Girl Meets World viewers may be sick of hearing me talk about the duality of the show, and the inevitable fork in the road the show always ends up meeting in trying to deal with it. We get it, we know: it’s a spin off, but it’s also trying to be its own show. It’s for the adults who loved the old, and the kids who are seeking out the new. There shouldn’t be anything new to say about it, and indeed, I’ve talked about that too, as season three has more or less proven that the show doesn’t quite know how to hit that compromise point (and sometimes, doesn’t seem to want to).
There shouldn’t be anything new to say about it—and yet, here we are with “Girl Meets Hollywood,” an episode divided against itself almost from second one. Like many of new writer Mackenzie Yeager’s episodes this season, “Meets Hollywood” delights in the absurd, and it starts in hard and fast: Maya asks Riley what she’d be willing to do for her as a friend, and you know, whether that includes kidnapping a lady and handcuffing her to a radiator. Cut to: lady kidnapped and handcuffed to a radiator. Things only get more preposterous from there as we discover she’s an international superstar—and then, from there, when we discover she’s actually the farthest thing from that. She’s really just Bobbie Jo from Arkansas, Katy’s former best friend before fame tore them asunder. Now they’re competing for the same role, and while Maya hopes to keep her locked up long enough for Katy to catch the director’s eye, it’s really friendship that ends up sealing the deal, as Bobbie Jo slyly steps aside.
If that sounded cohesive when I wrote it down, know that it’s because I’m leaving out the second episode in “Meets Hollywood”. I’m choosing not necessarily the better one, but the one that appeals to me, the one that begins with the impossible and unravels it to find the emotional core. There is also this one: Sarah, occasional snarky sideline student, apparently has a big shot Hollywood director father, who apparently has nothing better to do than to shoot the screenplay his daughter’s been writing based on everything she’s seen on the show in the past year. Katy is the lead, based on Katy herself and (I guess?) her sweeping romance with Shawn, though why Sarah would have any reason to know about it never really becomes clear. In the supporting cast are versions of Lucas, Zay, and Farkle, but I guess not Riley and Maya who apparently just sit on the sidelines and never talk. (“That seems fair,” Riley quips.)
Again, this is not a worse episode, or at least, it does not have to be. I have fond memories of Boy Meets World’s flirtation with a similar gag, as Eric falls into a behind the scenes version of a Boy Meets World like show with a cast very unlike our characters. But “Meets Hollywood” dooms itself from the start, never quite able to make the two big ideas able to share the same TV space for all that it comes down to two storylines about the same movie. For very nearly five minutes, “Meets Hollywood” offers no explanation for why it is Maya has chained a woman to her radiator—instead, it tries to build up the ludicrous moment to look even wilder, cutting back and forth between Topanga being asked how good a lawyer she is really and the girls waiting on Bobbie Jo hand and foot. At first, it’s baffling. Why is this happening? How on earth is that not Riley’s first question after the necessary joke about it not being her first question?
In hindsight though, it’s a warning of what’s to come. Not only are the two plotlines both large ideas, they’re also tonally at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Meta Girl Meets World has to start fairly normal, at a career day presentation. From there, it can only balloon out to preposterous, as the show unravels itself completely—even more preposterous than kidnapping an international superstar inherently is, given some of the audacity gets snatched up by it being the opener.
It’s the exact opposite plot map, and in trying to make them meet, “Meets Hollywood” mostly ends up eternally cranked up to 11 on speakers built to go to 10. Everything is loud: the quick cutting, the boys’ return to school after auditioning to play themselves, the routines of Katy and Bobbie Jo’s friendship. Even the meta character names aren’t really twists on what we know so much as competitions to make the longest, silliest collection of third grade insults you can think of. There are jokes to be found in “Meets Hollywood”. In the tag, Farkle’s accurate assessment of his journey from aggravating blabbermouth to Donnie Barnes to “smart character the writers don’t really know what to do with” (especially since Fogelmanis is actually growing into his looks, in ways the show probably hoped he wouldn’t) is worth a dark chuckle or two. The blasé attitude regarding the kidnapping is precisely on target (though the attempts to make it feel plot-relevant-tense are not). But mostly, it’s posturing, or jokes stretched just too far and large to hit when they otherwise could have found a way.
In the end, I fear “Meets Hollywood” only really succeeds at doing the one thing no writer wants to do: Spoiling its audience. With everything pitched at deafening, it’s hard to ignore the show’s hammering in the idea of friends leaving one another, and whether the friendship can continue after that. I’m not really sure how many episodes are left in the season, but barring a romantic conflict somehow popping up in a show that seems to have all but forgotten that was even an issue to begin with, it seems likely that our drama heading into the finale will probably come from the threat of a move. Maybe I’m wrong—it’s entirely possibly my ears are just ringing still from Katy and Bobbie Jo’s performance, or Lucas’ inexplicable Tom Cruise impersonation—but it would make sense, for the show that’s always been both or neither. Topanga once almost moved too.
One can only hope that when we get there, the show remembers to turns the dials back down to a more manageable volume.
