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.

All images used under Fair Use.

Episode 7x15 "The War (Part 1)"

Alright, here we are. This episode and its successor are definitely the most iconic of season 7. You think about season 7, and this is what comes to mind. Well maybe that's not true, you mostly think of part 2, which is intergalactically famous. Either way, they're far more memorable than the series finale. Honestly I think this sequence could have worked as the series finale, but I guess there just wasn't enough Joshua, there wasn't enough Michael Jacobs's kid for this to be a proper finale.

And to the folks who pointed out the Cat's in the Cradle lyric references, thanks! Both instances of that went completely over my head.

So last review I sarcastically claimed that they would surely reintroduce the fact that Angela and Rachel are living together, as well as Rachel's job as an RA. The universe does not allow me to have fun, so indeed that's what happens immediately in this episode. Shawn and Angela are making out on Angela's bed, apparently they're the new Jack+Rachel, while Cory and Topanga read magazines and make an inconsiderate mess on Rachel's bed.

Rachel comes home complaining about how awful her RA job is. Apparently the only reason she took this job was to get a reserved parking spot, but someone parked in her spot today! And clearly that is grounds for losing your fucking shit. But hey, she's had a bad day, there's more going on here than just the parking spot, and it's all made worse when we learn that Shawn Hunter is the parking spot stealing troublemaker. Instead of just apologizing, Shawn and Cory decide to be unreasonably mean to Rachel about it.

It has the same feeling as You Light Up My Union, when these two went through Rachel's underwear. The actors are doing the exact same voices as that episode too, and we're feeling that same, like, "who are these guys?" as we did back then. So I'm really not a fan of that aspect, but we need to start a war here which means SOMEBODY'S gotta be a jerk.

Rachel bans the boys from The Dorm and they swear their revenge. The War begins the next morning when Rachel and Angela are awoken by the sound of Rachel's car alarm going off inside their room. Because that's where the car is. While The Dorm Car Strike may not have been fully warranted, it was certainly an impressive move by the Cory Shawn Federation to kick off The War.

The War's first parley takes place here in The Union, and the Rachel Republic has brought UN Inspector Feeny to investigate allegations of war crimes. But after hearing the story, Feeny... doesn't dish out any punishment at all.

It speaks to the cosmic power of Team Cory Shawn that not even Feeny can bring them down. Except that he's brought them down a thousand times before. Maybe Feeny got laid that morning, or maybe he has a soft spot for the boys' pranks after Bee True. Whatever the reason, it looks like they've gotten away with this one. Speaking of, Dean Bolander got totally swept under the rug after her wedding at the end of season 6. State of the Unions was her last episode in the series. I don't think they even mention her this season.

The girls break The First Parley as Rachel squirts water out of a water bottle onto Cory, and Angela does the same into Shawn's pants. This event is known to most historians as The Union Water Ambush, and is widely regarded as a turning point in The War. These sorts of guerilla tactics were largely ineffective, yes, but they set the tone for future events.

Topanga arrives as the boys are recuperating from The Union Water Ambush, and it's unclear at first who she'll be reinforcing, but indeed she views The Dorm Car Strike favorably, and thus lends her strength to the Cory Shawn Federation.

See that guy in the background? That is amazing.

The Second Parley occurs in the independent border nation of The Apartment. Both the Rachel Republic and the Cory Shawn Federation (or CSF) have held ground here in the past, and now they're both looking to bolster their ranks. The Kingdom of Jack has long been allied to the CSF under the terms of the Treaty of Hunter Brotherhood, but Prime Minister Rachel makes some ethically-grey promises (that will likely go unfulfilled) to King Jack, convincing him to renounce the CSF and fall under Rachel's banner.

The United States of Eric are also in attendance at The Second Parley, constantly trying to insert themselves into The War, even though no one wants them there. I know it sets up the plot, but this is a perfect example of the changes they made to Eric this season. What happened to "THE MATTHEWS BRUTHAAAS"? And Jack is his best friend for crying out loud.

Feeny's giving a lecture to all of the warring nations, which is odd since some are seniors while the others are sophomores. The lecture is on the Civil War, and hey! That's awesome, we haven't had a school lesson tie in with the plot for far too long.

After a brief ceasefire between Shawn and Angela, the flames of war reignite here in the classroom. The United States of Eric plead for the others to make peace, despite just yesterday being desperate to join The War.

