Ask a Boy Meets World fan to describe the world of the show, it’s good odds they’ll say "high school." There’s no real reason—the show spent just as much time out of it, between the middle school years and the college years—but high school just seems to fit. It was arguably what that show was always destined to be, finally achieved the moment Cory and Shawn slammed those doors into those nerds in the hall and took their place in the narrative. High school: the land of teen movies and teen shows all over, relatable to other teens, adult-seeming and thrill-promising to younger kids, nostalgic to adults—in other words, a winning combination.
So far “Girl Meets High School, Part I” doesn’t promise much in the way of that. There's nostalgia of a kind—there are callbacks aplenty to be had to Boy Meets World, from the school’s continued cute Adams family love, to the new (admittedly charming) credits, to even a recreation of that first door-busting high school moment—but “Meets High School I” doesn’t have enough narrative heft to really inspire emotion. It knows what it is aiming to hit, beats-wise. Riley thinks people are good and that high school will unfold before them. Lucas is frustrated that all his character growth is useless in a school where no one knows his name. Life gets complicated the older we get.
But these are lessons, not plot elements. GMW has always suffered from pacing issues and they are in abundance here. We have apparent antagonists in a trio of high schoolers determined to shunt the new freshmen into The Hole, a strange undefined crawlspace between floors … and we don't really have anything else. The Hole lacking definition may be a plot point but that is no excuse for it narratively having no world, no atmosphere. It’s just a hallway, all mystique and power cultivated in the characters telling, not showing, that it’s something more than a hallway—usually through cyclical, tiring exchanges about whether or not they can trust the world to take care of them, or whether the world has now abandoned them.
The situation gets no better when we have our reveal: The high schoolers are not antagonists. Riley is right, they’re trying to teach them a lesson—though also, isn’t Riley wrong, because the lesson they’re trying to teach them is that the world doesn’t particularly care about them? It’s a contradictory mess of ideas that one can’t help but feel like Boy Meets World would have mined for humor, making it an unintentional lesson from obvious baddies like Harley that still ends with our guys in a hole. Or even kept dramatic by allowing Mr. Feeney to tie things together, as makes more sense and as fitting to a story that still needs to breathe and create character moments and plot movement.
As it is, we have grandstanding, and I’m not entirely sure to what end. Riley is proven right by being proven wrong in this episode, which is interesting—but I’m not entirely sure I am meant to be looking at how she was proven wrong. Maya at the end comforts a distraught and crying Riley by saying sometimes people make the wrong choices, with Riley paralleled with an equally upset Ava, whose parents appear on the verge of divorce. But it seems inconceivable to me they could be talking about Lucas and Farkle being upset with her. They have every right to be upset with her. Lucas in particular—Riley had no right to tell him pointblank he would be killed on the football field, to even laugh while saying it. Riley is endlessly controlling of her friends in this episode—is, demonstrably, someone who has made wrong choices about how to handle their arrival in high school and how to handle the disagreement. I leave it to Part II to either tell me I miscalculated or find a way to sell me on what I think they’re offering, but it’s far from the promising start to season two.
In fact, in most ways “Meets High School I” disappoints. The triangle is alive and well—and while it’s a little cathartic to hear Maya ask the universe how she could possibly be in this situation, it’s no less exhausting than it’s been every step of the way since “Meets Texas.” Zay remains merely on the fringes, somehow continuing to feel like an extra thumb on a hand that should have room for one more. Topanga remains relegated to barely B-Plot with the little ones—though admittedly, like most Ava-and-Auggie storylines, there’s considerably more charm to be found in the A-Plot, particularly in Topanaga’s vetting of the pre-nup despite Auggie’s delight over it. It’s not a particularly bad episode of GMW—Lucas is actually an active character for once, which works wonders—but it is one that suggests stagnation for the show. Contentment to muddle in the sometimes-working, sometimes-not state of life lessons and occasional smiles, rather than continue to step forward to the glimpses of the good show it’s demonstrated it could be with a little effort.
And if there’s one thing a switch-up to a new structure like high school should not convey, it’s stagnation.
