Girl Meets World returned last week with ever TV reviewer’s nightmare fan’s dream: a week’s worth of brand new episodes! Why? Who knows!
CLORIS LEACHMAN, AUGUST MATURO, DANIELLE FISHEL
“Girl Meets Gravity” (2×01)
A Plot: Riley and Maya are ready to move up and away from Cory’s class, but quickly realize that no one else will treat them as the center of the class (or the universe).
B Plot: Mrs. Svorski wants Topanga to quit her lawyer job to take over Svorski’s and make it a happening spot for the young kids. Topanga does as she asks, hiring Maya’s mother to help. Mrs. Svorski passes away.
What is Cory’s Class Studying? Belgium, 1831. Cory quickly gives that up to explain how people in Galileo’s time thought that the sun revolved around the Earth (and themselves). Then he starts teaching his favorite play, Our Town. He just does what he wants.
Life Lesson: Learn to appreciate those in your orbit and spend time with your loved ones while you can.
Best Part: Mrs. Svorski gifts Auggie with an antique salt shaker. After she’s gone, he opens it to find a note that riffs off their usual joke: “It’s not my-kranian bakery, I’m dead!”
Worst Part: The frame narrative. Riley is giving Mrs. Svorski’s eulogy, but it sounds like she’s doing the narration for a planetarium in front of a weird space backdrop for the majority of the episode.
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Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: After Riley’s speech, Cory calls Mr. Feeny to check up on him. Also, Maya and Riley declare that they are going to be “KINGS!” a la Cory and Shawn.
A Plot: Riley and Lucas are having trouble dealing with everyone’s nosiness and the idea that everything is supposed to change between them because of their kiss.
B Plot: Auggie has his first bro! Dewy pronounces his name “Doy” and it’s slowly driving Topanga crazy. She spends the episode trying to correct the 3 year old, but is ultimately unsuccessful.
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What is Cory’s Class Studying? The New World, i.e., pre-Colonial America.
Life Lesson: Don’t do things just because people say you should. It was communicated pretty well, too: “Sometimes the right pressure can turn you into a diamond,” Riley says. “And sometimes, it turns you into DUST!” Topanga counters.
Best: Farkle proposes to Maya with “the ring [his] mother throws at [his] father,” and Maya is hypnotized by jewelry for the rest of the episode. The couple passes by Lucas and Riley dressed in wedding finery. The ship is alive, my friends.
Worst: The oddly “Summer Nights”-esque harassment Lucas and Riley faced at the hands of their classmates. They weren’t even singing! Everyone should feel cheated.
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Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: I guess I’ll count the reference to Farkle’s father, Minkus.
A Plot: When Lucas’s former best friend Isaiah “Zay” Babineaux from Texas comes to live in New York, Riley and the gang find out that Lucas was actually expelled from his old school for a mysterious reason.
B Plot: NOTHING. The entire episode revolves around Lucas’s big secret.
What is Cory’s Class Studying? Belgium, 1831. Again.
Life Lesson: The secret of life is that people change people.
Best: Cory assigns the gang to wash cars with a partner to determine the secret of life. Riley and Lucas both end up spraying each other with a hose due to current tension. Then Maya sprays them both because she has a winning spirit.
Worst: They never tell us explicitly what Lucas’s secret is, just allude to him fighting.
Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: When he finds out that Topanga isn’t attending Career Day, Farkle complains: “My father says she should have been my mother.” Also, the episode was directed by Rider Strong.
A Plot: Cory realizes that 15 years have elapsed since they buried a time capsule. He takes Shawn, Topanga, and the girls to dig it out of Feeny’s yard.
B Plot: Shawn must make a decision between holding onto his past with Angela and moving on with Katie, ultimately deciding to be there for both Katie and Maya.
What is Cory’s Class Studying? “What is history?” Cory assigns a time capsule to all of the kids, challenging them to make their own history.
Life Lesson: Hope is real? Don’t give up hope? I don’t know, at some point Riley says, “Pluto is believing that something is out there.”
Best: When Shawn asks Katie what kind of lip stuff she’s putting on, she responds, “It’s cinnamon spice lip gloss. I put it on when I don’t know what’s happening.”
Worst: The fact that everything Cory, Shawn, and Topanga put in their time capsule was related to their relationships—every bit of adult happiness on this show is tied to having a steady significant other. What about a fulfilling career? Friends that you love? NADA. It’s a continual problem I don’t think is going anywhere anytime soon.
Boy Meets World Throwback Factor(s):
- Shawn busts in, convinced that Cory is dying, and promises to take him to his favorite restaurant to take all the rolls. “They want you to take the rolls!” Cory says lovingly.
- The montage of Boy Meets World Cory/Shawn gasps after they dig up Feeny’s yard.
- Riley and Maya do a rather aggressive version of the Feeny call.
- Everything they put in the time capsule—Cory put his denim jacket in, Topanga put the note from Lauren that led to her and Cory’s first break up, and Shawn put all of Angela’s stuff that he found in that purse that made him fall in love with her.
A Plot: Riley and Maya are in a huge fight, so Cory brings in Eric as the resident friendship expert.
B Plot: NOTHING. The entire episode revolves around this fight.
What is Cory’s Class Studying? Belgium, 1831. Farkle is so annoyed that he erases it before Cory can even begin. At least they’re having fun with the ridiculousness of Cory’s classroom.
Life Lesson: Everyone is insecure about something. Also, “lose one friend, lose all friends, lose self,” makes another appearance.
Best: Eric can’t keep Maya’s name in his head, opting to call her Moesha and the like for the entirety of the episode.
Worst: Eric has been elected as mayor of St. Upidtown—his current backstory is ridiculous and doesn’t feel like it’s in the same realm as everyone else. I would have preferred if they treated him like a real character.
Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: Eric shows up as Plays With Squirrels, the future version of himself presented in the Boy Meets World episode in which everyone is fighting over the prank war.
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