Okay I'm done with the war-history gag now, because there's no good way to describe what's about to happen. We quickly discover that Team Rachel put superglue on the chairs of Cory, Shawn, and Topanga, then poured honey on them and left the room as a ferocious bear roams into the classroom.

As we all know, the final straw comes next in The Union, where Cory and Shawn have blown up a sexy picture of Rachel and put it on display. The prank war is over at this point, and everyone thinks Shawn and Cory crossed the line with this since, as we all know, implied nudity is worse than literally putting peoples' lives in danger. This poster thing is a pretty scummy thing to do, and definitely goes beyond the conventional standards of a prank war, but RACHEL ATTACKED THEM WITH A BEAR. I really wish they hadn't done the bear thing. It's so absurd and over the top that it takes away from the emotion of this scene. How can I take all these emotions seriously when they just got attacked by a huge bear in a classroom? How can Rachel play the victim when she almost killed Cory, Shawn, and Topanga with a bear? I also want to point out once again that they can't get through a single story involving Rachel without bringing up her appearance. The fact that she's good looking has to come up EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The much more compelling aspect here is when Topanga shows up. Apparently she wasn't informed about the posters, and takes the exclusion personally. In fact, the whole reason she sided with Team Cory Shawn was to "be part of the legendary team," and recalling the toast Shawn gave at their wedding about stepping aside for Topanga, we can understand why she's so hurt about being left out. This is by far the most interesting thing the writers have done with Topanga in a very long time. This draws on the entire history of these three to delivery a genuinely powerful punch.

Things only get worse when Cory makes an offhand comment about how they haven't been friends with Rachel for very long. She takes it understandably hard. Everyone insists that she's their close friend, in particular that she was one of Topanga's bridesmaids, which in my opinion is sufficient evidence that she's actually part of their group, but Rachel is inconsolable at this point.

We have to stop and consider how we view Rachel as well. Is our lack of interest coming from the short time she's been around? That's how she thinks the others see her, and it makes you stop for a second and wonder if that's our hangup as well, but I don't think it is. Lauren is a good example, she managed to be interesting right away. And Harley, and Nunzio, and Griff, and Eric's old best friend Jason. This show is perfectly capable of making us care about characters without long exposure. They just weren't able to do it with Rachel. It barely seems like they even tried. She was just a trophy to be obtained by Eric and Jack for a whole season. Sorry Rachel, but my lack of interest in you is simply because you're not interesting.

The rest of the episode is showing all the other relationships fall apart. Jack and Angela are upset that they aren't part of the inner circle, Topanga is sad that she was left out, and for no reason that I can think of at all, Shawn is also mad at Cory. For now, at least. It's gone by the start of the next episode, so I don't really get it.

All that's really left is Eric. He makes some pretty adorable attempts at using Ghandi's philosophies to mend things between the Hunter boys at The Apartment. It falls apart though when Jack points out that no one wanted Eric on their team earlier, causing Eric's heart to quite visibly break in two.

Plot: 1.0 - I don't find myself very invested in what happened to Rachel, but the Eric and Topanga parts definitely hit hard. Topanga especially. Her feelings of exclusion are totally justified and we have the entire series to draw on for the emotional punch of that exclusion. I think it's awesome that they decided to address Shawn's toast from the wedding this way. Up until now, it looked like we had a smooth transition to Topanga being the best friend.

Character Development: 1.0 - Interesting developments for Topanga and Eric, as well as Rachel even though it's not as emotional for the viewer. We have to deal with the fact that Eric's development is founded on the fact that he's a braindead zombie this season, but still.

Humor: 0.75 - Everybody was pretty funny up until the poster ordeal when things got all gloomy.

Life Lesson: 0.5 - Being excluded fucking hurts.

3.25 out of 4.0. It's a good episode even though the bear prank is completely insane. We also have to remember that this is a buildup episode for Part 2, and it does a fantastic job of building up the things that it needs to. I still don't understand the tension between Cory and Shawn, and there's no reason for Team Rachel to have any lingering animosity, which will be an important thing to think about in the next episode. Either way, the Topanga and Eric angles are enough for me to be completely satisfied with this episode.

Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.

Episode 7x14 "I'm Gonna Be Like You Dad"

Will favorited my tweet.

So there we go guys, mission accomplished. Blog complete. The rest of these reviews are just gravy.

