Episode 6x16 "My Baby Valentine"

Well.... At least it's Friday...

Cory's having a phone conversation with his best buddy because Snapchat wasn't invented yet. God, can you imagine Cory on Snapchat? What a nightmare. Anyway Cory's talking about his Valentine's Day plans, including the fact that he's got his "red turtleneck for the romantic carriage ride". Why not just wear the rainbow suspenders and a bowtie too? I guess he's not getting laid no matter what, so it hardly matters.

Shawn's at some truck stop on the road, and he's afraid to wish Cory a happy Valentine's Day since this crowd of cowboys is behind him. Now that's confusing to me. It sounds like we're supposed to think these are some tough customers who won't take kindly to any of that man love, but even in the 90's I would have thought cowboy outfits were sort of a "gay" thing. Either way, they're cool with it, and the audience laughs, reaffirming the idea that we should have assumed they weren't. Weird.

Good for you, progressive cowboys.

As the phone call ends, Topanga arrives in Cory's living room. They dredge up the past concerning last year's catastrophe of a V-Day, I'm not sure why, maybe they're just reminding the audience what happened. Apparently Topers had to pick up Morgan from school since Amy forgot, again. Morgan's having some "left out" issues with the new baby on the way, which is just about the most cliche pregnancy storyline you could ever write. Because of said issues, Topanga invites Morgan to... spend Valentine's with her and Cory... What...? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! Seriously, Cory getting cockblocked at every opportunity isn't funny after the 20th time.

The parents and Eric come home and it's... pregnancy-palooza. Amy is difficult to deal with, lots of lazy jokes from pretty much everybody, and finally Topanga decides to throw a "Valentine's Day Baby Shower" for Mrs. Matthews. I can't really explain why, except that it advances the plot.

I don't really remember this episode, so I'm going in blind here, but I'll be thoroughly surprised if it doesn't involve the words "my water just broke" at some point.

Topanga insists that this baby shower won't interfere with her and Cory's plans, but he's not satisfied with just words, and I can't blame him at all. This is some bull crap Topanga's pulling right now. So Cory decides to take command of the baby shower, but of course, he doesn't actually know anything about baby showers.

Well at least some people are getting intimate this Valentine's Day. Jack and Rachel are going pretty hard in the same spot they made out both times in the past: the couch. They agree that they should tell Eric about this blooming romance, and then start kissing again. A well-crafted scene, all things considered. Haven't seen teenagers acting like teenagers since, like, season 4. I'm assuming they're 19, but maybe they're 20, whatever. You know what I mean.

It's baby shower time, and "the joke" is that Cory is doing literally everything wrong. And that horse is dead and beaten very quickly. He even hired a male stripper for the party, who shows up doing the pizza delivery man routine. And let's remember that Morgan is at this party, but oh, okay, Amy covers Morgan's eyes as soon as the stripping starts. So yeah he starts his routine, and manages to get his shirt off before Amy sends him packing. The funniest things about this are actually really subtle, and you'd almost certainly miss them if you weren't trying to write a blog about it. I only noticed because I paused at the right time. So yeah, two things, the first is Angela's reaction to the guy taking his shirt off...

And the second is Morgan's reaction.

Amy was using her hand to cover Morgan's eyes, so Morgan lifts her mom's hand to peek at this guy. That is easily the funniest Morgan moment in the series, and honestly it was probably improvised. Very funny, very easy to miss.

Amy declares the party over after she gets rid of the stripper, and sullenly walks offcamera. Topanga is angry with Cory and so she cancels their plans for the evening, and storms off upstairs! Honestly, what did she expect here! Both Amy and Topanga know perfectly well that Cory is a moron most of the time, and now they're upset that he did moron stuff.

The men have organized a poker game at The Apartment to take place during the baby shower, so that's where we are now. Jack's just about to break the Rachel-news to Eric when Feeny and Alan barge in. The sweater-vested old man has a real spring in his step today, and goes so far as to hug Eric and tell him he loves him "like a son". That's pretty fuckin significant to just idly slip in here! Well I'm glad it got said, especially since he's so resistant to tell the other heroes he loves them at the end of the series. But today Feeny's clearly got a different kind of love on his mind, directed at Dean Bolander.

