IN WHICH: Joel Reviews the "Girl Meets World" Premier
This is one of those random posts where I talk about something that's not a sermon or theology - feel free to read it, or just ignore the rambling as I fly my nerd flag high.
When I first heard the announcement sometime last year that the Disney channel was going to launch a long-awaited new "Boy Meets World" spinoff, I joined the throngs of people in my generation who had grown up with Corey, Topanga, Shawn, Eric, and the rest of the gang in a collective bit of excitement. Of course, the initial shout of "YES!" quickly became a "wait a minute..." as I heard more information and started to think beyond the gut reactions.
First, some information:
"Girl Meets World" is a followup series to "Boy Meets World" - Corey and Topanga have grown up and have children of their own: Riley (Rowan Blanchard) and Auggie (August Maturo). Riley is the main character, the girl who will be meeting the world. Much like Corey had his Shawn, Riley has her own best friend, Maya (Sabrina Carpenter) - and presumably her own version of Topanga, who this time takes the form of a new student from Texas, named Lucas (Peyton Meyer) - though, of course, this has yet to be seen, since the premier was just tonight. Corey, now all grown up and having met the world, is now following in the footsteps of the great Feeney and has become a teacher. We don't know what Topanga is doing as of yet, nor do we know anything about any of the other original characters (as far as the show goes).
Synopsis:
In this GMW pilot, we're shown a lot of what to expect for the rest of the series - it starts off with a surprising note of self-awareness: Riley and Maya are working out how to sneak onto the subway (they're in a bedroom in the Matthews' New York apartment). As Riley determines whether to be the "good girl" or to follow more in the footsteps of her best friend, they decide to sneak out the window - at which point Corey makes his entrance, through the window, to much applause. Corey informs Riley that "It's not your world yet; it's still my world," because if it had been her world, they would already have been on the subway and not trying to sneak out of the apartment. Riley asks how long she has to live in her father's world, to which Corey replies, "Until you make it yours." Riley asks Corey if he'll still be there for her when she does make it her world, and Topanga enters (to another bout of applause) and says "Right here. We'll be right here."
The rest of the episode goes into a decent amount of character development. We get a sense of who Riley is (every bit the daughter of Corey Matthews), and a sense of who Maya is - the girl from a troubled family on "the wrong side of the tracks" who somehow becomes best friends with Riley despite their vast differences. Riley admires Maya for how "cool" she is and wants to emulate her in as many ways as possible. Maya is flippant about school because she has "street smarts," whereas Riley is overeager to compensate for Maya by doing her homework for her and otherwise bailing her out of trouble. As Riley tells Maya, "I think too much... and you don't think at all."
As is to be expected, Corey is the teacher for Riley's class at John Quincy Adams Middle School (See what they did there?), and so she has to deal with the fact that her father is also her teacher. Along the way, we also meet Farkle (Corey Fogelmanis), who according to the preview at the end of the pilot, is the son of the one, the only Stuart Minkus. Farkle seems to be one of the main supporting "classmates" and is madly in love with both Riley and Maya, which becomes a running gag very early into the pilot. Being a Minkus, he's also a teacher's pet and seems to have a unique student-teacher relationship already with Corey.
After we've been given a baseline of all the characters, the episode picks up steam. In the classroom, Corey is trying to teach the class about the Civil War. Corey's assignment to the class is that they write a three page essay about anything, as long as it's something they believe in so strongly that they'd fight for it. Taking Boy Meets World fans on a trip somewhat down memory lane, Maya decides that not having homework is something she will fight for, and so leads the class in protesting for "No homework, more freedom." Maya tells Riley to stand with her in the protest "if she wants to be like her." And Riley, trying to determine who she is, joins Maya in the protest.
The tension carries on back to the Matthews' residence, where Riley talks with her parents about why she wants to be more like Maya - her parents encourage her to be who she is for herself, but she feels like they don't know her at all. Riley wrestles with her identity (while Auggie provides comic relief), and then we cut to the next day at school.
