News > BAD SHOWS WE LOVE: Boy Meets World
July 2, 2007
Written by: Josh Karp
BOY MEETS WORLD!
Boy Meets World will always hold a special place in my heart. For all of its shortcomings, it represents the formative years of my childhood with a special sense of nostalgia. I can remember waiting for its slot on ABC's TGIF lineup, more or less unable to contain my pitiful excitement, living vicariously through lead character Cory Matthews' trials, tribulations...and that hot girlfriend, Topanga. Mmmm Topanga.
The show, from an objective standpoint, was terrible. Poorly written dialog and canned laughter abounded, and the plot lines were either shockingly trite or stupidly bizzare (Remember, if you can, the episode where Cory joins a local cult. His friends and family attempt to save him from the misguided heathens to no avail. When Jonathan the oh-so-fun English teacher sustains a number of injuries during a motorcycle accident, however, Cory rethinks his religious affiliation. What the hell does that even mean?).
At the end of the day, however, we, the collective BmW viewers, didn't really care. Perhaps the bad aspects of the show were too far out of the reach of my feeble young brain... maybe I was too transfixed by Topanga's giant lips to think straight. Whatever the case, I loved the damn show. Thinking back on the show's 7 year run, I've come to the following conclusions:
#1 Cory, Eric, Amy and Alan Matthews represented the perfect American family. Well balanced, quirky and incredibly forgiving. They were the parents I always wanted.
#2 Eric was a dick, but he was a dick in a lovable sort of way. Exactly the way a brother was supposed to be. How goddamn cute.
#3 Topanga, duck lips and all, was a young teenager's wet dream. Seriously. She was smart, funny and actually had breasts. Yowza! That is, until the last couple of seasons. She hit the butter face/butter body factory pretty hard.
#4 Shawn was the perfect rebellious friend... independent and troubled, but always with a sense of dignified confidence and morality. So very perfect.
#5 Mr. Feeny was a hard ass, but he always had the moral upper hand. Sitting pompously behind his desk, Mr. Principal man would dole out punishment with the sort of self-righteousness that would make me want to punch a mere mortal in the face. For some reason, however, Feeny escaped my (theoretical) wrath. He was just always so damn... right.
The biggest problem with Boy Meets World was, when looking back, not its over abundance of white picket fence perfection (the Matthews actually had a white picket fence, if you'll recall). Shockingly, the show's biggest downfall was the fact that it was a near perfect facsimile of an older, better show... one that happened to star the older brother of BMW. Yeah... that's right... The Wonder Years had pretty much covered whatever ground Boy Meets World was attempting to venture across, and the fact is that they did far better the first time around.
Winnie was waaay more attractive than Topanga (sorry baby), Kevin's moral quandaries far more profound, and Paul “Milhouse” Pfeiffer made a far more compelling companion that Shawn could ever hope to be. Where The Wonder Years feels like a home movie from the childhood you never had, Boy Meets World feels like a, well, it feels like a sitcom. Aren't these things supposed to make us forget that we're watching television?
Oh yeah, and both shows had a Savage. And who are we kidding? Fred Savage out-Savages Ben Savage.
And yet, I don't really care. You can hate me as much as you'd like, threaten to hunt me down, kill my cat, or any number of other heinous acts, but I will not relent. I will always love Boy Meets World.
