaking out trying to study, and he's got Jack quizzing him about the Louisiana Purchase.

I am IN LOVE with that joke. Is that just me? This has stuck with me since the very first time I saw it. It's hard to put my finger on why exactly, but it's absolutely hysterical to me.

 Jack abandons Eric to study on his own. Our boy can't remember the name Marco Polo, and keeps saying "Marco..." for way longer than is necessary until an imaginary Feeny appears and says "Polo". Jack wanders back in since Eric's talking to nobody, and they spend like six hours on this bit where Eric tries to explain who he's talking to. If nothing else, we get one of the most important lines in the series.

We would be lost in the darkness without that line. Eric's only sayin what we were all thinkin. But now we know. Meanwhile, Jack mostly just makes this face and makes sure everyone at home knows what a crazy guy Eric is.

I think that's the perfect picture to describe Jack's function in season 5.

In the background they've still got that same piece of paper taped to the computer screen as in the Witches episode. Anyway Imagi-Feeny takes Eric to the library to study.

At Chubbie's, Cory finds Shawn reading that book of sonnets from The Purse. Cory wants to fix Shawn up with Topanga's friend Debbie, because he and Topanga want Shawn to experience the "warm feeling of meeting someone special". I think Shawn realizes how silly that notion is, but Corpanga are well known for tearing down the walls of Relationship Reality, so he goes along with it.

In the living room at Cory's house, Shawn is rocking out to some classical music that he found in The Purse. Cory points out that Shawn hates classical music, but Shawn explains that he just never gave it a chance. THE TRANSFORMATION HAS BEGUN.

I knew I recognized the music, and it took me a few minutes, but it's Vivaldi's Spring, at this part http://youtu.be/8eJoydTJDio?t=1m56s. And it does rock.

So let's talk about this. How do we feel about this changing Shawn? I definitely like this classical music part. Classical music obviously isn't something we associate with Shawn, but his response is still totally believable. He's not appreciating the, I don't know, the finer points of composition, he's just rocking out. I mean that's exactly what I do when I hear this song. If the goal is to make Shawn more mature or broaden his horizons, that is how they should do it, where they retain his goofiness.

Cory suggests that Shawn ditch all the air-violin, assuming it won't go over well with this Debbie person. Debbie and Topanga arrive, and Debbie... is an airhead. An airhead with no time for sonnets or Vivaldi. Even though everyone should love Vivaldi solely because of his name.

What a pleasant surprise though, that Debbie is played by Maggie Lawson, who I know as Juliet O'Hara on Psych.

Shawn and Debbie aren't getting along, so Shawn pulls some chocolate out of The Purse because he's a stress eater, apparently. Almost all of you know how this ends, that it's Angela's purse, so I'm confused why Topanga doesn't recognize it here. Probably just an oversight by the staff. Anyway Shawn is unhappy so he storms out of the house with The Purse. The point of this scene was that Debbie is the exact kind of girl Shawn was looking for in previous seasons, and now we're seeing firsthand that he's starting to want something more. And to turn down Maggie Lawson he's gotta be seriously caught up on this mystery girl.

At school the next day, Shawn is the bubbliest we've ever seen him. His best friend is perplexed, and Shawn claims to have that special tingly feeling that Cory gets with Topanga, and he feels it for the owner of The Purse.

Okay throw on the breaks, this train has reached its final destination in Crazytown. Fortunately, Cory isn't a dumbass in this episode. Even though he and Topanga did a totally bullcrap love thing in season 4, he thinks that Shawn's totally bullcrap love thing in this episode is nonsense. Shawn won't listen though.

At The Apartment, Eric's riding the elevator with Invisi-Feeny and we learn that Eric managed a B on the test, which is absolutely stunning. He gets home, and it turns out that Jack did worse than Eric on this test. Jack tries to talk to Fake-Feeny in probably the least funny scene with Jack to date. The camera is way too wide, Matthew Lawrence isn't into it at all, and the writing is lazy.

Shawn shows up at Cory's kitchen just as Cory completes a composite sketch of The Purse's owner, based on its contents.

