“Girl Meets Belief” is a complicated episode to review. Usually, my methods are comparative. What should, in theory, an ideal episode do? How do, in the rest of TV’s landscape, episodes similar to this one operate? They say that every story’s been told, and really it’s true. Even tonight’s episode is a classic, as the gang struggles ostensibly with a pair of reports on two very different historical figures but mainly, really, with the idea of God.
It’s just also that: classic. As in, not now, not here. It’s hard to imagine last night’s episode happening anywhere else on the Disney Channel. In fact, it’s the kind of story I would have ever expected from the kid world of TV period. Low stakes and contemplative, it’s an episode strung together entirely by conversations. Riley and Maya find themselves at odds as Maya is overwhelmed by Riley’s insistence on faith. Farkle attempts to root out the source of Lucas’ belief. Auggie tries to commune with Mrs. Svorski’s. While there are jokes to be had—Maya’s vacation from Riley, mainly—and life lessons to be learned—people change people, the show’s main theme—“Meets Belief” is much more interested in smaller things. How well Farkle knows Maya. How little Riley and Lucas help one another to think differently. The many colors in what appears to be a simple ray of light.
It’s just unfortunate that none of this really goes anywhere. I did appreciate the show’s lack of revelation and transformation. No sinners are converted, no great awakenings are had. Religion doesn’t even play much of a role. While we can assume based on previous episodes that the Matthews are some kind of Christian, you get the sense that faith in their household is a more humanistic, more spiritual sort of thing. Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t only Maya with doubts, creating for a rather nice range in the group. Lucas’ beliefs are amorphous, Riley’s vaguely church-based in that do or die way (it’s telling that she prays for herself all the time, and that Auggie’s main time of prayer is in the bathtub, so he doesn’t get pulled down the drain). Maya is perhaps best described as agnostic or afraid to believe, while Farkle is the closest to atheist that I think a children’s show would ever dare present.
But the episode itself is another matter, betraying the show’s general belief in a deity. Cory’s argument to Farkle’s request for proof is sound in so far that it shows why proof is more complicated than what we can immediately see—but it doesn’t actually answer Farkle’s question, and the show presents it in a way which suggests it does. So while neither Maya or Farkle are forced to recant their disbelief, they are rather forced into admitting it’s complicated. Which, the show might attempt to do the same with Riley, as she apologizes for trying to influence Maya, but it’s quickly defeated. She delights in Maya’s final decision to pray, and while it’s a lovely moment all the same, I do wish the lesson had lasted longer than .3 seconds, or the moment had come with recognition that Maya would have been right to have not prayed too.
Like last week’s episode, “Meets Belief” also suffers from being order-shuffled. The whiplash wasn’t as bad this time, but it did come with other complications—namely, the show accidentally reminding us again how they had begun to set up that Riley and Lucas were in fact perhaps better suited for friendship than romance. I got a genuine kick out of seeing the two agree so much they tired of one another—but it’s also just another moment of frustration given the work “Meets Texas” put into trying to say that this wasn’t an issue. I do again understand the show can’t help this. Usually these are network decisions, and I can see where Disney might like the idea of putting this episode close to the coming holidays. But one does have to hope, for the show’s sake, that it’s a problem we see less and less as the show continues to explore more complicated storylines for its cast.
Is “Meets Belief” a perfect episode? No. In all, it’s hard to say even whether or not I enjoyed it. It was often slow, often trying—but just as often, it was charming and moving, in the warm, schmaltzy way the best of Boy Meets World episodes often were. “Meets Belief” may believe in a higher power, but perhaps more importantly, it believes in people. It believes in young girls like Maya Hart, who aren’t sure if they believe in God but still would never bother such a being about her. It believes in every family behind every door in the wide, sprawling city of New York. It believes in a universe too large for any one mind to ever hold it.
And whether or not there’s a God, the show’s got a point in this: Life is kind of amazing, Even in dark trying times such as today. And maybe, ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with a show slowing down to cherish that truth.
