So I watched the debut episode of Girl Meets World, which is a spin off of the older show Boy Meets World. I followed that up by watching an episode of Boy Meets World for a little compare/contrast. The following are my thoughts.
IMMEDIATE IMPRESSIONS: Boy Meets World (hereafter BMW) was an ABC show, originally a coming of age story about Cory Matthews, Shawn Hunter, and Topanga Lawrence. It aired in 1993, the starring characters were all in Middle School, and the show centered on jokes and every day life lessons. Girl Meets World (hereafter GMW) is a Disney Channel coming of age show about Cory and Topenga's daughter Riley, who is in Middle School, and the show centers around jokes and every day life lessons. The formulas and setup aren't that different, but the style difference is noticeable. GMW LOOKS like a Disney Channel show. The set, clothes, camera work and pacing is very heavily influenced by the successes of Hannah Montana. After the initial "Oh, THIS is the vibe the're going with?" you stop noticing so much.
There IS something about this show - at least the first episode - that leaves you feeling like it's WAY different than BMW, and I think that most people will assume it's because it's the style without giving it much thought. Of COURSE it's not going to have the same vibe. Teenagers now aren't going to wear early 90's fashion, and the Disney Channel crew isn't going to use out dated camera technology. I think I have a better guess as to what the difference is.
CASTING/CHARACTERS: Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel reprise their roles as Cory and Topanga, main characters, and that seems to be about it for characters from the old show beyond the odd cameo. At least so far. And they didn't miss a beat stepping back into character. Rowan Blanchard plays their daughter Riley, and I can see why they went with her. Her mannerisms are SUPER similar to early Cory mannerisms. Middle school Cory and Riley are both driven to be social (and socially accepted on some level), but are massively uncomfortable in their own skin about it; wearing their inevitable awkwardness right on their sleeves.
Cory perhaps will get a few more laughs out of it than Riley will, until Riley learns to commit. She can't be internally analyzing her own every word, blushingly stumbling over how to say "hello" to a cute boy, and then expressing herself confidently and honestly to her father right in front of him the next second. Sabrina Carpenter plays Maya Hart, Riley's best friend and token bad influence from a rough family (neo-Shawn Hunter). Maya is perhaps a little more attention-commanding than Riley. She leaps without looking, and gets into trouble. The Cory-Shawn dynamic was a large part of what made BMW such a great show, and GMW knows this, and unapologetically sets itself up for a similar character dynamic. I DO hope that the writers go through the trouble of bringing something new to the table with the new characters, rather than give us a 1:1 Cory and Shawn, but as millennials and girls.
WRITING: I'm probably going to spend more time here than anywhere else, since I know more about writing than anything else.
The writing in GMW is strikingly similar to BMW, with one major difference I hope they fix. The setup and conflict in this episode were relatively low-stakes and served mostly to introduce you to the new characters, which is what a new sitcom should certainly do. GMW also felt like it had to spend a little of the first episode winking at the viewers who are watching because they remembered the old show. Not too much time; this is definitely NOT BMW trying to relive its glory days, and it's not Cory and Topanga self-celebrating what a good run they had. But they bothered with a couple of moments to kind of point at the old show and say to the newer younger viewers the parents of the main characters have a huge history of character development. I think the writing probably assumes the target audience is more the younger viewers than the die-hard BMW fans. They clearly want to write more BMW episodes, and they want to draw in the millennials, and this is the only way to do both. (Note: Michael Jacobs and April Kelly created both shows)
The keyword for the writing is subtlety. GMW needs to show and not tell.
The jokes in GMW are pretty standard sitcom jokes. They're a little hit and miss in the first episode, but I think that's largely because they're relying a little too hard on characters we haven't REALLY gotten to know yet. They TOLD us, for instance, that Maya is a trouble maker. So a couple of the one liners she delivers, while they SHOULD be funny, don't land as hard because we didn't get to SEE her be a trouble maker yet. Shawn has said similar one liners in BMW, but by the time he did, we already saw him making trouble. We didn't HAVE to be told he was bad news, we just watched him rent Mr. Feeny's house out as a bed and breakfast while he was on vacation. Thankfully, Maya DID make enough trouble before the episode ended that the jokes should hold some more weight later.
The drama does a little of that too. In a new show, you need to start small and grow it. GMW wants you to care about Riley's middle school problems a little sooner than we're really given a reason to. So again, they sort of have to tell you who the characters are so that they can show you who the characters are. It could very well be that Michael and April are better at middle episodes than they are an beginnings. Lord knows they've had way more practice in the middle. Again, the stakes were relatively low, and mostly served to show you who's who. Since sitcoms of this sort are designed so there is a sense of sequential order, but not so much that you ever HAVE to watch the episodes in order, this episode can be saved by the character development of later episodes. The trouble Maya gets her and Riley into in episode 5 might save the jokes she made in episode 1.