Shawn and his cartilage piercing are making out with Angela outside The Union. A nearby Topanga is filling out a longevity quiz in Couples Magazine, verified for authenticity by health specialists across the globe, while Cory eats onion rings dipped in melted cheese. This is a refreshingly full scene! Cory interacts with both Topanga and Shawn, Shangela is actually entertaining, and Topanga's pretty funny too! Good start. Doesn't last long, but definitely a good start

The absolutely real and definitely-should-be-taken-seriously longevity quiz informs us that Cory should already be dead. He apparently can't feel his legs now, so the other three decide to go to a movie.

That total nonsense question there is the basis of Cory's story in this episode. But you know what, that's okay, because it's supposed to be silly background noise while Eric takes the spotlight. So let's see what he's up to.

This is something we don't usually see on Boy Meets World, and that's because it's profoundly annoying and it breaks the immersion. When Eric walks on-set, the audience starts cheering, preventing him from saying his lines. We just have to sit here watching and listening to the cheer and applause. I get it when the character is wearing or doing something of note, but he's wearing totally normal clothes and he simply walks into the kitchen. You are at the WRONG set, obnoxious audience. Unfortunately, that's not my only complaint here.

Here's a recap of this scene. 1. Eric wants to work at his dad's store. 2. Eric is about to graduate and is only taking two classes this semester. 3. Alan doesn't want Eric working at his store because he thinks his son is an idiot.

Point by point,
1. Reasonable. Eric is worried about his future so he's defaulting to the safe option.
2. NOT reasonable. This is his third year of college, how can he possibly take so few classes and graduate so quickly? Is he just getting his Associate's degree? Seems like a waste.
3. NOT reasonable. This is really not fun anymore. I thought we were done with this after Security Guy and Raging Cory. After all this time, Alan still doesn't respect Eric? Alan is so close to being the perfect TV dad, but this really spoils it for me.

Amy thinks it's a great opportunity for Eric to get some work experience. What really bugs me about this is that no one ever mentions that Eric has already worked at Alan's store. For better or worse, he has worked there before, and that's very relevant information! But nobody remembers!

So now we have to watch a pretty terrible scene of Cory at the doctor's office. I'm gonna skip talking about it because it's not funny and also not important. The only plot element is that Cory is convinced there's something wrong with him and wants every test there is.

We're in The Kitchen in the evening after Eric's first day at the store, and to Alan's great surprise, Eric did very well. Amy is here as the original Eric-defender of the day, but her relationship with Eric just isn't developed enough for us to really care, and the writers knew that, so they also brought in Mister Feeny. Feeny has a lot to say in Eric's defense. It's always nice to hear, but he really shouldn't have to anymore, right?

WHY DOESN'T ALAN BELIEVE IN HIS SON? HE GOT INTO COLLEGE. HE TOOK CARE OF AN ORPHAN BOY FOR SEVERAL MONTHS. HE'S BEEN WORKING AT THE UNION FOR AT LEAST A SEMESTER. THIS IS A CAPABLE, RESPONSIBLE PERSON. HOLY SHIT IT'S SEASON 7, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING.

Ughhhhhh, and it only gets worse from here! Now that Eric has proved capable at the store, Alan wants to keep him there forever to keep him from struggling out in "the real world". I'm gonna take a direct quote from 5x01 when Alan kicks Eric out of the house near the end of the episode, "In every kid's life there comes a time when he's just got to move on. And I hate that that time has come, but I wouldn't be a good father if I didn't recognize it, ... If I didn't think you could make it, I wouldn't be kicking you out."

To, once again, quote the wise Ben Sandwich, WE'RE DOING THIS STORY AGAIN?

We get a firsthand look at Eric while he's working, and for some reason everyone is standing off in the background watching. Jack and Rachel are there struggling with thought of what they want to do after graduating. Jack realizes that his dual major of engineering and journalism hasn't led him to a career that he wants, and Rachel's in a similar situation. I'm pretty curious what Eric majored in, but we'll never know. I actually appreciate this a lot. Even after four years (or three, in this case) of college, most people still don't know how they want to spend their lives, and anyone who claims that they do is probably putting up a front. There are exceptions, of course, but for the general audience this is nice to see from Jack and Rachel.

Alan uses their struggle to reinforce his position: by hiring Eric, he's protecting him from what Jack and Rachel are going through. Oh hey remember when Rachel became an RA and decided to live with Angela? I wonder how that's going. I'm sure they'll bring it up soon. That's totally unrelated, but I forgot about it until now. (I initially wrote this in sarcasm, but as is the way of things, the very next episode starts by reminding us of both of those things.)

