Saturday, February 7, 2015

Episode Review: Girl Meets Farkle's Choice (#1.19)

Episode Title: "Girl Meets Farkle's Choice"
Episode Number: 19
Boy Meets World Episodes Borrowed From: I can't think of anything for the main plot, but the subplot with Topanga and Auggie reminded me a bit of Season 1's "Class Pre-Union" where Morgan had an obnoxious friend with an obnoxious mother, and Amy and Morgan like... taught'em a lesson.
Cory's History Lesson and Relevance: Poor little Canada is our greatest ally, so we best not take them for granted. He's really condescending toward Canada. I guess it's relevant, but I don't necessarily grant his premise.
Episode Review: 

Let's get some other topics out of the way since... who cares about this episode? It was announced this week that both Trina McGee-Davis (Angela) and Blake Clark (Chet) will be returning to Girl Meets World in Season 2 - joining Will Friedle, Rider Strong, William Daniel, and a cadre of other BMW vets for that season. What do we think of this? I already spoke about my thoughts about the idea of Angela's return in the "Master Plan" review - I'm not against the idea, as long as it's to provide Shawn with closure and not reunite them. Chet, though? Why Chet? Don't get me wrong, I like Chet a lot. Probably my favorite non-main-cast-member BMW character. But the guy's been dead for 15 years. The actor has aged since then. They went to the ghost well once-too-often as it is. I think this is a mistake. But - is it kind of a "Screw it. We want to bring everyone back at least once. And how else do we get Blake Clark on?" situation?


So, yeah, as I mentioned. I don't care about this episode. I expect you didn't either. We're over these kind of early Season 1 shenanigans. With us just having the Shawn episodes, the knowledge that this season's about over, and a more promising Season 2 is just around the corner, an episode like this is a major let down. It's been widely reported that this was an episode written to be aired much earlier, and I expected it to be a little obvious (because on the whole the later episodes have been better) but I didn't expect it to be THIS obvious. Smackle was clearly being introduced for the first time, as others reacted to hearing her name for the first time. And I'm not sure this wasn't supposed to be Ava's introduction as well, as Topanga's initial dialogue about her sure reads like exposition for the audience. That one I'm probably wrong about, since Ava appeared as early as the third episode, and I think I recall Topanga learning of her for the first time. But I bet this was meant to be Ava's second episode then. Either way, if this was meant to be Smackle's intro, this puts it as being made at least before "Girl Meets Popular" - episode 6. Between that, and the lack of Lucas (what is this, like, the 5th one this guy's missed?) it almost felt like... a prequel episode or something.

I don't get why they do this. I mean... I do. They try to do stronger episodes up front when they can to get
audiences hooked, and then show their shittier ones later on hoping the audience is already devoted and will forgive a bad one. But in a lot of cases it really causes continuity issues. Like Smackle, Harley was also not introduced with his intro episode and it was awkward as a result with it not being entirely clear to everyone that this even was Harley Keiner. Smackle wasn't so bad, because you didn't really need this episode to introduce her, but nonetheless....

The episode wasn't good. It wasn't aggressively in-your-face bad, but it wasn't remotely funny (absent tiny moments like Riley's inability to get words right on camera or Cory struggling with a juice box), the plot was very contrived (I didn't buy Riley and Maya's one-eightys about Farkle... what, just because he said sweet things to them? He does that all the time) and it relies on the initial Farkle persona - the aggressively flirtatious one - which I don't care for. We have another celebrity guest star that I wind up just feeling embarrassed for and uncertain why they bothered to bring in (though Jane Lynch is like the first one I'd legitimately buy the audience would recognize) and really it was just a whole lot of nothing.

Last bit - I confess, I didn't consider Canada either when Cory was asking who was America's greatest ally. It seemed to be obviously the UK to me. And like.... are we sure it's not the UK? They're a lot more powerful than Canada, and they're a big part of our link to Europe, which is a pretty important place. Why Canada? Because of the border? Well, then why not Mexico? Because Canada's border is bigger? Is that it? I feel like this episode was written by a Canadian with a chip on their shoulder about America's regard for them. Don't get me wrong - I like Canada lots and I'm willing to hear an argument about why Canada is our most important ally, maybe that's correct. Maybe it is, and I'm just not thinking about it the right way. But Cory just... stated it and it was treated like "Oh, of course! Canada! Why didn't I think of that?" and he never actually really explained why that was so. 