Cory shows up now too, and the joke is once again that he messed everything up at the baby shower.

Meanwhile, Amy opens the gifts she received for the shower. It comes up again that Morgan's sad about not being "the youngest" or whatever anymore, so Amy promises to spend as much time as possible with her until the baby comes, which is practically a guarantee that that baby is about to drop. Sure enough, she gets some sort of rumble in her stomach and we cut over to The Apartment, where they receive a call from Topanga informing them that Amy's water broke. Six weeks early, as a matter of fact.

This does not interest me. Am I alone here? I'm genuinely interested to know. There have been zero times in my life where I was interested in a pregnancy on television. I just cannot get invested at all. The "six weeks early" thing is their attempt at separating it from normal tv pregnancies, but it's still not enough to pull me in.

At the hospital, Topanga's taken care of pretty much everything and guides Alan right where he needs to go. It's... nice. Topanga has taken charge and directed her attention to what really matters here, instead of stewing over what happened earlier. These moments of level-headedness are always the times that I like Topanga the most. And Cory feels the same way, as he realizes that this stuff takes precedence over his earlier plans. It's a great little scene for sure, thumbs up.

So Cory and Topanga have managed to set aside their own shit for this important event, but Jack and Rachel are still pretty focused on themselves.

She tries, but is unsuccessful once again. Doesn't matter though, as Eric reveals that he knows they're falling for each other. Poor Eric.

Alan makes his way into the delivery room, where things are already under way for Amy's C Section. The doctor performing the procedure is played by McNally Sagal, who played a hospital administrator on Sons of Anarchy, so I'm concluding that the two shows exist in the same universe. Even more, she was already on Boy Meets World! She played that newscaster at the end of Danger Boy when Feeny and Cory got on the roller coaster. So her character has apparently spent the last four seasons at medical school. Good for her.

Morgan has been awesome this episode, it might be her best episode ever. Which is a shame, since I've only seen this one like twice in my life. And one of Angela's best episodes was Starry Night, which I never watch. It's a shame that some characters shine in episodes that I hardly ever watch because it leaves me thinking that they're just weak characters in general.

So the new baby boy gets born, but he's having trouble breathing and has to get rushed off to the ICU. Crazy times.

In the waiting room, Cory's stuck worrying about his own stupid problems again, which makes him look like a real bozo when Alan comes in with the bad news about the ICU. The baby isn't breathing on his own and has to be on a respirator. William Russ gives a pretty powerful performance here.

You can see Angela there on the side, she's had literally one line in this episode. Less than Rachel. So much for being Topanga's best friend. Without the Shawn drama they've got nothing to write for her! It's a little sad, honestly.

Alan makes his way to Amy's hospital room, as she's trying to decide between "Joshua" and "Daniel" for the baby's name. The veterans among us know that she eventually chooses Joshua, so it might have been a cool touch if, say, Auggie had been named Daniel instead. Either way, the episode fades to black as Alan is about to give her the bad news. It's just the music playing over the logo during the credits. They've done that a lot this season.

Plot: 0.25 - I mean... what really happened here? There was a baby shower that wasn't really much of a baby shower, and then Amy gave birth. Pretty straightforward.

Character Development: 1.0 - I always give this one away too easily, but Eric is handling the Jachel situation with surprising maturity, and Morgan was at least some sort of character trait.

Humor: 1.0 - Just because it's so rare for Morgan to make me laugh.

Life Lesson: 0.5 - Don't be a self centered piece of crap like Cory.

2.75 out of 4.0. I doubt I'll ever watch this episode just for fun. It's not very fun. Shawn is almost entirely absent and Eric's actions are all in response to the Jachel thing. If it weren't for Morgan peeking out at that stripper, I'd have said this whole episode was a wash. I was about to say that at least we don't have to watch Jack and Eric compete for Rachel anymore, and that's true, but there's still more drama to come from that as Eric tries to figure out what to do about it. Blah.

Thanks for reading, see you Monday.

All images used under Fair Use.