Episode 7x16 "Seven the Hard Way (Part 2)"

I like the title a lot. It's a reference to rolling a seven "the hard way" in the game craps, as well as that our group of seven friends are having a hard time reconciling. If we were to define a value for "title cleverness as it relates to content," this one would be pretty high.

The Seven have all been corralled into a classroom by Mister Feeny. I'm not sure how this could have possibly been accomplished. Maybe this is one of those classes that they all have together and he just kept them afterward. Eric has taken a position of command alongside Feeny, as he is by far the most concerned of the seven. We had our hearts broken with Eric in the previous episode, but he seems to have set that aside for the greater good (read as: the writers decided to forget about it). The writers also seem to have forgotten that they put Shawn and Cory at odds as The War ended, because now they're as bromancey as ever, to Topanga's great annoyance. We observed that this is the most compelling dynamic to come out of The War, so hopefully it reaches a meaningful resolution.

So we've got three main threads to deal with here.
1. Topanga wants to be Cory's #1, and despite what Shawn said at the wedding, he's evidently still got that spot.
2. Jack and Angela feel like outsiders since they haven't been around as long.
3. Rachel feels like a SUPER outsider since she hasn't been around very long AND she is no one's girlfriend or relative or close friend, like Jack with Shawn/Eric and Angela with Shawn/Topanga.

There's also the fourth thread of everyone completely disrespecting Eric and treating him like a loser, but it seems like we're erasing that one, either to simplify the plot (most likely) or to show us how mature Eric is by being able to set his own issues aside for the greater good (giving the writers too much credit).

Rachel claims that she doesn't fit in with "these people" and heads for the door before being stopped by Eric. Feeny decides to treat everyone like the children they're acting like, telling them all to write down on a sheet of paper what they like about each other. The prospect makes Rachel stay for a moment, but everyone is too busy fighting to write anything down, causing Rachel to head out the door. It's actually a funny contrast to the Big Shawn Exit, this is the Small Quiet Rachel Exit.

I want to say that all of the petty arguing going on between The Non-Eric Six is really well written. These are all genuine issues derived from what we've actually seen on the show, so there's some real bite to these fights.

Pragmatic Cory insists that no one will care about these stupid little fights by next week, which I appreciate since in most cases he'd be right. Feeny responds by dismissing everyone from the room, not because he agrees with Cory, but because he's fed up with their attitudes. Eric protests, but they all leave and things fall apart even more in the hallway when Cory (reluctantly) decides to talk with Topanga instead of Shawn. Shawn drastically overreacts to this, especially when you recall what he said at Corpanga's wedding, but you know, overreacting is just the Shawn Hunter Way.

It fades out after Shawn's Big Exit, and then back in on Cory and Topanga arriving at a retirement party for Mister Feeny in Future-2006.

I've spent a good amount of time thinking about how to review this part. The next 10 minutes are a Ghost of Christmas Future situation, and I figure everyone here knows almost all the lines by heart. What can I say that's not just preaching to the choir? I never managed to come up with a good answer to that question, so let's just wing it. 

Corpanga run into Angela first, and she's wearing leather pants which is probably the most interesting thing about her. Cory leaves the girls in search of alcohol and finds Jack by the drinks table. Okay this is actually something I want to talk about. Jack has become a captain of industry, real 1% type guy, and he doesn't have much to say to dirty proles like Cory and Shawn.

Rather than make me fearful of what Jack could become, as was intended, it makes me regret what he could have been. When we first met Jack, his only real trait was that he's Shawn's brother. That got solved after like two episodes, and since then he's basically just been Eric's sidekick. But what if he'd been more like his filthy rich stepdad, sort of cold and elitist, aimed at becoming a businessman, and then he would be slowly turned away from that by spending time with Eric and Rachel and Shawn. That's a solid development arc, and then we would actually feel something when we see him this way in The Future That Could Be. We would say "Oh no without his friends he went back to being a cold businessman." It's a shame, he would have been ten times more interesting, and his part of this scene would have been highly emotional.

Time to meet Shawn. He's having a conversation with Feeny about his freelance writing for Rolling Stone, clearly a step up from "This entire paper is in one sentence." I like it though.

I almost wish this were the real future just for that, Shawn keeping in touch with Feeny. It's very City Slackers. So let's just assume that that happens in the real timeline too.