My sincerest hope is that they don't try and make Riley and Maya Cory and Shawn 1:1. It's clear they're setting the show up to run a somewhat similar course; Riley comes from a good family, but needs to learn to be comfortable in her own skin, and Maya comes from a bad family and needs to be (as the show put it) "fixed". But they won't get away with an exact repeat. Riley and Maya can't have Cory and Shawn's problems all over again. For one thing, nobody CAN pull off Cory and Shawn. For another thing, they're girls. Riley is allowed all the similarities she wants with Cory, particularly because she is his daughter. But Cory was a shrimpy, fruity middle schooler who had bully problems and tried too hard to please everyone. As a girl, Riley simply can't have those same disadvantages.
She's not terribly shrimpy, she's not wanting for romantic partners (in the pilot episode, the cute boy (whose name escapes me, because his entire personality is "cute boy") seems completely fine with her sitting on his lap, and Farkle Minkus made it abundantly evident that Riley and Maya are desirable enough), and her people-pleasing impulses come off less weasle-y from her than they did with Cory. Cory tried to use charm he didn't have. Riley lives in a world where Zooey Deschannel exists, and so can actually be charming. In fact, if they actually want to get a laugh out of a socially awkward, people pleasing female character, in situations that are believable for that sort of personality, they could stand to take some notes from "the New Girl".
The writing overall was pretty alright for what it was. The winks at the old series were extremely distracting, however. They took the whole "passing the torch" theme a little too far for my taste, and spent too much time drilling the "this was once Cory's world, but now he's already met the world, so now Riley has to make it HER world" into your head. How many times do you guys need to say "world"? You trying to start a drinking game?
Oh. Well, alright, I'll watch it again later with vodka then.
DIRECTION/FLOW: I don't know as much about this department. I only know so much about how it's done or how to do it well, because I don't have any first hand experience with television shows on this level. As I'd said before, GMW is newer than BMW, so the cameras are better, the styles are more modern, people dress... well, at least they dress how the Disney Channel thinks people dress these days. Beyond that, the pacing and flow is mostly the same in GMW as it was in BMW. I mentioned that the jokes have the same writing style, and the actors give them much the same sort of slightly-absurdly over-the-top delivery.
Oh. Well, alright, I'll watch it again later with vodka then.
DIRECTION/FLOW: I don't know as much about this department. I only know so much about how it's done or how to do it well, because I don't have any first hand experience with television shows on this level. As I'd said before, GMW is newer than BMW, so the cameras are better, the styles are more modern, people dress... well, at least they dress how the Disney Channel thinks people dress these days. Beyond that, the pacing and flow is mostly the same in GMW as it was in BMW. I mentioned that the jokes have the same writing style, and the actors give them much the same sort of slightly-absurdly over-the-top delivery.
They don't really let you think for yourself, however (and this is that tell, don't show problem). In BMW, the cameras would back off mostly and treat it like a live stage performance. Multiple characters would be on screen at a time, in a relatively open space, and even though only one person talks at a time, perhaps only to one other person, EVERYONE would be acting as they would in that situation. If they're in the background of the shot listening, they're wearing an expression. If they're NOT listening, they're doing stage business, and whatnot. In contrast, GMW tends to make you pay attention to what they think you need to look at. There are more close-ups on whoever is talking, and it makes the whole vibe a little more cramped. This is a relatively small nitpick in the overall scheme of the show. It doesn't break the show, it's just a personal preference for scene setting.
Like that.
CONCLUSION: Boy Meets World was probably a more family oriented show than Girl Meets World feels like so far. It's not quite as smart yet, and it hasn't taken any risks to the wholesome Disney Channel vibe. BMW addressed very real issues sometimes in a very real way. I remember one of the early episodes where Cory and Topanga fell asleep at the school and a rumor started to spread that they had sex, and while Cory was being celebrated for it, Topanga's reputation took a real hit. Cory had a tough decision, and the stakes were kinda high. Will GMW have any episodes like that? In a later episode of BMW, Shawn dated a black girl, which at the time was still a rarity on television, revealing a certain latent racism in the media. That still exists. Will Maya date a black guy? I can't think of a whole lot black guy/white girl partnerships in sitcoms, other than a brief relationship Ally McBeal had with the landlord from Rent.
A lot of people collectively decided to watch Cory Matthews grow up and go to college and such. There may be a new generation of people that collectively want to watch Riley Matthews grow up. To me, the draw of the show is seeing how Cory Matthews, all grown up, parents Riley as she grows up. I don't relate to twelve year old girls, but I do relate to Cory. And Cory cares about Riley. If the show does well, it will do so because of the father/daughter relationship between these two.
I'll have to watch more episodes before forming a more permanent opinion about the show. Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think!
--J.m. Gatewood
