Boy Meets World / Girl Meets World TV Show • Page 2

apparently freeform shot it down. But it still has a chance on netflix so that's where people are trying to get it picked up. It probably (hopefully?) would do a lot better with more freedom. Disney obviously makes you toe a lot of lines.

also yeah cartoons are a completely different ball game. I also feel like the ones you named are specifically well known for appealing to adults even more than children lol plus none of them were on Disney so again different limitations (I believe GF was on XD right?)

ETA I guess what I'm trying to say is that as far as Disney shows go, I think GMW was the best one by far.

 

And while I understand that argument, I still don't think it's saying much at all that GMW was the best Disney show by far. Because their shows are pretty much uniformly awful. I think my problem with it is that it should never have been marketed as a kids show on Disney. It just kind of betrays the spirit of its parent show (BMW was never strictly a children's show with heavy handed moralizing), which is why I think it would have been better suited for network television or, yeah, Netflix I guess. Whether anyone likes it or not, Netflix has been successful with Fuller House. I'm not a huge fan of that either, but it feels like more of a natural spiritual follow up than this. It at least focuses on characters and story beats rather than forcing a lesson into the forefront of the script and then attempting to construct a thin storyline around it.

A big issue for me has always been Cory and Topanga's roles in the show. I posted this same thing back on the old AP thread but I'll just reiterate it here. Making Cory the teacher has never worked for me and I feel like there's a better version with some simple rewrites. One of Cory's final arcs (which is something that occasionally resonates throughout the series in his role as the bland "every man" (i.e. "Celery") against Shawn's bad boy status) is his struggle to figure out what to do with himself in the future. He's not a great student and doesn't have a standout skill set. He feels lost. In the end he heads off to New York with Topanga and Shawn after she gets the job offer. You get the sense that he'll go where the wind takes him in life and he's okay with that ("Boy Meets World...now I get it!"). Earlier in the series he laments the loss of his favorite hangout place, Chubbies, because it's a sign of the past slipping away from him. Cory grows ever more manic as the series wears on and a lot of that has to do with his lack of direction and fear of change.

So how does that affect Girl Meets World? Well, in the version we got, he became a middle school history teacher who inserts himself into his daughter's life in front of the classroom every chance he gets. His lessons turn into diatribes about the meaning of life centered around his daughter and their friends. It's distracting and kind of weird. Cory just doesn't work as Mr. Feeny. I get why they went with it. Easy way to keep Ben Savage at the center and BMW viewers glued to the screen waiting for more of the familiar. The problem is, he no longer feels like Cory in this role. We get the occasional glimpse of the manic Cory we all remember (usually whenever Shawn shows up again or Cory starts panicking about something the kids have done to undermine him), but for the most part he is neutered in this setting. Topanga, meanwhile, is apparently a lawyer like she had always planned but we never see it. She somehow spends all her time - and nearly every storyline she has - with her son Auggie. She got saddled with some of the worst material. I don't understand it. Then in season two they also, for some reason, give her a bakery to run. So now she is a full time lawyer at a high end law firm, the owner of a bakery which seems to be staffed by her and Maya's mom and no one else, and a stay at home mother (how in the world is she always at home with this kid). It would seem to me that there's a simple fix.

This is a show called Girl Meets World. Give Riley a female Feeny in the form of an older, worldly woman as her teacher. Give Cory the restaurant. It makes sense for his character. Going back to his lack of direction and attachment to his own nostalgia, Cory recreates his past via his variation on Chubbies, here calling it "Cory's". It removes him from the head of the classroom and out of his daughter's everyday education. It allows for some distance between home and school life. Let the female teacher provide lessons (and make them less on-the-nose while we're at it), and then let Riley and her friends go to their favorite hangout restaurant, Cory's, after school. It's Riley's dad's place so he gives them either free or cheap meals. This gives Cory room to still be a part of the show and a tangential part of her life in parental advice. He's no longer a distraction this way. When the kids are sitting in their favorite booth deliberating over what they're supposed to be learning at school or what's going on in their personal lives, that's when Cory can step in at the restaurant and offer some insight, but give him space to be manic. Running a busy restaurant would do that. In the version of the show we got, he gave Harley Keiner a job as a janitor. That dynamic is actually one of my favorite things about GMW. So keep that. Have Cory hire Harley at the restaurant because he needs a job. Cory is now Harley's boss. Cory and Harley Keiner running a restaurant together is a pretty great setup.