After some further Farkle/Lucas character development in the lunch room, we get back to the plot again: Riley asks Maya if she did the homework, and Maya tells her that she didn't - Maya asks Riley if she did the homework, to which Riley balks, claiming to be one of the founding members of the Homework Rebellion... Maya calls her and says she knows Riley did the homework and thinks Riley did her homework as well. Riley confesses, and Maya tells her to "stop saving her" and to let her just be her. Back in the classroom, Maya states that she hasn't done her homework, and Riley follows suit, lying to her father. Maya continues to follow through on her protest against homework as she stages a "homework revolution," stealing one of Farkle's essay presentation sparklers to light all the homework on fire. In the process, she sets off the sprinklers in the classroom. Lucas, sheltering Riley in the downpour, asks her why she didn't stop Maya. Riley says that that's not what she does anymore, but Lucas tells her that she's better than that. Corey gives Maya detention and Riley demands that she should be given detention, too, but Corey tells her she didn't do anything.
Riley, Maya, and Corey have a confrontation by the lockers - Corey tells Riley that she was so busy trying to be Maya that she forgot that the best thing she could do for Maya was to be herself. Riley leaves with Farkle, and then Corey has a conversation with Maya alone. He tells her that he always believed a friend should help another friend out of trouble, and not into it. As Corey reprimands Maya, Maya reveals that she has nobody at home to help her with her homework, leaving Corey troubled and lost.
As Riley and Maya ride the subway back, Maya tries to end their friendship to help save Riley - obviously, Corey's words hit her deeply. Maya tells Riley not to be her - she doesn't go as far as her - then pushes her out the door of the train. But Riley determines that she's not Maya, so gets back on the subway to pull Maya off the train and to stay friends - because if this is her world, the first person she wants in it is Maya. They run off together and come back to the Matthews' residence, where they meet together with Corey and Riley decides to make the world her own and declare her best friend - "she's going to get me in trouble, and I'm going to get us out of it."
Corey marks Riley's "becoming Riley" by bestowing her first subway pass upon her, calling it "her ticket to the world." He tells her, "I've already met the world. It's your turn." Riley and Maya set off into their own world with Corey and Topanga looking on lovingly. Then we cut and Corey, Topanga, and Auggie are back at the subway to welcome Riley and Maya back because they said they'd "always be there for them." Corey says, "It's not so easy handing over the world without making sure everything's going to be ok." Corey looks behind his shoulder, sees Feeney, who says "Well Done, Mr. Matthews," and disappears.
My Two Cents:
The gist of the whole episode is that Riley is trying to figure out who she is. She wants to be like Maya, but she needs to learn to be comfortable being who she is first. It makes for an interesting pilot, and having watched it twice now to sort through initial reactions and write a better synopsis, I can honestly say that this episode is really a metaphor for the show itself.
GMW doesn't know what it is yet. It knows what it wants to be - and what its older fans, especially, want it to be. And so in this pilot episode, that's exactly what it aims for: Boy Meets World 2.0. The major child leads could almost all pass as children of their BMW counterparts - except that Maya isn't Shawn's daughter. Riley and Maya try very hard to be Corey and Shawn. Farkle is almost a spot-on clone of Minkus (which is actually an admirable performance from Fogelmanis, getting even the voice down pretty well). Auggie is even a near-identical figure to Morgan from BMW, at least as far as the "cute/comedic little sibling" trope goes.
