Episode 7x21 "Angela's Ashes"

Okay here's something I BET you didn't know. Super duper monumental shoutout to commenter Jacob for sharing this with us in the comments of 7x20. Michael Jacobs had another show called Maybe This Time, and it was awful. In fact, one of the main characters, a young girl named Gracie, was a precursor to Riley on Girl Meets World in that she revealed Jacobs's affinity for girls who sound like they have stuffy noses. Seriously, listen, she sounds like Riley.  But that's not why we're here. In episode 15, "Acting Out," Gracie is having trouble with a friend who's getting peer pressured by some lame kids. As you can see here, http://youtu.be/AmIWlOyT3Og?t=16m34s she starts watching Boy Meets World. It's not a real episode of BMW obviously, this is a cameo by Ben and Rider as Cory and Shawn. They talk about how Shawn is actually a good person, like how Gracie's friend is a good person, so she gets the message. It's totally bizarre, Jacobs is using one show to teach a lesson to a character on his other show. That is an unheard of level of deus ex machina. Or rather, cornelius ex machina.

HOW FUCKING CRAZY IS THAT? I completely lost my mind over that. Thank you again, Jacob. There's more footage of them at the end and Feeny gets involved, sort of.

Wow. Just wow. Also Dane Cook is on that show. I didn't recognize him at first, but there he is.

There are two things you need to know. Topanga is one of 500 quarter-finalists for an internship at the prestigious New York law firm "Brown-Elliot," and Jack has a rich stepfather. I suppose it's fair to say that the writers finally chose a direction for Jack, but that's really just because of the time constraint. I'm sure if they had another four or five episodes after this they'd change him again.

Rich Stepfather is bankrolling Jack's new business venture, "ImJack.com." Or it could be "UmJack.com." Matthew Lawrence needs to enunciate. What he doesn't need is to be any more smug because he would probably just explode at that point. Eric shows up in his graduation gown to remind us that the timeline makes no sense, and Angela's dad comes on the scene as well. The Union is fully channeling the spirit of Chubbie's right now. I don't remember this guy's rank, I think he was a sergeant, so let's go with that. Apparently Sergeant Moore has been reassigned to Europe.

And here's the kicker, he wants Angela to go with him. Shawn shows up now too (of course) just after Sergeant Moore asks Angela, so Shawn doesn't know what's going on yet but he can feel the tension immediately.

I touched on it back in Angela's Men, but the dynamic between Shawn and Moore is fantastic. A mutual respect founded on strength of character. It was still fucking weird how involved Moore got in his daughter's love life, but if we can look past that, I love the way these two talk to each other. Actually, it's really Shawn and any father figure. Alan, Chet, Turner, Feeny... Then again, it's anyone with any father figure. That's really what the first five seasons were.

But that sort of talk is more suited to the next episode, so let's keep going. Angela explains the situation to Shawn, and it's clear that Cory is more interested in Shawn's situation than Topanga's potential internship. The final thread comes later when Jack gets a call from his stepfather (in The Union, for some reason) informing him that he's being "cut off." Rich Stepfather wants Jack to be an investment banker, but since Jack wants to make his narcissistic website "business" instead, he won't be getting financial support any longer. So there we go, there's our three plot threads.

At The Apartment, Cory is advising Shawn on his latest life changing problem. I will always prefer the old system where Shawn gave Cory advice about women, Ever since the beginning of season 5, when we first met Angela, things have been too Disney-soulmate-y for me. And we all spent a great deal of time raging at Cory for how he lectured Shawn around the time of Chasing Angela. I think that's a big reason why we loved the Lauren story so much, is that it was a return to reality from the Disney-soulmate territory. Anyway, this scene reminds me very much of that Cory, which makes me uncomfortable. Cory is supposed to know nothing and thus meet the world, so when the show tries to convince me that he knows everything about love, I'm not buyin it.

Shawn buys it though, and decides that he doesn't want Angela to go to Europe.

Cory says some more shit about shoes, I don't really get it.

Here's the scene now where Jack gets disowned by his stepdad over the payphone at The Union. Wearing a surprisingly hilarious expression of defeat, Jack shuffles over to Rachel, who makes a passing comment about the appeal of joining the Peace Corps. So let's keep that in mind. She's pleasantly supportive of Jack when he explains the situation. This is exactly the sort of thing they should have STARTED with. This is an EXCELLENT jumping off point for Jack, and Rachel's supportive reaction was the perfect way to kickstart their dynamic. That's literally the best thing I've seen between those two in the series. That exchange was the best thing. Why the fuck did they save this until the end of the series? Very frustrating.

Topanga went through another round of interviews this morning, and Cory initially tries to pay attention and show he cares. But as soon as Shawn walks in the door he dismisses her again. Shawn's toast at the wedding was very nice, and it looked to hold true for a little while, but it's clear as day by now that Cory will always care more about Shawn than Topanga. And those two episodes of Girl Meets World pretty much confirmed that.