I'd like to direct you again to that quote from 5x01, "If I didn't think you could make it, I wouldn't be kicking you out." Come on Alan. I think if we hadn't covered this extensively in past seasons, this episode would be fine. But we're supposed to be past this! There is no way to redeem this story, I'm sorry.

Alan specifically uses the words "He's safe here," and that brings back that story about the "kid gloves" in Security Guy, and even the end of Security Guy when Alan reassures Eric about his future on the condition that "you don't take the easy way out." BUT HERE IS ALAN TODAY, in season 7, encouraging, practically forcing Eric to take the easy way out. This episode is unbelievably frustrating, it's almost as self-contradicting as "this is our first fight ever" in the last episode.

HOLY SHIT IT'S GETTING WORSE. Amy points out that Rachel and Jack believe they're capable of anything, and listen to Alan here, "not everyone is capable of anything." Yeah that's great Alan, way to completely shit on your son, especially after you reassured Eric that he could be anything he wanted back in Security Guy. Hold on, I need something with alcohol in it.

At The Dorm, Shangela and Topanga talk about how insane Cory is acting, and it's pretty entertaining, but maybe that's just relative to the previous scene. I mean this City Slackers compares to the sludge we just went through with Alan.

As usual, weird/angry Cory is funny. The other three are about to head out to a movie to avoid Cory again, but Topanga comes back. We get a very drawn out scene of her deciding to comfort Cory, because hey, that's what you do when you love somebody. And he comments that he'll want to do the same for her whenever she's scared or sick. It's all pretty adorable even if it takes too long. So at least this episode isn't pure evil.

Alright let's close this thing out. Back at The Store, Alan initiates a conversation with Eric about his future. In an absolutely STUNNING display of continuity, he brings up the fact that Eric always wanted to be a weatherman. Eric says you have to know about meteorology to be a weatherman. COME ON WRITERS. ERIC IS IN COLLEGE. JUST ONE OFFHAND COMMENT THAT HE TOOK A COURSE IN METEOROLOGY HERE WOULD SEND ME TO THE MOON. WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT? AHHHHHHHHHH.

After an uplifting conversation that they already had in Security Guy, Eric thinks he wants to either be a weatherman or a veterinarian, which is perfect and makes me smile, so the writers get an A+ on that. Jack and Rachel show up to recruit Eric for dinner, and Alan sends him on his way to be in career-limbo with his friends, as he should be.

Okay I said this story was irredeemable, but that line was a very strong attempt at redemption. Perhaps the most critical component of Alan's character is that he worked as hard as he could to make sure his children have a better life than he had. So "I belong here, you belong with your friends" is a genuinely beautiful way of capturing that part of him. And Russ's delivery is spot on. That hits pretty hard.

That's pretty much the end. During the credits, Cory's crazy uncle who thinks he's Sammy Sosa shows up at The Dorm and wastes everybody's time for a while.

Plot: 0.25 - The endings of both stories worked for me, but the paths there were pretty unbearable for the most part.

Character Development: ? - I don't know. Alan regressed so much that I can't bring myself to give him credit for the progress. But the ending was great! I just don't know.

Humor: 0.5 - Humor duty pretty much all fell on Cory.

Life Lesson: Iunno. Don't be a jerk to Eric.

Whatever. This episode made me furious for the first 18 minutes, and then managed to rope me in at the end. I wish I'd written this summary while I was furious. I can't stand how disrespectful Alan was to his own son for most of it, especially since we're supposed to be past it already. It's not worth the ending, I'll say that much.

Thanks for reading! Only three weeks left. See you Monday.

All images used under Fair Use.

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.

Episode 7x12 "Family Trees"

Okay here we go, coming in with fresh eyes. I know a lot of people like this one, but there are a few issues we're going to have to address.

It's a family-wide effort to plan for Alan's birthday party, and Eric's in charge. Or so he thinks, anyway. Eric comments that their father is capable of torturing them for information after his time in the Navy, and Cory corrects him by saying he was a cook in the Coast Guard. We know for certain that Alan was in the Navy because of Kid Gloves in season 1, and being a cook would be a little anticlimactic. So I'm just gonna wildly assume that Cory is lying to try to embarrass his brother. The only alternative is that the writers are LITERAL FUCKING IDIOTS, and that just can't possibly be true.