The trouble is, they're trying too hard to be Boy Meets World right off the bat. It feels forced in a lot of places, like "We're doing this because it was popular in the original, so we need to keep it." And while his actor is talented, Farkle's character chews scenery in a way that outdoes his father, promising to turn what is already a running gag into a dead horse that gets flogged each new episode. And if Farkle feels a little forced... well, I guess the show is going to use a plunger to push the Riley/Lucas dynamic forward. One of the great things about the BMW development was that Topanga never started out as a love interest for Corey. She was basically the equivalent of "Back of the Class Brenda" when the series started out, and not meant to be such a recurring character. So Corey and Topanga's relationship developed organically, even by surprise when Corey has his first kiss with Topanga on a day that his hair looks like Don King and nobody but Topanga would have dared to kiss such a strange boy. Lucas is thrown at us (actually, Riley is thrown at Lucas, but let's not split hairs) before we even get to the opening credit sequence - and it's clear from the get-go that he's going to be the love interest for Riley. If it isn't clear from the first scene, it becomes further and more painfully clear as each progressive scene continues because Riley gets doe-eyed over Lucas every time he walks in the room, while Corey becomes the worn out "father protecting his daughter from all men" trope as soon as he notices that Riley likes Lucas. Lucas is now inevitably set to become Riley's main love for the rest of the series - again, more because the writers knew from the start that there needed to be a new Corey-Topanga romance to drive the show forward and resonate with all the fans of the original series.
All this is not to say that the pilot was a failure - actually, on my second time watching through it, it grew on me a little more than the first time through. I still think it feels forced, but it shows promise. There are some moments in the show that really shine through and I hope to see them happen again in future episodes. The relationship between the new Matthews family is very good - it really felt like a family, and like they were a continuation of the Matthews clan. Ben Savage and Danielle Fischell picked up right from where they left off in BMW, and it was like seeing old familiar friends once more after having spent a long time away and only seeing old school photos of them on Facebook. Corey being a teacher is going to be a neat new dynamic, though we'll all miss Feeney and wish that he'd been the teacher still.
I also appreciated that there was a definite plot and that the show will continue to wrestle with the same kind of things that made the original series so compelling - the idea of wrestling with identity is something relateable, and that's important to the very idea of a new BMW-style show. I still love the original series because it resonates with me - my friends and I were Corey's and Shawn's in our world. We wanted to see what would happen to these characters because it gave us a mirror for our own lives, our own struggles, and our own fantasies. And I'm hoping that this new generation will have the same impact as a show.
On the whole, I'm not terribly disappointed. I'm willing to give it the rest of the season to see how it grows and who it decides it wants to be. It needs to figure out how to be its own show still, but this was only the first episode and you have to start somewhere.
Go make it your world, Riley - I'll look forward to watching it happen.
When I first heard the announcement sometime last year that the Disney channel was going to launch a long-awaited new "Boy Meets World" spinoff, I joined the throngs of people in my generation who had grown up with Corey, Topanga, Shawn, Eric, and the rest of the gang in a collective bit of excitement. Of course, the initial shout of "YES!" quickly became a "wait a minute..." as I heard more information and started to think beyond the gut reactions.
First, some information:
"Girl Meets World" is a followup series to "Boy Meets World" - Corey and Topanga have grown up and have children of their own: Riley (Rowan Blanchard) and Auggie (August Maturo). Riley is the main character, the girl who will be meeting the world. Much like Corey had his Shawn, Riley has her own best friend, Maya (Sabrina Carpenter) - and presumably her own version of Topanga, who this time takes the form of a new student from Texas, named Lucas (Peyton Meyer) - though, of course, this has yet to be seen, since the premier was just tonight. Corey, now all grown up and having met the world, is now following in the footsteps of the great Feeney and has become a teacher. We don't know what Topanga is doing as of yet, nor do we know anything about any of the other original characters (as far as the show goes).
Synopsis:
In this GMW pilot, we're shown a lot of what to expect for the rest of the series - it starts off with a surprising note of self-awareness: Riley and Maya are working out how to sneak onto the subway (they're in a bedroom in the Matthews' New York apartment). As Riley determines whether to be the "good girl" or to follow more in the footsteps of her best friend, they decide to sneak out the window - at which point Corey makes his entrance, through the window, to much applause. Corey informs Riley that "It's not your world yet; it's still my world," because if it had been her world, they would already have been on the subway and not trying to sneak out of the apartment. Riley asks how long she has to live in her father's world, to which Corey replies, "Until you make it yours." Riley asks Corey if he'll still be there for her when she does make it her world, and Topanga enters (to another bout of applause) and says "Right here. We'll be right here."
