This week on Girl Meets World, Maya wants to celebrates being the real Maya again by wreaking havoc at their high school. At Topanga’s Cafe, the kids are having a laugh over Farkle pretending to be a volcano (Mount Farkleuvius) and Lucas’s British alter ego Mortimer (which Farkle declares as #311 in the list of things Lucas can’t do)–everyone except Maya, who feels like she no longer has a role within their group. Riley asks if she still likes Lucas, but Maya no longer knows what she likes. Riley’s new tendency to bring up Lucas and the love triangle at every turn feels pretty unnatural; she hasn’t really had any problem passing the Bechdel Test before, and now all of a sudden she’s obsessed with Lucas and Maya’s feelings for him. There’s a cute moment where Maya threatens Farkle, who responds by kissing her adorably on the nose. “Things like that are getting more unpredictable as we get older,” he explains cheerily. “I’m telling Smackle,” Maya threatens. “I’m telling Smackle!” Farkle interrupts, his demeanor just as sunny as before.
Katie calls over to the kids, concerned that a hundred dollars are missing from the cash register. They all look to Maya, who denies any involvement. Katie quickly finds the money underneath the register’s drawer, but the damage has been done. Maya doesn’t want to be around friends who think she could do something like that.
Cory’s Class: the board says, “Why live next to a volcano then, huh?” Good question, Cory. The volcano in question was Mount Vesuvius, the demise of Pompeii. The volcano in metaphorical question is Maya, who is ditching school. The lesson: learn what you’re living with, and know that it’s human nature to explode after a while.
A Sketchy Park: Maya lays out a brick, a hammer, and several cans of spray paint. She’s the most prepared vandal I’ve ever seen. She runs into Carla and Renée, who she knew from back before she met Riley. They start trashing Riley, calling her Dorothy and generally making fun of her for being a good person. Maya defends her and the three nearly come to blows. Renée hits the park’s statue with a hammer and both girls goad Maya to do the same. Maya threatens them, I think? The blocking on this scene was awful. This entire scene and storyline in general was awkward and didn’t fit. They were clearly trying to mirror the storyline where Shawn nearly vandalized the school, but that was a result of Feeny’s tough finals schedule. In Maya’s case, there’s no point other than being bad, and she has to create the opportunity, it doesn’t just present itself. This was not well executed at all.
The Matthews’ Apartment: Maya is brought back to the Matthews’ apartment by the neighborhood cop. When she sees Riley, she flips. “You! You did this! Put me in jail for the rest of my life and don’t allow visitors because if you do, she’ll come and she’ll bring me a stupid lemon meringue pie,” she yells. “It’s for you and all your jail-bird friends,” Riley responds. Interrupting for just one minute to point out that Maya doesn’t actually live at the Matthews’ apartment, so this scene makes very little logical sense.
The Park: our kind police officer brings Maya, Katie, and almost the entire Matthews family to see what kind of vandalism occurred at the park. We get a nice shot of a very large “HOPE” mural, which initially was what I thought Maya had done. In actuality, I think the cop caught Maya trying to fix the statue that Renée broke and brought her in for that. Maya reveals that she nearly did some damage herself, but her conscience (that she’s going to call Dorothy in honor of Riley) stopped her. Katie is proud of her and the cop swears he’s not going to give up on Carla and Renée just yet. He’ll write Maya up, put it in a folder, and lose the folder–as long as he never hears from her again.
The B plot sees the return of Doy, the loveable child who can’t pronounce his own name. He sprints into the Matthews’ apartment out of breath, proclaiming himself to be a “bad boy”. Apparently he stole some candy, not knowing he had to pay for it. Topanga explains to him that it’s a good thing that he feels bad, because that way they know he has a conscience. She’ll take him to the candy store to get the entire mess cleared up.
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Topanga and Doy return with a cop in tow, who explains that Doy has been stealing from that candy store every day for a year. They want $300 to make up for it, which for some reason Topanga is going to figure out. This kid has parents, right? The Matthews are not responsible for him? “Hey kid, you want to take a ride in a real police car?” the cop asks. “Yeah! You want some more evidence?” Doy asks, giving him a toy car he also stole. “Yeah! See, the system works sometimes,” the cop says. Uh…I’m not sure about this whole thing either.
As stated above, this episode was clumsy as hell. In an effort to make Maya as dark as teenage Shawn, they’re trying to shove her into this angsty box that she just doesn’t fit into right now. Even though she was looking for something bad to do, this destructive behavior didn’t make any sense–her spirits were too good, and there wasn’t even an actual storyline to go along with it. I hope they’re past trying to create problems along these lines for Maya, because they sure aren’t working.
Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: Medium. While this episode didn’t directly reference anything from the original series, it was very obviously a reboot of the episode where Shawn almost vandalizes the school. A poor reboot, but one all the same.
Episode Rating: 3/10.
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