Shawn finds Angela outside. Everything seems neatly wrapped up when she says "I could never leave you," up until she qualifies it with "... unless you said I could go." Pretty much the perfect setup, thumbs up to the writers.

 Two days later, Shawn arrives at The Dorm to, I don't know, hang out with Cory. Naturally they immediately start talking about the situation with Angela, and Shawn explains that he's basically resigned and just wants to enjoy the time he has left with her. Shawn actually knows Angela, and clearly understands the situation, but Cory, who has never had an actual conversation with Angela, insists that he knows better and gives Shawn some bad advice. Admittedly, his first round of advice was good, but this time he's talking out of his ass. It's intentional by the writers, though. Cory explains that you have to pay attention to women to "pass their tests," and he then proceeds to pay absolutely no attention to Topanga yet again. And she's being so cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute and sweet, it honestly breaks my heart that Cory doesn't give a shit about her interviews.

Shawn is convinced that he has to tell Angela to stay, but he only finds Sergeant Moore at Angela's Dorm. There's an emotional confrontation here, deserving of some comment. Shawn has always had to watch things get taken away from him, watch people leave. So you can feel the weight of his decision to stand up and say "not this time." My only complaint is that he didn't do it on his own. Why oh why oh why did Shawn need Cory to tell him to do this? Whether or not it's the right thing to do, the writers are having him do it, but it seems so obvious that he should have reached this decision on his own.

This scene is really well written, giving another reason to love the dynamic between Shawn and Papa Moore, right up until Shawn says he's going to ask Angela to marry him. Marriage as a tool to tie someone down is sort of despicable, so I think that's a pretty low blow from Shawn. Not a fan. Sarge concedes that he'll step out of the way if Angela wants to marry Shawn, and that's when Angela finally shows up.

As an aside, it's funny that Moore is so much taller than Shawn, his head gets cut out of the shot every time the camera is centered on Shawn.

So yeah, Angela is here now, and Shawn tries to steer their conversation toward asking her to marry him. He's about to do it too, before she cuts in saying "You're the only person that knows how important it is for me and my dad to spend this time together."

Mobile users, you're missing out on that one. Rider sells the hell out of this, he looks absolutely devastated as Shawn realizes that he has to let her go. I may not be fully invested in the Shawn/Angela relationship, but I sure as hell am invested in Shawn. That look on his face kills me every single time, and the sad guitar music comes in at exactly the right moment. Who directed this... Fred Savage! No kidding! Well done, Freddy. This is my favorite moment for Shangela. And not because it's ending, I'm not that mean. It's because when Angela walks over to her dad there, and Shawn is left holding out his arm with that dead look in his eyes... for those few seconds, I actually believe it.

It's time for the final goodbyes at The Union. They make one last attempt at showing us Rachel and Angela's friendship. Eric hugs Angela and sings her a song, which is hilarious, and then asks her to hand out some fliers with his picture and phone number to the girls in Europe. It's a picture of his season 4/5 self, and the bottom of the flier says 1800 - CALLERIC, but get this, it's blurred out. They blurred out the phone number on the bottom of the fliers, look at this.

I could swear we saw those in another episode, but it's not Eric Hollywood or the one with his one-man play. Help me out here.
*edit* Thanks to commenter Josh for pointing me to The Psychotic Episode! That is indeed the first time we saw that picture.

Topanga arrives just in time and we're like "oh right, they're supposed to be best friends." Not much else to say about this until Angela heads out the door for the last time. Shawn has had to deal with a lot of people leaving him in one way or another over the years. But this time he let them go, and that says a whole lot more about him than an audience-cheering happy ending could have said. Cory tells him not to spin out of control, and Shawn, for once, looks like he's going to be okay. This time, he's not going to spin out of control.

To wrap things up, we learn that Topanga got the Brown-Elliot internship, but that means they'll have to move to New York. Cory is acting like he's hearing about this for the very first time, which is more for comedy than drama, thank god. Topanga doesn't seem at all affected by the fact that Cory hasn't been paying attention this whole time. Cory, on the other hand, is very affected.

Plot: 0.5 - The continued emotional destruction of Shawn Hunter. Lots of groundwork being laid for the finale.

Character Development: 1.0 - Shawn decides to take control of something. While he ends up making the selfless choice, he still made a choice. And so he's not going to "spin out of control" this time. And for the first and only time, I actually believed in Shangela.

Humor: 0.5 - It's not the most important part, but Cory and Eric do enough.

Life Lesson: 1.0 - There are more important things than your high school sweetheart.

3.0 out of 4.0. I'll never know why they did this episode separate from the finale. Both parts of the finale are mostly clips, they even do a segment for Rachel. So Angela is just completely left out, and Angela is unarguably more important than Rachel. If they had simply used fewer clips, they could have included the Angela story while also giving her some clip-time. Or hell, do this episode as the first of a three-part finale . It's just weird to me that Angela didn't get to be part of the clip show. Which is not to say I'm upset about it, just confused.

Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.