The rest of the episode goes into a decent amount of character development. We get a sense of who Riley is (every bit the daughter of Corey Matthews), and a sense of who Maya is - the girl from a troubled family on "the wrong side of the tracks" who somehow becomes best friends with Riley despite their vast differences. Riley admires Maya for how "cool" she is and wants to emulate her in as many ways as possible. Maya is flippant about school because she has "street smarts," whereas Riley is overeager to compensate for Maya by doing her homework for her and otherwise bailing her out of trouble. As Riley tells Maya, "I think too much... and you don't think at all."
As is to be expected, Corey is the teacher for Riley's class at John Quincy Adams Middle School (See what they did there?), and so she has to deal with the fact that her father is also her teacher. Along the way, we also meet Farkle (Corey Fogelmanis), who according to the preview at the end of the pilot, is the son of the one, the only Stuart Minkus. Farkle seems to be one of the main supporting "classmates" and is madly in love with both Riley and Maya, which becomes a running gag very early into the pilot. Being a Minkus, he's also a teacher's pet and seems to have a unique student-teacher relationship already with Corey.
After we've been given a baseline of all the characters, the episode picks up steam. In the classroom, Corey is trying to teach the class about the Civil War. Corey's assignment to the class is that they write a three page essay about anything, as long as it's something they believe in so strongly that they'd fight for it. Taking Boy Meets World fans on a trip somewhat down memory lane, Maya decides that not having homework is something she will fight for, and so leads the class in protesting for "No homework, more freedom." Maya tells Riley to stand with her in the protest "if she wants to be like her." And Riley, trying to determine who she is, joins Maya in the protest.
The tension carries on back to the Matthews' residence, where Riley talks with her parents about why she wants to be more like Maya - her parents encourage her to be who she is for herself, but she feels like they don't know her at all. Riley wrestles with her identity (while Auggie provides comic relief), and then we cut to the next day at school.
After some further Farkle/Lucas character development in the lunch room, we get back to the plot again: Riley asks Maya if she did the homework, and Maya tells her that she didn't - Maya asks Riley if she did the homework, to which Riley balks, claiming to be one of the founding members of the Homework Rebellion... Maya calls her and says she knows Riley did the homework and thinks Riley did her homework as well. Riley confesses, and Maya tells her to "stop saving her" and to let her just be her. Back in the classroom, Maya states that she hasn't done her homework, and Riley follows suit, lying to her father. Maya continues to follow through on her protest against homework as she stages a "homework revolution," stealing one of Farkle's essay presentation sparklers to light all the homework on fire. In the process, she sets off the sprinklers in the classroom. Lucas, sheltering Riley in the downpour, asks her why she didn't stop Maya. Riley says that that's not what she does anymore, but Lucas tells her that she's better than that. Corey gives Maya detention and Riley demands that she should be given detention, too, but Corey tells her she didn't do anything.
Riley, Maya, and Corey have a confrontation by the lockers - Corey tells Riley that she was so busy trying to be Maya that she forgot that the best thing she could do for Maya was to be herself. Riley leaves with Farkle, and then Corey has a conversation with Maya alone. He tells her that he always believed a friend should help another friend out of trouble, and not into it. As Corey reprimands Maya, Maya reveals that she has nobody at home to help her with her homework, leaving Corey troubled and lost.
As Riley and Maya ride the subway back, Maya tries to end their friendship to help save Riley - obviously, Corey's words hit her deeply. Maya tells Riley not to be her - she doesn't go as far as her - then pushes her out the door of the train. But Riley determines that she's not Maya, so gets back on the subway to pull Maya off the train and to stay friends - because if this is her world, the first person she wants in it is Maya. They run off together and come back to the Matthews' residence, where they meet together with Corey and Riley decides to make the world her own and declare her best friend - "she's going to get me in trouble, and I'm going to get us out of it."