Shawn makes his way onto the scene here in The Living Room with a snail mail letter from his mother Virna, who I think gave her last appearance in Turkey Day. She has apparently run off again since then. Cory is convinced that nothing good can come from reading this letter, but everyone else in the room thinks Shawn should read it.

Equipped with that cartilage piercing that he seems to only wear in seasons 4 and 7, Shawn does indeed the read the letter from Virna, and proceeds to inform everything that Virna is not his biological mother.

Okay, time to stop. Why did this happen? Is there a quota for torturing Shawn that has to be filled every season? Is it purely to achieve the emotional ending? Shawn was finally in a good place, he lost his best friend to Topanga but he still kept his chin up, so we gotta sucker punch him right back to the ground?

So we're three minutes into the episode and we have two things going on: Eric's contribution to the plot is that HE'S DUMB, and this unnecessary Shawn-torture. We've barely started and this episode already feels like a chore.

At The Apartment, Eric details his plan for initiating Alan's surprise party, the core of which involves poisoning Morgan and, if necessary, using pony rides to raise spirits at the party after her untimely demise.

This one goes out to the optimists among us who, like me, originally thought Eric was still believably dumb, that he hadn't changed that much. I think we can all agree that this is the final nail in that coffin. Whether or not this is funny is left up to your personal tastes, but there's no denying that Will Friedle's delivery is as perfect as ever. Long-time Comment-contributor Christian expressed disapproval with this bit, saying "this isn't fucking Family Guy." I like the comparison, this definitely smells like an "everyone hates Meg" type gag, but there was that time Cory pushed Morgan out into traffic in her miniature car. Whatever, the point is, Eric has gone way way way off the deep end.

Over in the kitchen area, Team Shawn is using that wild and wonderful internet contraption to look up Shawn's ancestry. He's got some colorful ancestors, and somehow they discover three candidates for Shawn's biological mother: Virna, who wrote him the letter stating otherwise, so she's out, Ming-Hwa, whom Shawn rules out for obvious reasons, and finally Elaine, who was apparently last spotted in Boston. Amazing thing, that internet. I like to think that Chet just kept some sort of blog where he detailed all his sexual exploits, and that's where they're getting this information.

I mean Jack's pretty excited about it there, so yeah we're talkin about pretty impressive stuff here.

Speaking of Jack, he's feeling snubbed about this whole ordeal, since he is legitimately blood related to Shawn while Shawn keeps going on about how he has no family. Shawn dismisses Jack as his "half brother," which is frustrating. Anyway they're ready to send Elaine's information to some sort of investigation agency and Shawn says he wants to go through with it. Jack asks him if it's his "final answer," which brings to mind Eric's South Park references. Funnier at the time.

X days in the future, we find Eric helping Rachel rehearse her nonsense role in Alan's surprise party, and she makes it very clear to the viewer that Eric is dumb. Shawn shows up now with the results of the investigation, but everything turned up empty. They've got no way in the world to find this Elaine person and Shawn is clearly affected by it, despite his characteristic claims to the contrary.

What I like most about this is that everyone else knows it's characteristic. Cory knew from the start that this would end badly, and now the rest of the gang are seeing how true that was. It almost seems like a conflict in the writing for this episode. Michael Jacobs wanted this story to happen, but whoever wrote the actual script came at it with the attitude of "We're doing this story again?!" That idea is further supported by the fact this episode's writer is Matthew Nelson, who's been writing for the show since season 2, and, interestingly enough, wrote Fishing For Virna, the other episode where Shawn tries to hunt down his mother. How bout that shit?

Also, Fred Savage directed this episode, if you care about that sort of thing. I wish I knew more about directing so I could talk about the different choices they make, especially on the episodes directed by William Russ. Alas, they all look the same to me. Russ has two more episodes left, so we'll see if we can pick up on his nuances.

At home we find Eric spilling the beans about his surprise party for tomorrow, but Alan's upset since his birthday is today. But then everyone else bursts in to surprise him, revealing that they used Eric as a decoy (without his knowledge).

Well there you go. I've said it a hundred times and now Eric himself is saying it.

Shawn waltzes into the party and everyone immediately picks up on the fact that he's drunk. He must smell like alcohol because it is not obvious to me at all. He seems perfectly fine. Shawn starts raving about how he doesn't have any parents, and then chastises himself with one of my favorite Shawn lines.