I guess it does sort of look like Angela, with the brown curly hair. I'm not sure if they were trying to be cute there or not. Doesn't matter though, since The Purse's owner left a message at Shawn's apartment saying to meet her at Chubbie's so she can get it back.

Shawn's terrified of losing this tingly feeling. He doesn't want to look behind the curtain, so he says he's not gonna go to Chubbie's.

Shawn's hair looks fucking amazing right now... Hm? Oh, right, yeah, I wasn't expecting something so emotional here. That's pretty powerful stuff. We are fully aware of Shawn's abandonment issues, which we now know are only made worse by people abandoning his father as well. So he keeps his Two Week Rule to avoid reaching the point where he can be abandoned. And I think that's a great direction to take this. Shawn's abandonment issues are firmly grounded, we've seen them being built up from the very beginning. And now he's afraid of being abandoned by this girl he idolizes. Good stuff.

Topanga shows up, and still doesn't recognize the purse. You would think that Angela would have at least mentioned to Topanga that she lost her purse. Cory makes a speech about love and shit, and Shawn looks prepared to go to Chubbie's. It's extremely annoying how high Cory's high horse is when it comes to love. DON'T YOU WANT THIS SHAWN? THIS IS REAL LOVE. WE'RE SO HAPPY BLAH BLAH BLAH.

At The Apartment, Eric is abandoned by Feeny-Geist. He's leaving Eric on his own now, apparently heading out to Nevada. It's actually heart-breaking to watch.

That's Eric saying that second line, if you can't see it. He says it to himself, it's a real tear jerker.

Now we're at Chubbie's for the fateful meeting. Shawn puts on Vivaldi's Spring on the fucking jukebox, which I don't even need to comment on. A leg-tastic stunner of a woman walks down the stairs into Chubbie's, and it looks like she's here for The Purse. Her boyfriend comes in shortly after, and Shawn is still under the impression that she is the owner of The Purse, so he makes a bee line for the exit. Miss Legs picks up The Purse as the scene fades out.

At school, Shawn pretty much screams at Cory for telling him to put his heart on the line, now that he's completely crushed and in pain. All Cory can do is try to apologize, but Shawn storms off. Somebody with a lot of time should go back and count how many times I've said that Shawn storms off. At least twenty by now, surely.

...Oh. Well. It's not Angela's purse. That shows what the fuck I know about Boy Meets World. It was actually Legs's purse. That also explains why Topanga didn't recognize it. I'll own up to it and not go back and change what I wrote, but... crap... My memory failed me. Regardless, all of the contents of the purse were indeed Angela's, as we learn here in this last scene. And that's really what was important.

That's Legs McGee there on the right. I'll be saying this 90% of the time, but I have no idea what Angela's doing with her hair.

Much more important than all that is Topanga's expression during these events.

Yeah there's your new desktop background.

So Cory and Topanga are all excited now that they know Shawn's been falling in love with Angela's stuff, and we'll see how that plays out in Part 2.

During the credits, Jack is still trying to talk to Genie-Feeny. Eric says he'll help Jack study, and asks him a quiz question about Poe's The Raven.

That little head turn is perfect.

Plot: 0.5 - IIIIIII dunno what to give it, honestly. Am I biased because I already knew how it would turn out? On the other hand, is there anyone on Earth who wasn't able to figure out that it would be Angela? The beginning made it too obvious. I dunno. My feelings might be a lot different if I were seeing this for the first time.

Character Development: 1.0  - Just for "every time a woman walks out because he's not good enough." That's some serious crap right there. And Eric finally moving on from Feeny's assistance is pretty significant.

Humor: 1.0 - Even with Jack's short comings, the whole thing was still really funny. I've talked about this Cory/Shawn dynamic before, where Shawn is dealing with emotional stuff and Cory gets to be silly in the background. As usual, it worked wonderfully.

Life Lesson: 0 - Don't fall in love with a purse.

2.5 out of 4.0. Definitely better than I remember, but not great. Maybe it's the next one that's annoying.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday for Part 2.

All images used under Fair Use.