As for Topanga, let us see her at work. Topanga was always driven. Let us see the fruits of her labor at her law firm where she defends those who can't defend themselves. Still want to force Auggie into her storylines on occasion? Let him be the audience, watching her operate at work because she couldn't get a sitter. Do something, anything other than sitting her down at the kitchen table or on the living room couch. Also, this is, once again, a show called Girl Meets World. They've been a little better about it this season, but for god's sake let Topanga be the one to spend time with her daughter and provide some much needed wisdom. Give Topanga something to do. It would make sense for her to be more instructive in her daughter's life. She was a great student when she was younger and now works for a law firm dealing with people from all walks of life on a consistent basis. Riley's mother has seen the world Riley is currently meeting. So show that. Tie that into the lessons she and her friends are learning.

Lastly, Disney Channel vs. Netflix/broadcast network leads to a smaller budget and production value. The Matthews family lives in New York but it never feels like it. We see the classroom, the school hallways, the bakery and the apartment on a regular basis and that's pretty much it. The most we ever see of the city is the subway station. Yes, BMW took place in Philadelphia and we never saw the city, but the family lived in the suburbs there. It was an easy pass. Here they live in an apartment in the heart of the city, but you would never know it save for the establishing shot of the apartment building and the million times they tell you they're living in New York City. The show just feels too staged and confined. Let them go places and give them room to breathe. Make the show more expansive. Telling instead of showing is the series' biggest problem. They tell us constantly about where they live but never show. It's the exact same problem they have with the character beats. They tell us over and over and over again that Riley and Maya are the bestest of friends, and that their group of friends is also the bestest group of friends, and they do so by sacrificing a fun story between characters in lieu of another heavy handed message they're practically shouting at you. It feels forced as a result. They often feel like people reciting a script instead of people.

I don't know. I could go on and on, but it doesn't matter because the show is what it was and now it's cancelled. I didn't hate everything about it. I appreciated that it was a female centered show (for the most part, when Cory wasn't butting in at every turn) and that their group of friends gave room for some diversity in the cast. Some of the lessons I did genuinely like, but they were few and far between. I think overall they needed a different network/platform and better writers. It also seems like Michael Jacobs maybe needed to take a backseat on this one. He said repeatedly in interviews that he disregarded fan complaints because if he were to make Boy Meets World now, he would make it like this. That would not be the show I know and remember and it's not the reason I tuned in to this show. I respect that people grow and change over time, but sometimes you have to know when to let go of the reigns.

 

So I disagree that BMW wasn't heavy handed in morals/lesson-giving--ESPECIALLY the beginning seasons. As the show moved on it got a little less obvious but it was very similar in the beginning and I say that to people all the time because people tend to remember BMW for the high school and college years, and never seem to remember the first awkward middle school years. It was very reminiscent of GMW FOR SURE. If anyone doesn't see it I encourage them to go back and watch the first few seasons of BMW lol.
I think some of your criticism is a little harsh- it's a kids show after all. they don't need to show us NYC (just my opinion) but I think your ideas about cory being the restaurant and Riley having an older female role model would have been so great. Much better, for sure.
I do think the making-every-lesson-relevant-to-their-lives is a bit much because BMW was never really like that. There was overlap maybe once or twice but overall if they were at school, the focus wasn't what they were learning about.
Anyway this is a pretty short quick response to your clearly well thought out and long post but eh it's a start hah

