This week’s episode of Girl Meets World suffered at the hands of Disney Channel’s Whodunnit Weekend, in which all of their original programming falls in line with a chosen theme: this time, mysteries. This rarely does this show any favors, and this weekend was no exception.
Cory’s Classroom: Chelsea, the class goldfish, has one last student rotation before it’s declared that she made it through the whole class without biting it. Riley’s nervous but determined—that is, until she takes a fish selfie and realizes that Chelsea is dead on her desk. Auggie, dressed like Sherlock Holmes and fresh from watching way too many hours of Owl Detective, swears that he is going to find out who killed Chelsea.
The Goldfish Store: owner Phil is clearly familiar with Maya (and the rest of Cory’s students), but Maya makes it clear that they need protect Riley’s naiveté and trusting nature. They avoid telling her why Phil knows the whole class and how goldfish are disposed of after their deaths.
Riley’s Window Seat: the entire class has been gathered for questioning about Chelsea’s murder. Auggie and Ava torture Farkle with graham cracker crunching until he confesses that he was responsible! He gave her a bath in a birdbath…in the cat’s water dish…and took an ill-fated trip to the Empire State Building. Lucas was also responsible for a few deaths, courtesy of a few home-runs at the baseball field. Maya went through seven fish! Um, never let these kids take care of anything ever again.
Riley apologizes to Chelsea 105 for their abysmal care of the previous 104 Chelseas to cross their desks. Auggie is still trying to figure out who’s responsible for the death of Chelsea 104 when Ava stops him from feeding Chelsea 105 graham crackers. Since graham crackers expand in water (and fish stomachs), they’d kill the fish. That’s when it hits him: AUGGIE is responsible! And feels terrible about it.
Riley gives Chelsea 105 to Auggie, then buys Chelsea 106 for the class—this time, they’re committed to keeping her alive for fifteen-twenty years. Yeeeeeah, sure. Maybe give the fish a little more water this time? Anyway, the kids dictate their own lesson: everything alive deserves to be cared for the right way. Cory wanted them to get here so that when the class goes on their retreat in the Berkshires, they take care of each other. That is a ridiculous jump to make.
This entire episode was rather underwhelming and didn’t make a ton of sense. I’ll be happy when we return to our regularly scheduled plot lines—these themed weekends are clumsy and less interesting than the overarching stories.
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Boy Meets World Throwback Factor: Low. Besides Auggie echoing his father’s French accent when saying the word “murderer” (see: “And Then There Was Shawn,” Boy Meets World episode 5×17), there wasn’t anything that hearkened back to Boy Meets World.
Episode Rating: 3/10.
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