Corey marks Riley's "becoming Riley" by bestowing her first subway pass upon her, calling it "her ticket to the world." He tells her, "I've already met the world. It's your turn." Riley and Maya set off into their own world with Corey and Topanga looking on lovingly. Then we cut and Corey, Topanga, and Auggie are back at the subway to welcome Riley and Maya back because they said they'd "always be there for them." Corey says, "It's not so easy handing over the world without making sure everything's going to be ok." Corey looks behind his shoulder, sees Feeney, who says "Well Done, Mr. Matthews," and disappears.
My Two Cents:
The gist of the whole episode is that Riley is trying to figure out who she is. She wants to be like Maya, but she needs to learn to be comfortable being who she is first. It makes for an interesting pilot, and having watched it twice now to sort through initial reactions and write a better synopsis, I can honestly say that this episode is really a metaphor for the show itself.
GMW doesn't know what it is yet. It knows what it wants to be - and what its older fans, especially, want it to be. And so in this pilot episode, that's exactly what it aims for: Boy Meets World 2.0. The major child leads could almost all pass as children of their BMW counterparts - except that Maya isn't Shawn's daughter. Riley and Maya try very hard to be Corey and Shawn. Farkle is almost a spot-on clone of Minkus (which is actually an admirable performance from Fogelmanis, getting even the voice down pretty well). Auggie is even a near-identical figure to Morgan from BMW, at least as far as the "cute/comedic little sibling" trope goes.
The trouble is, they're trying too hard to be Boy Meets World right off the bat. It feels forced in a lot of places, like "We're doing this because it was popular in the original, so we need to keep it." And while his actor is talented, Farkle's character chews scenery in a way that outdoes his father, promising to turn what is already a running gag into a dead horse that gets flogged each new episode. And if Farkle feels a little forced... well, I guess the show is going to use a plunger to push the Riley/Lucas dynamic forward. One of the great things about the BMW development was that Topanga never started out as a love interest for Corey. She was basically the equivalent of "Back of the Class Brenda" when the series started out, and not meant to be such a recurring character. So Corey and Topanga's relationship developed organically, even by surprise when Corey has his first kiss with Topanga on a day that his hair looks like Don King and nobody but Topanga would have dared to kiss such a strange boy. Lucas is thrown at us (actually, Riley is thrown at Lucas, but let's not split hairs) before we even get to the opening credit sequence - and it's clear from the get-go that he's going to be the love interest for Riley. If it isn't clear from the first scene, it becomes further and more painfully clear as each progressive scene continues because Riley gets doe-eyed over Lucas every time he walks in the room, while Corey becomes the worn out "father protecting his daughter from all men" trope as soon as he notices that Riley likes Lucas. Lucas is now inevitably set to become Riley's main love for the rest of the series - again, more because the writers knew from the start that there needed to be a new Corey-Topanga romance to drive the show forward and resonate with all the fans of the original series.
All this is not to say that the pilot was a failure - actually, on my second time watching through it, it grew on me a little more than the first time through. I still think it feels forced, but it shows promise. There are some moments in the show that really shine through and I hope to see them happen again in future episodes. The relationship between the new Matthews family is very good - it really felt like a family, and like they were a continuation of the Matthews clan. Ben Savage and Danielle Fischell picked up right from where they left off in BMW, and it was like seeing old familiar friends once more after having spent a long time away and only seeing old school photos of them on Facebook. Corey being a teacher is going to be a neat new dynamic, though we'll all miss Feeney and wish that he'd been the teacher still.
I also appreciated that there was a definite plot and that the show will continue to wrestle with the same kind of things that made the original series so compelling - the idea of wrestling with identity is something relateable, and that's important to the very idea of a new BMW-style show. I still love the original series because it resonates with me - my friends and I were Corey's and Shawn's in our world. We wanted to see what would happen to these characters because it gave us a mirror for our own lives, our own struggles, and our own fantasies. And I'm hoping that this new generation will have the same impact as a show.
On the whole, I'm not terribly disappointed. I'm willing to give it the rest of the season to see how it grows and who it decides it wants to be. It needs to figure out how to be its own show still, but this was only the first episode and you have to start somewhere.
Go make it your world, Riley - I'll look forward to watching it happen.
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