Episode 6x21 "The Psychotic Episode"

The entire time I was writing the 6x20 review, I kept reminding myself to mention the Popeye's Chicken, but I never did. The whole time, there's boxes from Popeye's, the restaurant, on top of the fridge in The Apartment. Usually they use generic names like "Cola" but I guess they cut a deal with Popeye's for that one? I dunno. It's strange.

Also, fair warning, I have never bothered to watch (or read) Psycho. The guy in Eric's story in this episode is supposed to be inspired by it, so that's gonna be lost on me.

The episode kicks off with a dream sequence, where it looks like Eric's gonna move back in to The Apartment and Rachel is kissing everyone because RACHEL IS PRETTY AND IT DRIVES THE PLOT. Cory and Shawn wait for the elevator, and Cory pushes Shawn into the open elevator shaft as soon as it opens. Cory wakes up screaming and blames it on the "puppet dream", and reminds Shawn that he is his best friend, though he's really just reminding himself.

Is Cory going to murder Shawn at the end of this episode? Could be! Guess we have to keep watching!

In Feeny's class, Shawn is performing a magic trick which, as he assures Mister Feeny, is definitely part of his report of Louis Pasteur. But oh, this is a dream sequence too, and Cory strangles Shawn to death with some magic rope. In his deathy writhing, they do some sort of effect that's like... Shawn kicking the camera? Or the dream shattering? I don't really know, but Cory wakes up again.

Who's having fun yet? Me? You? Nobody? Ok.

At The Union, Shawn explains the situation with Cory's nightmares to Angela and Topanga. We see Eric sleeping on his parents' couch, and he is quickly woken up from his dream about Xena by his mother. Eric complains about not having a room, and asks Morgan, who is in the room as well, doing homework, if he can stay in her room, but of course she says no. So Morgan was there listening to Eric talk in his sleep about banging Xena the Warrior Princess. Awkward.

He tries to move in to Cory and Shawn's dorm next, but as you may have seen in the logo, that doesn't work out.

We may be locked in for another edition of "Eric saves the episode" today, folks.

Eric runs the same gambit on Topanga, and is equally unsuccessful. He ends up sleeping on the pool table in The Union, and is found by Jack and Rachel who plead with him to move back to The Apartment. He refuses, and for once Eric is not overreacting or being needlessly flamboyant. I wouldn't want to live with that either. Regardless, he starts shouting in The Union that he needs a roommate, and eventually Jon Stewart offers Eric a room in his apartment.

It's actually some actor named Charlie Newmark, but he hasn't done anything except this, really.

We have another dream sequence now, two minutes long, but there's some content this time, at least. Dream Feeny's class ends, and he gives Cory some advice about his Killing Shawn dreams. It's some nonsense dream-interpretation gobllyblargh about how Cory needs to forgive Shawn for his "cross country" drive a few episodes ago. It's better than nothing, I guess, and eventually Cory kills Shawn again, with a baseball bat this time. He wakes up in class, yelling to himself about how much we wants to kill Shawn.

Heh... That blonde girl behind Cory, she's convinced this is her big break. Just has to really nail her reaction here and she'll get discovered for sure.

I also want to mention that they're studying Hamlet here in Feeny's class, which has got to be like the SEVENTH time we've seen Hamlet in this series. Cory explains his murderous dreams after class, which is humorous, and ends up giving Shawn an entirely nonspecific forgiveness, in accordance with Dream Feeny's advice. I'm sorry, I'm so bored by this episode, I don't understand. Maybe it's the fact that we've spent five out of the last ten minutes in dreams? Is it my natural aversion to dream sequences?

Eric moves in to Jon Stewart's apartment, and so far it seems too good to be true. He's even got a really hot and friendly female neighbor named Sheila. Her last name is like, Shaggart or something, Jon Stewart kinda mumbles it when he introduces her, and it's not in the credits or her imdb page. The point is, the first syllable is "shag", prompting Eric to do an Austin Powers impression, which is even more cringey than "Oh my god they killed Kenny" in And Then There Was Shawn. Shelia is played by Leslie Danon, who was also in 5x04 as a girl named Lisa, as well as 40 episodes of a show called, and I swear this is a real name of a show with at least 40 episodes, "Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills."

That is a real show. And a real disaster. Look at this 30 second clip, the dark haired girl is Sheila in this episode of BMW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt8YaAY34Y0

THAT JUST HAPPENED. ON A KIDS' SHOW. I'm sure Eric would like to see that. And hey, she doesn't look very tattooed to me.

Boy that was definitely the most fun I've had writing this. Back to the grind. Cory has another screaming nightmare, of which Cory gives a pleasingly comical description. He goes to Real Feeny for advice, as well as complaining about Dream Feeny's bad advice. Well I'm real damn glad we wasted an hour on that scene with Dream Feeny then. Real Feeny suggests that Cory try to finish the dream, to see what comes after his attempt at murdering Shawn.

Jon Stewart is watching The Weather Channel and invites Eric to join him. The task proves difficult, however, since one chair is his dead mother's chair, and one of the couch cushions is where "Uncle Dave died". They do a cute little bit where Jon Stewart has to call Eric on the phone from only a few feet away rather than directly talk to him, and a lot of the humor is owed to Will Friedle being amazing.

Eric is about to get the fuck out of crazy town, but Sheila shows up in a towel, apparently having locked herself out of her apartment.

Arite let's get Cory's dream over with and move on with our lives. He pushes Shawn down the elevator again, but doesn't wake up this time. He follows it up by murdering Jack, Eric, Rachel and Angela. We're expecting Topanga or his parents next, but OH MY GOD IT'S

IT'S LAUREN

WELL CRAP.

Dream Lauren-Not-Lauren claims to represent everything Cory's giving up by marrying Topanga, all the girls he'll never get to date. Hey, alright, that's actually a real thing, worrying about what you might be giving up by committing to someone for the rest of your life. The journey here was pretty boring, but I like where we ended up. Anti-Not-Un-Lauren goes down the elevator shaft of her own will, and then Topanga shows up in a wedding dress. Cory tells her that he "killed them for us."

So yeah the dream is telling Cory that everything's going to change and he's going to be giving up a lot of his life when he gets married. After waking up, he explains this revelation to Shawn, who confirms that everything is going to change once he ties the knot, but Cory says, sullenly, that he doesn't want it to. Interesting, that's actually fairly compelling, but hardly worth the work we had to do to get here.

During the credits, Eric seems to have adapted well to Jon Stewart's craziness, right up until Jon Stewart wants to introduce Eric to his mother's skeleton.

Plot: 0.25 - I was gonna go zero until the part with Fake-Lauren.

Character Development: 1.0 - Cory suddenly realizing how drastic marriage is is pretty significant. I'm really glad this finally came up.

Humor: 0.5 - Eric was good, Cory was okay sometimes.

Life Lesson: 0 - If your dream gives you advice about dreams, it's probably bull shit.

1.75 out of 4.0. I didn't enjoy it. But maybe that's just because I've been doing this for three hours. Like, if I sat down with some lunch and spent 20 minutes watching this episode, I'm sure that would be fun. I think I've done that before, actually, when someone mentioned in the comments back in season 5 that we'd see Lauren again. So maybe it's just that I had to draw it out for three hours that really made it suck. I'm gonna go watch Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills.

Not really though.

But maybe.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday.

All images used under Fair Use.