Welcome back to days of Girl Meets World past.
If you had any expectations of “Girl Meets STEM” handling the love triangle issue that blew up during the New Year’s Party, think again. It’s a standalone that despite the filming order in the middle of the “Meets Texas” episodes feels meant to fit in sometime before any of this mess started, given the hole it fills in Riley’s apparently then mounting anxieties about how the Girl/Boy part of the equation is muddying up the friendships inherent in the group, and thus a standalone drawing out eternally the shipping war no one ever asked for. Not the show’s fault? Almost certainly. But it does make certain moments in “Girl Meets STEM” frustrating, especially as it’s still hard to see where things are going from here.
On the one hand, if we’re headed toward an ending of Friendship Trumps All (for now), “Meets Stem” might settle in nicely enough. Riley, noticing with horror that the boys have naturally given the girls the inactive task, comes to an understanding of how gender roles become more complicated when children themselves are now self-aware enough to adopt them. It’s harder to see your friend when you’re thinking of yourself as a girl, them as a boy, and the expectations both on you as individuals and on you as a potential pair. It’s hard to ignore the complete lack of comment on the ongoing problem, or the ambiguity of how we’re supposed to perceive Maya and Lucas’s relationship, but it at least becomes a step toward setting up the idea friendship is key.
On the other hand, we still might be heading to a definitive answer of the Riley/Lucas variety, and on that front without any real interaction between them, “Meets Stem” becomes just a solid lesson muddied by some iffy plotting. While I’m all for the idea of the lesson plan dividing the girls and boys, I’m not really sure why it wasn’t actually executed to divide the girls and the boys, with the teacher himself doing it. What would have happened if a girl couldn’t come in after school? If a girl had taken the lead? I’ll even admit to some actual confusion at first just what it was Riley was upset about. We know Farkle is the scientist. We have never once seen Riley however express interest in it. Their fight is meant to set up the conflict but it also just seems, for them specifically, like such an obvious way to split up the task—never mind the fact that it’s hard to imagine Farkle would not agree to sharing the workload if Riley really were interested.
Things do get a little more interesting when you consider the B Plot (really a glorified runner). Auggie is taking advantage of the free-spirited participation matters vibe of children’s sports; Topanga and Ava, a skilled soccer player, are baffled. Whether the show is trying to say that things are improving with time or pointing out how we are often more inclined to remember that gender roles are problematic when children are young is a little ambiguous (the show’s much more interested in matching the explicit takeaway of the A Plot, encouraging full effort even when there’s no immediate motivation) and maybe it doesn’t have to be. Both statements after all are true, and it’s a much neater thematic tie in then the show normally had. It's also worth mentioning that it's not that “Meets STEM” isn’t funny. Maya and Lucas, allowed to talk again, delight as partners. Topanga, so rarely given enough to do, easily wins the night with her attempt to be supportive of Auggie’s participation trophy while secretly dying inside from the absurdity of it.
In fact, placed where it originally meant to fit, “Meets STEM” would probably be pretty delightful. But while the trappings of the channel likely mean we’ll be stuck with this sort of shuffle for the rest of the show’s run, it’s hard not to sigh when we’ve got only one more episode scheduled, and no reason to believe it’ll end things.It’s true the show has improved generally for including these more serialized stories—but now they’ve got to learn how to deliver them without leaving its audience stranded every time they dip back into episodic. Animated shows like Steven Universe and Gravity Falls accomplish this with relative ease, so it's not like it's inherently impossible. Difficult, maybe, sure.
But as we learned in "Meets STEM": Difficulty doesn't mean it's not worth doing or trying.
But as we learned in "Meets STEM": Difficulty doesn't mean it's not worth doing or trying.
