Episode 6x09 "Poetic License: An Ode to Holden Caulfield"

HOPEFULLY we can recover after that train wreck from last Friday.

It would seem that Mister Feeny is a professor of English/Lit at the moment, as he reads a poem to class titled "An Unpublished Manuscript for J.D. Salinger." And I'm just gonna completely dodge talking about Catcher in the Rye, let's just leave that alone. Suffice it to say that a comparison of Holden and Shawn would be pretty interesting. I don't know much about poetry, but I think this one's pretty decent. Cory thinks it's stupid, while Topanga and Angela really enjoyed it. The scene ends as we learn that the poem was written by none other than Shawn Hunter. Well it's about time we brought back the Hat of Hobbies. Congratulations on becoming a poet, Shawn.

Feeny asks Shawn if he has any more poems. He says he just "writes stuff down, I've been doing it since I can remember." IS THAT RIGHT. We need look no further than Season 2 Episode 15 for one of his earlier works, titled Welfare, that begins "My uncle Ralph he does not care, 'cause twice a month he gets welfare..."  Shawn even claims that it's some of his best work. I was initially trying to make a joke, but now I've almost convinced myself that this all makes some kind of sense.

There are poetry readings every Friday night at The Union, hosted by Feeny of course, but Shawn doesn't really want to go, feeling like his poems should stay private. Cory's gonna drag him along anyway, though.

It's good to see the other characters call Cory out for being insufferably annoying. It seems like Cory's going to be making terrible rhymes and pretending it's poetry for the entire episode, so yeah, annoying to Shawn AND to the audience. Shawn agrees to go to the poetry reading, just to stop Cory's nagging, but with no guarantee that he'll actually read any of his work.

Let's see what The Apartment has in store for us today. The three roomies are all studying independently in the living room, but each is doing some small tick that's annoying the others. Rachel is twirling her hair, Jack's eating an apple, and Eric keeps clicking his pen. Tensions rise, everyone explodes at each other, and Eric decides to go to the library to study. It's actually kind of funny and it doesn't seem like anyone is in love with Rachel today. It's basically Christmas.

At the library, things aren't really any better... Everyone's really stressed out over upcoming exams and it's bursting out in their behavior. Rachel is about to commit homicide, as is pretty much everyone else here, when Eric takes command of the situation. He explains to everyone that they need to relax and calm down if they want to do well on their exams, and everyone ends up... going to the movies... This is protagonist privilege at its finest. There is no reason in the world for anyone to listen to Eric, it's really kind of stupid to watch. HOWEVER, this is the first time our Apartment friends have had a story that doesn't revolve around Rachel, so I'll take what I can get.

The poetry reading has begun, and Cory has taken the stage. Full of energy, he recites a terrible poem about how great Topanga is. Woulda been funny if the poem turned out to be about Shawn, but oh well. Speaking of, apparently Cory signed Shawn up to read, and now he's got no choice but to take the stage.

Shawn recites the first two lines, "You don't know it, But sometimes..." and can't get the rest of the words out, so he heads for the door. THAT, at least, has not changed. Shawn Hunter will always head for the door. Cory picks up where he left off, finishing the reading. It's a love poem, and there's one line I really like, "and a breath that fills my lungs with the air between two stars", but most of it sounds really... thesaurusy. Where you just pick the longest word that's synonymous with what you're trying to say, and throw it in. Like, most of these words? There's no way Shawn Hunter knows most of these words. Rider Strong wrote both of Shawn's poems in this episode, and you can read them here if you're curious http://boymeetsworld.wikia.com/wiki/Poetic_License:_An_Ode_to_Holden_Caulfield

Angela is in the audience, and I think this is the most famous example of "What the fuck is Angela's hair."

It looks like someone ran over a piece of paper with a lawn mower and the wind blew all the scraps into her hair.

Shawn comes back inside in a huff after Cory finishes the poem, and drags him outside. This is a fantastic scene right here. Shawn is genuinely pissed off at his best friend, and Rider does a perfect job of making is feel his frustration, the same frustration we've been feeling toward Cory whenever he does inconsiderate shit like this. Eventually, Shawn asks Cory what he thinks tonight's poem was about. Cory thinks it was about him, which is cute and funny, but Shawn explains that it was about Angela, who happens to be standing in listening distance. (Which is fucking rude, her and Topanga were eavesdropping on the argument, that's not cool at all.)

So this is fairly compelling, but as always the problem is that the show's numerous past attempts to invest us in the Shangela relationship fell short, not to mention their instantaneous off-camera breakup, so I can't say that I'm feeling everything they want me to here. I can't say I care much at all. Angela's been doing great as her own character lately, and Shawn's way more fun as a serial monogamist, I just have no interest in seeing them back together.

Cory follows Angela back to her room to continue meddling in Shawn's affairs, as if that argument had no effect whatsoever. On the other hand, he is able to provide some helpful and meaningful insight. Angela's upset that Shawn is keeping his feelings secret, angry that he could have feelings for her and still choose not to be with her. Cory explains that perhaps Shawn's poetry is his only way of truly telling her how he feels.

I can't remember any instances of Shawn telling a girl he loves her, so I'm assuming he never has, but now he loves Angela, and that's why we're making such a fuss. That doesn't change the fact that it's strange he would break up with her to see other people.

Either way, when Angela approaches Shawn over in The Union, before she can say anything Shawn explains that he wrote that lovey poem while they were still dating, so there's nothing to feel weird about! Defensively, Angela claims that she's moved on as well. So we're in even more of a pickle with these two than when we started. Aside, the fact that they're sitting in front of a fireplace is just so cheesy, like the scene starts with a closeup of Shawn writing poetry in front of the fire. It's pretty hard to swallow, and this episode was directed by William Russ, so I'm surprised he set up the shot like this.

The sad music plays as it zooms and fades out, then back in on the group of students from the library hanging out in a hallway. By the magic of Hollywood, they were all studying for the exact same exam, Feeny's exam, no less, and they're waiting for him to post scores on the corkboard nearby.

Now Eric, that's not quite true, you learned this method from Feeny! In season 2 episode 23, when you needed to study for the SAT. I wish they would've actually mentioned that at some point.

The students are rightfully pissed off at Eric, but soon change their tone when Feeny posts their grades and almost all of them did really well. Feeny pulls his protege aside and commends his efforts, except for the fact that Eric never actually did the studying part before the relaxing part. So that's a fun little conclusion to by far the best Apartment Crew story so far this season. Some of that classic Idiot Genius Eric.

In The Union, Topanga and Shawn are waiting for Corgela to show up so they can all go to a movie. Topes figures out that Shawn is still in love with Angela, that he wrote that poem only a couple weeks ago, but he makes her pinky-swear not to tell anyone, since he now thinks that Angela has moved on.

During the credits, Cory gives one last poem about Topanga, called Frustration. It is definitely his best work.

Plot: 0.75 - It's hard to say. Their intentions were good, right? It's just that I personally am not as invested in Shawn+Angela as the showrunners want me to be. But it was still interesting, Eric had a fun little side story.

Character Development: 0.75 - Shawn is a poet, I guess, and Eric knows how to motivate students.

Humor: 1.0 - It was decent up until the end, when Cory's poems during the credits bring it home.

Life Lesson: 0 - It's okay to be a big broody baby as long as your best friend is willing to invade your privacy.

2.5 out of 4.0. It's considerably more enjoyable than the previous episode, and at least we got a bit of Eric/Feeny. I don't know enough about poetry to comment directly on the poems, unfortunately. But guess what? It doesn't matter because it will never come up again.

Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.