Cory, Topanga, and Angela find their way over to Shawn. Shawn claims not to know what Angela's been up to all this time (she is also a freelance writer), and then she has to leave. Now we learn that Shawn actually has been following her writing all this time, and I'm not a very big fan of that. It's the same problem as always, that I just don't buy into the idea that Shawn and Angela are destined for each other, and we're supposed to think that he missed his big chance to get her again now. But I don't feel any of that, to me it's just weird that he hasn't been able to move past her for seven years, more than twice as long as he even knew her. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I am terrified of the fact that she's going to be on Girl Meets World, for the same reason.

So Eric has become a hermit and changed his name to Playswith Squirrels, and he carries around his manifesto. Apparently, all hermits have one.

There's a minute long exchange between Playswith and Jack, and once again this would be a million times more powerful if Jack had been on the road to being this coldhearted businessman before he met Eric. Jack even says "What is this power you have over me?" Your homework for tonight is to watch this episode while pretending that my new backstory for Jack is canon. I'm telling you, it's infinitely better.

Everyone begins to gather in the center of the room and there's a joke where Playswith uses "niche" instead of "niece", which is funny on its own, but even funnier when you remember that he used "niece" instead of "niche" in episode 14. Both times Feeny corrected him, and both times Eric suggested that Feeny was drunk. It is hilarious.

They all begin to wonder what happened to Rachel, and she answers that question herself, walking toward their group from the background. She's got this insane dixie hairstyle and outfit, and she's trying to do like a southern accent. Let me be frank here. This is a clown show. I am nowhere near taking this at all seriously, it's just so stupid. I think if she hadn't done the accent, or if she weren't loudly chewing gum, I could accept it, but this is a caricature. I cannot take it seriously, I'm sorry. So once again the writers have failed at making me care about Rachel. And unlike Jack, this gives me no ideas for a better backstory for her.

Yeah, I'm with you, Topanga. By the way Playswith Squirrels married a moose. They're very happy.

Feeny asks about Playswith's manifesto, and apparently it's a compendium of all his knowledge. So they decide to take a look. As you all know, the only writing is on the first page, where it says "Lose one friend, lose all friends, lose yourself."

Feeny tells Mister Squirrels that he was always his most interesting student, which falls into the same category as that "correspondence" exchange between Feeny and Shawn. I think everyone responds to this scene so well because it reminds us of the Eric of yore. Yeah he's being silly, but everyone is still listening to him. They're all taking him seriously. And as we've so thoroughly sorted out, that's the key difference between past Eric and season 7 Eric. Everyone is taking him seriously despite his eccentric presentation. And dammit all that's how it's supposed to be.

The screen wibble-wobbles us back in time to just after Rachel leaves the classroom. Only this time, Eric immediately chases after her and fireman-carries her back into the room. He shows her that he wrote something down on his piece of paper, and indeed it's the same thing Playswith Squirrels wrote in his manifesto.

A sort of friendship-dogpile begins to build up on the floor, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me smile, but I'm forced to come at this as a critic. Those three problems I listed earlier are all solved right now with one or two sentences. The same problems that caused all these friendships to fall apart are solved almost instantly by very obvious sentiments. They're just like "We like you Rachel" and that's it. Jack and Angela feeling like outsiders is never even addressed, and the Topanga/Shawn issue gets dismissed almost immediately. You get a nice feeling from watching this, but if you think about it a little more it's really not that satisfying.

They all go after Feeny at the end, and at some point Matthew Lawrence gets hit in the eye.

I can't see exactly what happens, but it's funny to me that he's breaking character right in the middle of this scene.

This is an unconventional episode, so I don't think my conventional scoring system would be meaningful. Playswith Squirrels is enough to make anyone love this episode. Beyond that, everyone else's future self was well written, I especially like what they did with Shawn and Feeny. Oh except Rachel, hers was an absolute circus. This whole thing is centered on Rachel, and at no point in either Part 1 or 2 was I able to feel sympathetic toward her, so in that regard the writers have failed. But that's more of a long term failure starting from her introduction than a failure in this particular episode. If we had cared about her in any way before The War, this two-parter would have gone off without a hitch. There's also the feeling of a huge potential if Jack had my new backstory. Finally, when we also consider the extremely shallow resolution at the end, we're forced to wonder, would anyone really care about this without Playswith Squirrels?

Thanks for reading, see you Friday.

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