Episode 7x13 "The Provider"

Anybody remember that Joshua kid? They made such a big deal about this baby at the end of season six, but have they even mentioned him so far this season? I know he shows up a few more times, but man, he really fell out of the spotlight.

Also, if you were one of the first 80 or so readers of 7x12, you saw a typo where I wrote "Hunter mind" instead of "Hunter men". I've been fairly lax with my proofreading, but still, how the hell did that happen... One more thing, it occurred to me that Shawn never bothered to ask Chet about Elaine. Is Elaine the stripper Chet was talking about? Not very clear.

One MORE thing. I tweeted the review of Eric Hollywood at Will Friedle yesterday. He hasn't responded. Sad day.

Cory finds Shawn at The Union. He's got the greatest news in the world, that he landed a telemarketing job. Half of that sentence is not true. But hey, we were all giving Cory a hard time for not having a job back when he wanted to buy that house. This is at least a step in the right direction.

But Topanga made an even bigger step in that direction. More like a sprint, really. She ran the hundred meter dash compared to Cory's one step. Lady Luck placed Topanga next to a fashion magazine editor on a subway earlier today, and ultimately Mrs. Lawrence was hired as the editor's assistant. So there's our setup. Topanga is always better than Cory at everything, and now his inferiority is finally coming to a head.

On the other side of The Union, Eric finds a lucky penny because everyone was completely out of ideas at this point. Jack is around too, and he's actually pretty patient with Eric's dumbness. That's always nice to see. Also Jack is wearing his uniform, even though he blatantly got fired from working here by Bridgett in episode 10. Rachel shows up too, and I know I've had a lot of bad things to say about Rachel, she's had a lot of bad scenes, but this one is the worstttttttt. I don't even care that she gave away The Apartment, I don't care that she did it a second time, not compared to this. She's jokingly seducing Eric for his penny, and that she's marry him for a nickel, but the writing and delivery are irredeemably bad (and it's not really a good joke in theory either). This MUST have been the first take, and nobody on the set cared enough to try again.

At The Dorm, Cory's trying to sell some magazines.

He's doing a very dry monotone for this whole bit and it's fantastic. The golden rule is that Cory is hilarious whenever he's doing something out of the ordinary (getting angry, for example), and this is no exception.

Cory goes to some room in the background on his quest for Aspirin, and Topanga equips her husbands telemarketing headset. She manages to sell eight magazines to the first person she calls, while Cory hasn't sold any all day. I completely understand how this is grating for Cory, and I would feel the same in his position, but as a third party I can't help loving Topanga right now. She is an enormous sweetheart, it feels exactly like Girl Meets World Topanga. Cory's getting fed up though.

Time for some Lucky Penny shenanigans because everyone was completely out of ideas at this point. Eric decides to call out a big tough football player as being gay t prove that his penny can protect him from anything.

The guy actually is gay, as is every other football player nearby. That's pretty bold for '99 right? That seems like a laudably bold thing to put on your show in 1999.

Outside, Cory's playing solitaire for the same reason that he owns a poster of celery. He can't figure out his next move, but Topanga shows up and makes it seem obvious and easy. Okay that one was a little annoying, you don't interrupt somebody's game of solitaire. "Solitary" is right there in the name. We learn that Cory quit his telemarketing job and all the feelings of inferiority start to come out. Topanga can see that he's upset, and asks if he wants to go home and have "pookie pook," which is adorable, but he's not in the mood since she's better than him at that too. The rest of the gang are all off on the sidelines, and Rachel comments that Cory and Topanga are having their "first fight". Now, this has been mentioned in the comments many times, how absurd it is that they call this their first fight. But SURELY Rachel just meant that it was their first fight as a married couple. Right? Well we'll find out soon enough.

That grammar correction sends Cory (and me) over the edge. His explosive reaction to that is completely justified. That sweetheart Topanga is long gone. It's a pretty drastic shift in her behavior from a few minutes ago. So they both reach their boiling points, and Topanga basically says that she has to be perfect since Cory sucked at his job, Topanga is way more vicious in this fight, up until Cory tells her that she killed his spirit. It's pretty harsh and the sad piano music starts playing as Topanga walks out of The Union.

Shawn uses his extensive knowledge of his parents' fights to give Cory some advice. It's pretty obvious advice though, basically just "go talk to her and sort this out," but it comes from a good place. Eric wants to help too. He doesn't have any real advice, but still makes a heartfelt gesture after a funny exchange with Shawn.

It's very sweet, and that's really all due to Will. His delivery is always spot on and I love him even if he won't respond to my tweet. No longer lucky, Eric gets struck by lightning multiple times here inside the Union. It's a little over the top.

So now there's a montage of Cory and Topanga arguing at The Dorm, it's essentially the same stuff they said at The Union, but there's one part in particular worth noting.

There you go. Both of these characters believe this is the first fight they have ever had. Not just since marriage. I refused to believe that that's what they were going for, but this is undeniable proof. I am absolutely stunned. Who let this happen? How could the actors do this with straight faces? NOBODY on the crew stopped this from happening? I... I'm incredulous. Is season 7 in a parallel bizarro universe? First Alan wasn't in the Navy, now Cory and Topanga have literally never fought before? What show am I watching?

The argument reaches a climax as Cory gives a concise statement of what's really bothering him.

I'm not really sure what kind of reviewing I can do here. It's just five minutes of them working through an argument. It's a believable argument and the resolution is decent, but the problem is that this was also a believable argument from day 1. Am I stupid or has this never been an issue before? The entire point of this episode is to watch this five minute scene at the end where Cory and Topanga are working through this fight. I could understand if this were "the episode where Cory finally fights with Topanga about his inferiority complex," except that his complex was invented just for this episode. There is no "finally" about it. This is the kind of thing you have to build up to. If they had given us some hints that Cory secretly resented his wife's success in the episodes leading up to this, then I'd be pretty happy. But they didn't. So I'm just not that invested in this.


The resolution is Topanga saying "We're not competing, we're a team," and hey, that's pretty awesome. As a team, they manage to sell a magazine subscription to the guy Cory had trouble with earlier in the episode.

During the credits, Eric shows up looking for his penny. It's still over the top, but funny.

Plot: 0.25 - Like I said, this episode is supposed to be THE ONE WHERE THEY FIGHT, but they've fought many many times before, and a handful of them were worse than this. The ONE thing this relationship does not need is more drama. We've had to deal with them breaking up twice, and I'm done. I'm done with the fights between these two. And like I said just above, there really wasn't anything leading up to this. It just sort of happened, and that's not enough to make it meaningful.

Character Development: 0.5 - The basis for The Fight was solid, I just wish they had set a trail of breadcrumbs for it in earlier episodes.

Humor: 0.75 - Cory was pretty funny, Eric was okay, Rachel was not funny.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - We're not competing, we're a team.

2.5 out of 4.0. This is not their first fight. It's not their worst fight either. It's not a well established fight. It's just a fight. I like the resolution, but it wasn't worth the work to get to it.

So I have a community project for you guys. This episode had a "How ya doin..." and it made me want to put together a compilation video of all the How ya doin's in the series. So if anyone is willing to sign up for a certain section of the series, half of a season for example, and watch all the episodes looking for instances of How ya doin, then I can put them all together into one video. It would be dreadfully tedious to look through them all myself. Maybe there's an archive of full episode scripts out there that we could just search through instead. So. Yeah. Leave a comment.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday.

All images used under Fair Use.