Oh, and what was with those two weirdos in the subway? They actually seemed like they might supposed to be rape-y Joey and Frankie analogues, what with the bad grammar New York-y little guy and the eloquent big guy. I don't like them. Don't let them back on. Let them go the way of "The Rebel". Into the dust. Also, was the little guy maybe just a midget and he's too young for us to tell? Farkle dwarfed him. Farkle. 

Episode Rating: C-
Episode MVP: No one really blew me away or anything. I guess Corey Fogelmanis had to do all the heavy lifting, and he's never won one of these before, has he? Fine then. Corey Fogelmanis. 

12 comments:

  1. Not really a lot to write here. This episode was obviously shot so long ago, that the characters no longer resemble the ones we saw in this episode. Corey is the MVP, since he had to carry the episode. He did ok, but the "I love you both" Farkle is so cheesy that his delivery of the lines makes it worse. Jane Lynch was good as herself, in a parody award show spot. This was the throwaway of throwaway episodes, which is ironic considering the message. Also, the "Oh, Canada" bit was overkill.

    As far as Canada goes, yeah, I didn't think of them either. Yet, its true and makes a lot of sense. The border is part of it, as it is the worlds longest unprotected border which speaks to the relationship between the two countries. Also, the majority of the US economy is not in China, as its reported in the media, its in Canada. The same is true in the opposite regarding Canada. All that on top of their willingness to stand by us in many international political situations.

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    1. Yeah, put that way, Canada as our most important ally totally works. They just should've done even an abridged version of that explanation.

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  2. A little off topic but do you bother to watch Jessie or Dog With a Blog since they straddle Girl Meets World on the schedule? Sometimes I think they're better at being GMW than GMW itself (though Jessie has gone downhill midway after S2).

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    1. I've seen a fair bit of both, both before and after. Austin and Ally too. Dog with a Blog, despite it's horrible premise, is actually surprisingly not bad. The cast is all good and some of the writing is kind of funny. From what I've seen, GMW at it's best is better than it, but it doesn't get as bad as GMW does either.

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    2. Jessie, on the other hand, is absolutely dreadful. No one but Jessie herself, and some of the adults, have any business being on camera, and the writing is laughably bad.

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    3. And Austin and Ally's somewhere in the middle. Not offensive, and I think the girl who plays Ally has a definite non-Disney Channel future. But not worth watching.

      I have noticed a Disney trend that, among the kids, the actresses tend to be much more talented than the guys. It's true in all four of these.

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    4. I think that's because Disney Channel skews towards young girls, so they look for talented young ladies, and just slot the boys in and hope they perform.

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    5. Are there any other Disney Channel shows you watch? You think you might do a mini-review for one just to see how it compares with GMW?

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    6. Afraid I don't really think that's in the cards. Maybe if they do some sort of crossover?

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  3. I'm watching this episode of GMW at the moment, and this early segment with Topanga and Ava's dumb mother and the moose book was spot on, I thought. Especially the juice box, like you said. Definitely don't like that they're trying to romanticize Farkle's stalking.

    WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE THUGS? Like, it's sad that there's such a huge population of actors who can't land a job out in LA, but if THIS GUY can get on Girl Meets World, maybe all those jobless actors just really suck, I don't know.



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    1. I skimmed through the last ten minutes and it doesn't seem like there was anything else at all. Tough break.

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  4. literally will friedleOctober 26, 2016 at 11:32 PM

    the fuck even are the two thugs like they're ugly as fuck and terrible actors :/ And I was laughing at Farkle's "I may not look so tough, but I'm insane," until they ruined it with "...about these girls". The first half is an excellent line.

    Also an excellent line: "Hi dad! This spider is laying her eggs in my brain". "Yeah, okay" as he walks off, eating a Cup o'Noodles. #BenSAVAGE

    the rest of this episode, though. fuck this episode. like why the fuck are they so into farkle. is it just because he has one ticket between the two of them like if some girl did something like that with cory and shawn we all know what they would do and IT AIN'T THIS SHIT. "for the rest of our lives let's never settle for anyone less than farkle" WHAT THE FUCK

    and i don't know if i'm wrong but it seems like sabrina carpenter was legit losing her shit during the newscast scenes

    ALSO I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING

    http://i.imgur.com/zZVKCkV.png

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F529sd62y8Q/U_FOjd-q7_I/AAAAAAAADro/xhoNJC8FaC4/s1600/guy.gif

    at first i just wanted to take a picture of her reaction because it struck me as a very "yup, she's acting" kind of moment but SHE'S DANCING GUY'S DAUGHTER. I SWEAR IT'S TRUE.

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