This week’s episode of Girl Meets World kicked off with a role reversal for Riley and Maya. Their Spanish teacher doles out their first test grades, giving Maya an A and Riley a D. When the teacher insists that Riley speak exclusively in Spanish, we see why—she merely speaks in English with a Spanish accent.
Topanga’s Café: Riley has pinned the D to her chest and separated herself from her friends, convinced that she’s too disgraced to sit with them. The gang discusses how their middle school grades don’t matter, but their high school grades will all go on their permanent record, a fact that freaks Riley out like woah. Maya is too busy being enamored with her A to give Riley’s problem much attention at this point—she’s actually speaking to it as if it’s her first love. Get it, girl.
The Matthews’ Apartment: Maya welcomes the entire Matthews family to the “First-ever Maya Refrigerator Ceremony,” and holds her A up for all to see. Topanga and Cory are thrilled and proud of her. Topanga even smells the A to make sure it’s real. She throws her children’s papers off of the fridge to make room for Maya’s paper. “That’s not going to affect how we grow up at all,” Auggie says. Their only concern is that Riley got a D.
School: Cory explains to Riley’s Spanish teacher that giving her a D will only convince her that she’s a D student. The Spanish teacher says that’s what she is right now, she has a point. She insists that good teachers don’t build their students’ self-confidence, they help their kids build their own self confidence.
Bay Window: Riley’s not the only one who’s down this week—baseball tryouts reveal that Lucas has lost his mojo, while Zay is flying high on his own success. Farkle joins them, upset that he’s no longer the smartest person in his chem class, having been upstaged by resident genius Smackle. They split into two groups—the successes (Maya, Zay, and Smackle) and the failures (Riley, Lucas, and Farkle).
Spanish Classroom: this time it’s Topanga who goes to see Riley’s teacher, only she’s not there to demand that she change a grade. Topanga thanks the Spanish teacher, as she’s the kind of teacher who is going to help parents push their kids to do better. She doesn’t want Riley to rest on her laurels, she wants her working hard. Even Cory realizes that the kids need to step up their game.
The Spanish teacher explains she won’t be giving Riley a makeup test or extra credit. She doesn’t care that she got a D, she cares that she work harder and improve for the next test. Both Riley and Farkle see that they have to better themselves, inspiring Riley to crack her book and get studying.
Spanish Room: Riley arrives speaking almost fluently in Spanish. Maya and the Spanish teacher are very impressed until she says, “The potato is a good sailboat.” Can’t win them all. Riley gets an A on the next test. Lucas and Zay explain that they’re now on the JV team together. Over in Cory’s class, Cory explains that what the kids know now will never be good enough for a good teacher, and he plans on being a good teacher.
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Thankfully, Girl Meets World finally shook off some of their weirdness that plagued the beginning of the season. Instead of a heavy-handed lesson delivered to us by overly complicated storylines, this week Girl Meets World gave us a lesson about how to deal with failure with a solid amount of humor. As always, Maya, Riley and Lucas had solid moments. However, Smackle continues to be a star when it comes to humor—her timing and delivery is always impeccable when she makes comments about Lucas. For instance, when Zay spoke to her and she responded, “Don’t hit on me in front of Lucas,” without missing a beat.
Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: Quite low, though Topanga smelling that A recalled her days as Student Extraordinaire on Boy Meets World.
Episode Rating: 8/10
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