Episode 7x06 "They're Killing Us"

Corpanaga are talking to the fourth wall about how difficult it is to plan a wedding, and as usual I am incapable of feeling sorry for them. It looks like we'll be jumping from the pair talking to someone positioned at the camera to normal footage of the show, almost like mockumentary.

The first such jump takes us to The Tnemtrapa where Angela and Rachel are trying on bridesmaid dresses for Topanga. Of course they look absurd, and of course Topanga loves them. Has there ever been a television series involving a wedding that didn't do this kind of thing with bridesmaid dresses? This already feels like a chore. Oh good Morgan's here too, we've got a real recipe for success today ladies and gentlemen.

The next 20 jokes are "Topanga likes them but the others don't." I don't like this, I want Shawn or Eric, not The Angry Morgan Show here.

Back in the mockumentary style, Topanga explains that "every wedding has a theme, Cory," and she wants hers to be a southern belle "Gone With The Wind" style. Where the hell did that come from? In the same way that Cory and Shawn were insane last episode and Eric was a sociopath in "And In Case I Don't See Ya", they're now making Topanga into something completely unrecognizable for the sake of cheap laughs, which are all also similar to making Topanga insane in the first four episodes of the season for the sake of the plot. I don't know why we have to completely destroy her as a character all the time, and obviously I don't enjoy it, but here we are. nonetheless.

I think that picture, uh, that pretty much sums everything right up for us. There you go, review over.

Seems like the goal for this episode is to pick a punchline and then milk it dry for an entire scene. The first one was Topanga's ugly dresses, and now it's Cory's sexual frustration. He and Topanga are discussing the honeymoon at The Union because there's really no other place for that sort of thing. Cory makes big scene about how un-laid he is, and it does work, but only because Ben Savage is hilarious when he's acting angry, something we've noted with consistency throughout the series.

I still can't figure out why they did this. It's obviously not for family-friendliness, I mean they swear relatively frequently and everyone else has had sex, so I just don't get it. Was it just for the jokes? It doesn't even work with her character, she's always been progressive and liberal, it doesn't make sense. I know I'm late to the game in saying that, but damn it's annoying. But they get married in the next episode, so I guess this is the last time.

Okay here's something compelling, Cory has to choose a best man. So is it Shawn or Eric? In The Dorm, Shawn and Cory try to imagine what will happen if Eric is best man, and it ends with Eric burning down the church, and indeed, when it skips to Eric and Cory discussing the same subject, that does in fact end with Eric setting The Dorm on fire. And this really highlights the disappointing change in Eric, since at the end of season 6 HE WAS FEENY'S BEST MAN AND DIDN'T SCREW UP ANYTHING. HE WAS CLOSE TO ADOPTING A CHILD. And now he just casually sets a dorm room on fire? It's not really even that funny. And the real emotion would have come from Cory having to choose between the season 5/6 Eric and Shawn, now there's a decision. Choosing between Shawn and this braindead zombie Eric? I'm not even invested.

Cory's parents are upset that he's chosen Shawn as his best man, and there's like a minute long effort to convince Cory to choose Eric. It's a massive waste of time though, since as soon as Cory calmly agrees to have Eric as his best man (he clearly knows Eric is about to mess something up), braindead zombie Eric lights a sparkler in celebration and then sets the house on fire.

Did you think we would get out of here without the other dress-related trope? Not a chance. Time for Topanga to be unhappy with her own dress. But not just any dress, it was Amy's wedding dress, and it's been in the family "since the Civil War". Outside of budget constraints, I really can't see any reason why anyone would want to wear someone else's wedding dress, but whatever. This stuff is so easy to write. And I know what you're gonna say, I'm being too serious, this episode is supposed to be a fun time, a little fun before the wedding, but it's just not hitting any of the right notes for me.

And what would a wedding preparation episode be without a Professor Umbridge style wedding planner? Yes, how silly, she has a posh accent and she means business. Does anyone like this episode at all? Maybe it's fun if you've had a wedding, and maybe can relate? I don't know.

Apparently Alan hired Feeny and "his jazz group" to play the music at the wedding. Of course Feeny has a jazz group. They meet right after his yoga class, and right before his astronaut training program.

Listen. Okay, listen. There are two things I hate on television, above all others. Weddings and pregnancies. Proposals are a close third. And it's not the ideas I hate, it's the destruction of those otherwise nice ideas for the sake of entertainment. Every storyline boils down to "how much of this situation can we send to shit in 20 minutes of screen time".

Shawn shows up with the other girls, all wearing their ugly dresses from before. He has apparently coached them on pretending to like the dresses, and they all demonstrate their ability to lie to Topanga, whose eye won't stop twitching. Morgan doesn't want to play along though.

Arite. Fine. That's pretty funny. It is odd though. Morgan's always been really sweet to Topanga in the past.

Okay if we're talking about odd, then this is odd. Eric feels cheated by not being chosen as best man, so he decides to be the groom instead. He "confesses" his love for Topanga and tells her to marry him, I'm sure you all have a vivid memory of this scene. Taken alone, it's hilarious, but it's just so ridiculous. It's a shenanigan. Antics. Nothing in this episode makes any sense.

The mockumentary style thing turns out to be Cory and Topanga speaking to the other characters on the show in the Matthews living room. They've decided that all this trouble is a waste of time and that they won't survive an eight-month engagement. BETTER GET MARRIED IN A WEEK. IN THE LIVING ROOM. So there you go, there it is. We see a big title card invitation to the wedding.

 During the credits, they break the fourth wall for real this time to invite the viewer to their wedding, and to RSVP at coryandtopanga.com, which I'm sorry to say doesn't exist anymore. Did any of you see the original run of this show? I'd love to know what was actually on that site.

Well that was terrible. What an absolute waste of time. Not only does the wedding not actually occur in the living room, but all the issues with the dresses that took up so much damn time completely vanish in the next episode. I just checked and nobody mentions Amy's dress again and the bridesmaids' dresses are totally different, also without any mention. So this was a total waste of time, except for moving the wedding up from 8 months to next week. Great.

Plot: 0 - See above.

Character Development: 0 - See above, and the fact that Eric is a braindead zombie.

Humor: Indeterminate - I don't know, you can decide for yourself. I would probably find some of the stuff funny if I weren't so appalled by the rest of it.

Life Lesson: 0 - JUST HAVE IT NEXT WEEK IT'LL BE FINE, DON'T WORRY ABOUT ANYBODY'S AVAILABILITY.

1.0 or less out of 4.0. I can already see the comments about that scene with Eric proposing to Topanga, and yeah if you pull it up on youtube out of the blue it's worth a laugh, but I was just so bored by everything that came before it, I couldn't even enjoy it. I don't know what to say, I wasn't expecting to find such a worthless episode this late in the series. It was almost entirely pointless, predictable, cliche, and worst of all boring. 

I don't think I will ever watch any of these first six episodes again. Thanks for reading, I guess.

All images used under Fair Use.