 

All good! After I finished writing and hit reply I looked at the length of the comment and was like "what am I doing with my life" hahaha. I actually, and this seems to be rare amongst fans, prefer the first four seasons to the final three. I rewatch BMW frequently. I can still remember watching BMW from the beginning when I was only about eight years old. I loved it because Cory and his dad reminded me of me and my father. Cory and Alan Matthews still remains one of my all time favorite father/son relationships on television. I think they nailed his parents. Because of my nostalgia, the first season is one of my favorites. Weirdly enough, I have this false memory of seeing the episode where Topanga kisses Cory against the locker as the season finale. Thus it's always weird to me on a rewatch when it's actually early on in the season. 90s culture I guess. I probably missed it the first time and had to wait months to see it again because that used to be a thing. God I'm old.

Anyway, I do see some similarities between the initial seasons of BMW and GMW, but I still think the writing is way better. Part of that is due to a network television writers room that had to be good enough to sustain the series ratings to a wider audience on ABC's much lauded TGIF lineup. Conversely, GMW on Disney Channel is inevitably going to have a more niche audience and I think the writers room is weaker as a result. I think you're right about the early seasons placing an emphasis on lessons, but that's one of the things I love about it. Those lessons came as a result of fun stand alone stories that developed the characters, which only aided it later when it became more serialized. By that point you had come to know these characters well and cared about them in context of what came before. The writing on GMW is just weaker overall to me. I really do have a problem with them placing so much emphasis on moralizing over story. It feels like they sit down with their lesson first and then try to force a story around it and the result is some pretty crummy dialogue. The kids don't feel like kids to me in the ways in which they reach their disagreements. The issue they are often arguing about are things that usually feel untrue. It's like the writers know what they need their turning point, setback and climax to be, but can't find a natural way to get there so they force Riley or Maya to dwell on something that just often feels unrealistic. It's frustrating because, again, there is a lot there I do like and wish they would flesh out more.

I'm of the rare opinion that BMW got worse when it went into their senior year and then followed them to college. It turned into a teen soap opera and less of a family sitcom, which is to be expected at that point. I know that's not a popular opinion as a lot of fans prefer the later seasons. My favorite version of Eric is season four Eric. That season gives him such an emotionally satisfying arc by season's end. And then they turn him into a moron afterward. I mean that's fun and all, but yeah that's all he really is at that point. He's just an idiot. Flanderized I guess.

 

This Is the Scene That Got William Daniels to Play Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World

 

I knew that bit of trivia about the Romeo and Juliet scene, but reading that entire excerpt was a real treat

 

Just got added to Hulu

 

I got the notification from you and thought there would be a bigger announcement. Dammit

 

BMW or GMW?

 

Boy Meets World

 

I should get Hulu.

 

Damn I hate Hulu.

 

I'm sorry but not sure what you expected lol

 

Just started a hulu description yesterday. Yes!

 

90s TGIF is now on Hulu

 

yeah I'm so stoked!! now if only my hulu would work...

 

“The stars aligned perfectly to come back and be on camera again, so I’m slowly starting that again, which is fun,” said Friedle. “We’re getting back on track, and Danielle and I are actually, looks like, maybe doing something in the future.” Mysterious! Fishel chimed in with only slightly more detail: “Yeah, we’ve developed an on-camera show that we are shopping currently.”

 

Oh by the way. This is still one of the greatest shows.

 

This is a great post

Cool, Will needs to be back on camera again. Trojan War is legendary

 

Late pass, but the first half of this tweet made my face sink, only to read the rest and see that's it's just Feeny being amazing again

 

Aww I know some of them are supposed to come to the mega con in Orlando I think, but idk who. But I want to go explicitly for them

 

I would die to meet William Daniels. One of my favorite people ever.

 

Daniels looks so much like Stan Lee here that i pretty much did a triple take