In some ways, the most interesting part of tonight’s episode of Girl Meets World is what it wasn’t about at all. We see Maya, climbing into the bay window and finding Riley in existential crisis, as she lends an eager ear. She is understanding, supportive, communicative. But underneath it is the quietest discomfort. If Riley is telling Maya that her parents are fantastic, she already knows that: “Not everyone is so lucky.”
And it’s true. Not everyone is.
Because how lucky is Riley? She loves her parents. Riley really loves her parents, and okay, yes, she has to. This is the Disney Channel, one. Those of us tuning into the show as Boy Meets World: The World Strikes Back loved them first, two. But more importantly, three, Riley’s had a pretty amazing life. The Matthews home practically vibrates with love. It’s in the way Topanga and Cory do their work when the children have gone to bed. It’s in the way Topanga chastises her daughter for the sleepwalker act but lets her eat her fill. It’s in the genuine confusion and concern Cory has when his daughter has been laid low—not by anyone and anything he can fix, because the problem is them. The problem is how much she loves and admires them, in everything they are and everything they do.
It’s why in some ways this episode felt like a slog to me. Pacing and plotting remains the show’s biggest issue, and while the beats tonight seem to work on paper, I can’t help but feel we went out of our way for nothing in “Girl Meets Cory and Topanga.” Riley decides to go on a quest to find her way, but ends up again and again facing the fact that her parents are perfect. But why? Yes, Cory and Topanga are both pretty cool adults. Topanga’s a shark lawyer who hasn’t given up her moral code; Cory’s a goofball kid on one level and a caring mentor on another. But it’s not really as interesting a conflict, watching them be objective heroes for the masses. No one is perfect, least of all them. We’ve seen them be wonderful but human, skilled but strange. The consoling pat on the back as the nun and the clown realize that Riley really does have impossible expectations to meet is an okay gag, but it doesn’t really have meaning. We don’t know the nun and the clown. We’ll probably never see them again—and frankly, the fact it’s a nun and a clown was already plenty distracting. It’s Riley we care about, and Maya, who shares Riley’s view because they’re the only stable family she’s ever known, the only parents who have never betrayed her. Riley feeling inadequate is perfectly understandable. Riley’s only conflict being whether she is or isn’t feels flimsy, a yes/no question when we thought everyone already knew the answer was yes.
The superficial take here also only emphasizes the weirdness of not having Cory and Topanga deal with this issue themselves. As much as I was dreading the gimmick of literally entering the past based on the promo, that was when the episode worked best, and for obvious reasons. It simplified the conflict down to our real players. We see Riley and Maya actually observing and coming to a new understanding of the heroes they admire. We watch them discover how spastic and strange Cory and Topanga are when taken out of the context of adulthood, and in turn ourselves realize (whether for the first time, or once again) how genuinely non-adult these two once were, child actors just the same as Carpenter and Blanchard. It’s unfortunately though a natural development without resolution. Riley and Cory’s hug, as he quietly code-switches to father mode, is endearing, but why has he not stepped in before? Maya is great, but this problem is about him, and it seems his responsibility to solve it.
As GMW goes, particularly in its stronger sophomore outing, “Girl Meets Cory and Topanga” isn’t unworthy. It’s a flawed episode in form, but a curious one in theory, and an ambitious one in practice. It’s an episode that follows up on the show’s previous baby steps towards a more complicated level of storytelling, and while it falls short of its goal, Girl Meets World is clearly considering the physics of the move. Where to position itself, what angle to take—and as Farkle himself says, the fun is in running the bases, regardless of whether or not you score.
