Girl Meets World continues its streak tonight with part two of our three-parter, easily the best of the three and perhaps of the show so far. But it also continues barreling down a hard path, as it adds more heat to the “Riley actually does like Lucas” fire.
I’ll be clear: If the show does what it might be doing, I think it’s doing something very special. Riley not being okay with Maya liking Lucas even though they’re better as friends than a couple, and attempting to cover it up by doing the right thing while down-spiraling, is interesting emotional ground, and an accurate demonstration of how these things work in life. We’re so easily influenced by what we would like to have, or what seems nice to have, or what we could have. As I said last night, just because Riley can’t feel that way about Lucas does not mean she would not like to, and sometimes the desire to pretend feels just as real. Sometimes is just as real, ultimately, when you really think about it. I'm okay, in this sense, even saying more simply that yes, Riley is lying, yes, she likes Lucas still.
But that’s a might, and a caveat. Mostly I, once again, feel annoyed about what seems to be a lie, for what feels like no reason other than drama and a simpler love triangle. While Riley was the focus of the reveal in episodes past—to the point that Maya tried very hard to hide it from her and was very supportive of letting Riley figure it out in her own time—it’s Maya’s relationship with him being pushed as brotherly in “Meets Texas: Part 2.” To the point where Riley tries to replicate his and Maya’s exact current relationship, as she tries to force her own feelings into a safer space. It’s possible I’m overthinking this, and the show’s just trying to emphasize the swap in their roles—that Riley, in attempting to her own feelings, is seeking comfort in Maya’s own ways of doing so while subconsciously trying to derail the very romance she’s pushing. But all of this nuanced writing work is new for the show, and it’s hard to see just how much to trust it; whether we can look at what it’s saying and what it’s not, or whether we should just try to focus on the surface read.
Particularly when any efforts toward hinting that the two have a sibling relationship are immediately undone. There’s palpable tension when Lucas almost kisses Maya tonight. When he immediately and quickly snaps into calling Riley as a sister after doing so, and you see him reframe their entire relationship in the final scene, comparing Riley and Maya (if in a rather duh moment) to the lamb and the bull. It’s more powerful than Riley and Lucas’ actual kisses have been, and just as powerful as every moment like this has been between these two. It’s the kind of shift that gives me hope for what I think the show has overall promised, and so if this is all in interest of keeping things from rushing forward too quickly, I can at least accept that. It should be a slow process, to agree with many of you commenters, though I think the show would have done better to let it play out more naturally over the course of a few episodes.
It’s only if, again as I said last night, the show wants me to overlook what works for what doesn’t where we have issues, because then they definitely need to start throwing some muscle into proving what they’re saying. Chemistry is hard to manufacture. There is no question that Lucas and Riley are close, and are being written with everything that makes a good relationship. It’s whether they have what makes a good definitively romantic relationship that’s in question, and I hope they don’t try to downplay Lucas and Maya in order to solve that problem, twisting the brotherly feelings into a reveal actually of Maya’s own. It doesn’t gel with how Maya has plenty of experience with these kinds of relationships, and how the moment came about in the first place; doesn’t make sense as a “reveal” with how her relationship with Lucas has mostly been presented so far, or in the greater scheme of Maya’s life. She’s also already got Josh, too old for her and likely mostly a means to feel like a part of the Matthews family, to get over. Why give her Lucas for this too?
As an episode however, I really do need to commend “Meets Texas: Part 2.” While Isaiah still feels like an unnecessary addition to the group dynamic, the girls teaming up without a word to make Vanessa jealous is a fantastic bit of comedy, and the drama so long as one doesn’t consider the season at large was incredibly well handled. I called the writing nuanced before, and I mean it—it’s precisely the kind of thing I hoped to get from this show, and it’s wonderful to see that faith rewarded. Equally incredible is how the episode manages to be such a clear winner without even an appearance from Cory. His influence is felt (and Riley’s vaguely horrified, vaguely frustrated realization that even in Texas she’s going to get a cryptic lesson from him is gold) but this episode is 100% Girl, standing independently precisely because it knows it can.
“Meets Texas: Part 2” is an important episode of GMW, the sort of “explosive and great” combo I pointed to last week with “Meets Rah Rah.” Whether this whole Riley/Farkle/Maya business soars or crashes to the ground, it’ll remain an important episode, demonstrating the level of quality GMW has hinted at often throughout season two.
Here’s hoping though that it soars—whichever ship wins.