 Whether it's economical or emotional, Shawn has always hated showing vulnerability. He always puts up his strong front like nothing's wrong, and now that he has an open display of weakness we get to see firsthand his rampaging internal struggle. This has been going on in his head for the whole series. A lot of bad shit has happened to Shawn and he hates himself for letting it get to him. Powerful stuff. Alan offers to adopt Shawn so that he can have parents again, but as we all know, the only thing Shawn hates more than showing weakness is being given pity or charity. Even though this offer is coming from a loving place, Shawn can't see it as anything other than pity/charity and makes a Big Shawn Exit. Shawn doesn't actually say anything about pity or charity, in fact he doesn't say anything at all, but Matthew Nelson has been with the show long enough to know his shit, so I'm confident that my interpretation is correct.

We find Shawn strolling the streets of Philly, and apparently it's Christmas time. This is our Christmas-time episode for the season. Shawn gives some money to a salvation army Santa, who he initially mistakes for Cory. I could spend an hour talking about the symbolism of Shawn donating money to charity, but it probably wasn't intended that way, so let's just keep going.

It's a lovely sentiment that carries a lot of what we love about their relationship. It also instantly reminds us why they're the best on the show. When they try to do something like this with Corpanga, it never even comes close to being this good. Or even, God forbid, if Angela had tried to come talk to Shawn.

Unfortunately, that sentiment is lost relatively quickly as Cory instantly dismisses Shawn's idea to go to Chet's grave. Like, I thought this was a moment of ultimate impenetrable friendship and Cory's just like "nah I don't wanna go." So now Shawn's at the cemetery where he quickly finds Chet's ghost, and the two have a conversation about things.

This may be a massively unpopular opinion, but I don't like this scene. You know what I do like? The hospital scene with Chet and Shawn right before Chet died. And the ghost moment when Shawn goes on his road trip. That was the perfect setup, the perfect way to close out Chet's character. But now oh, here he is, just because, for a free plot device to give Shawn the answers he needs. It really takes away a lot of the impact of Chet's death. The whole reason his death hit so hard is because these two had so much left unsaid, so much to help each other through, but now... here he is, free of charge.

The scene ends with the two Hunter men finding some closure with one another. But the reason that We'll Have A Good Time Then was so amazing was exactly because they didn't have this Disney ending. That's also what made Shawn's road trip meaningful. This scene put a pretty pink bow on Shawn's relationship with his dad, and I am steadfast in the opinion that it was better without the bow. To be fair, the writing is good, it's not the cheese fest you might expect, and it is touching, I just think we were in a more interesting and compelling place before this.

Cory shows up to pay his respects, which is sweet, and the two head back to Alan's party.

Shawn declines Alan's adoption offer, saying he's got to do some repair work on the Hunter clan. I would have stopped watching the show forever if he accepted. Shawn apologizes for his earlier behavior and hands a wrapped gift to Alan. We see that it's one of those handprint things that kids give their parents.

An extremely touching moment that Eric sort of ruins with his nonsense. You couldn't put Eric on pause for ten fuckin seconds? Seriously?

Shawn asks Alan to scold him for getting drunk the way that he would scold Eric or Cory. This is one of those cases of content vs. spirit. It's really special what they tried to do here, but it ends up feeling really awkward for me watching Shawn get lectured in front of an audience of his friends. Angela joins in and it's just a whole... blech. So yeah, the spirit of this scene gets an A, but the actual content is not my favorite. The last exchange is good though.

William Russ really is fantastic.

Plot: 0.5 - It was enjoyable, but again, the greatest fault here is that it's completely unnecessary. The Shawn/Chet thing was in a perfect place, and we really didn't need this out-of-the-blue Shawn torture. The setup was BEYOND random.

Character Development: 1.0 - The Shawn/Chet ending didn't do much for me, but Shawn/Alan gets top marks.

Humor: 0.25 - Eric was written in the worst possible way this episode.

Life Lesson: 0.75 - Yes, I get it Boy Meets World, "you don't have to be blood to be family". You have made it clear many times now.

2.5 out of 4.0. 

I think I've said everything I want to say. The navy/coast guard thing was pretty infuriating. I may not have emphasized that enough. Fuck that.

Apparently Ben Savage was on Criminal Minds. That's a good show, I'll have to check that out.

Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday.

All images used under Fair Use.