If there’s any episode that rewards Girl Meets World’s weaknesses as a show, it is without a doubt the Christmas episode.
There are things we expect from a good Christmas episode, even things that the rest of the year, we’d mumble and groan over. It’ll probably come with a lesson. It’ll be warm, and it’ll be gooey sentimental, because peace on earth and good will to men, yadda yadda yadda. It’ll be a little obvious, because there’s something about snow lit by twinkling lights that makes a speech to the heavens go down a little easier. (I blame Charlie Brown, king of holiday speeches.)
None of this is to say that “Girl Meets A Christmas Maya” is particularly flawed. Compared to “Meets Hollywood” it’s even quite good. When Maya reveals she does not want to spend the holiday with her parents, certain that somehow if she does she’ll prove to Shawn that she and her mother are too much to handle and her new life will come crashing down, Riley takes it upon herself to prove to Maya otherwise. Meanwhile, the gang sans Lucas tries to participate in Secret Santa—much to their shared frustration, especially as they get people within the group they know the least—and Topanga, as Topanga so often sadly must, steers Auggie and Ava as they learn more about the holiday through O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” It’s a surprisingly full load for a show that rarely can handle anything more than an A plot and the barest hint of a runner, and “Meets A Christmas Maya” manages to balance things much more than I would have guessed. Riley, running a show, controls the shift between Christmas at home and Christmas with her friends, and while it feels artificial, it does at least keep things moving; and while Ava’s sugar rush likened to a drug addiction is in poor taste at best, the show does at least try to use it to thematically bring everything together. Gifts, according to Girl Meets World, are meant to be thoughtful. They are meant for the other person, and require a step beyond yourself—even if it means thinking outside the box of what you think you don’t know about a person, and even if it means giving up something you would like yourself. Like, for example, having your usual Christmas with your best friend at your side, as Auggie realizes Riley has done here in her efforts to boost Maya’s confidence.
There’s also something pretty delightfully honest about the Secret Santa exchange. It does feel like a bit of a jerk, given how the show tries very hard to present the group as a united front even as Zay and Smackle disappear for episodes on end, but for the show we actually see with our eyes, “Meets A Christmas Maya” feels real. I can’t imagine Zay and Farkle hanging out without Lucas as the go between, or Smackle and Zay without the context of the whole group. Friend groups don’t always come together in perfect harmony. Friends invite their friends, their boyfriends, their girlfriends. Some get closer than others. You’re all lumped together, so the expectation of celebration and hanging out is there, and sometimes you don’t even question it—until exactly times like the holidays, when you’re left searching for what it is you even know about the person that doesn’t feel shallow.
And the show doesn’t try really to pretend otherwise. The gifts the group get each are less about what the other person might like as they are about how they’d like to try better, so that next year isn’t quite as awkward. The speeches might be a bit much, and the fake drama as they realize they don’t get each other at all is unnecessarily constructed almost purely for the act break, but they are wonderfully character-specific. Of course Smackle would give Maya both a complicated metaphor and a practical, hands-on invention. Of course Farkle would give Zay something the two can play together. Of course Riley would overstep her bounds and try and help Farkle make a stronger connection with his newfound heritage, and of course Zay would get Smackle a bit of a joke gift (however earnest it also was). These are who these characters are, and sometimes a clever bit of writing is just enough to outweigh the treacle.
If Riley’s Christmas Carol attempts to help Maya don’t quite succeed at the same, perhaps it can’t be helped. I appreciated the reminder that Shawn’s hardly had good Christmases either, as a way of reminding Maya just why it is she bonded with Shawn in the first place, but it feels hollow without Shawn’s actual presence, even for a few minutes. Presumably Rider Strong was unavailable to film, either schedule-wise or contractually, but it drags “Meets A Christmas Maya” down with a frustration that’s existed for much of the second half of season three: The sense that everything has changed and nothing. I’m glad we now know that Shawn is living with Maya and Katy—or at least, I think we know that. But why isn’t he stepping in? Riley might be her friend but Shawn is now her step-father, and it’s strange to not even see him make the decision to let Riley handle it when everyone else is playing a role.
Similarly, while it makes perfect sense for Lucas to be in Texas for the holidays, why doesn’t Riley know? The show makes light of it but at this point, the ambiguity between Riley and Lucas here is no longer funny. We spent half of last season and half of this season on the love triangle, and so far ever since the resolution, it remains a question whether or not it even mattered is up in the air. Are they dating, or are they not? Am I supposed to think that this buddy attitude is yet again demonstrative of how they actually don’t have a romantic relationship but a platonic one, or does the show simply not realize I don’t know?
These aren’t the questions the show wants me to ask, and frankly, I don’t enjoy having to ask them, but they needle most when the show is so cavalier about pretending they don’t exist at all. It’s reasonable to wonder whether Shawn really did move to New York City when we do not see or hear about him for episodes, even when in Maya’s apartment. It’s reasonable to feel like Riley and Lucas angsted about not being able to be together for so long that it’s preposterous the closest we have come is seeing Zay suggest that he guesses probably they’ll do it soon in the future maybe. Some of these episodes I believe were filmed out of order, which might have something to do with it, but at the same time, I’m hard-pressed to find this an acceptable excuse. Writing ambiguously in fear of spoilers getting out isn’t writing; it’s trying to tread water in a rapid current, willfully ignoring that you’re being carried along downstream either way.
These are larger problems though. “Meets a Christmas Maya” might not be the show’s first holiday special, a blend of casts old and new and a highlight for introducing Shawn and his complicated history to the show, but it achieves really what any good Christmas episode should: It makes you believe these people care about one another, and are happy to spend this time celebrating that fact.
May everyone be so lucky this holiday season.
