This is an article topic that’s been stewing in my brain for a little over a month now. For reasons, I’ve been putting it off. Just let me say that my wife and I started watching Girl Meets World when it came to Netflix as a result of our mutual interest in Boy Meets World. I’m almost certain that she and I were not in the intended audience demographic, but we’re weird. What can I say? I want to focus more on Girl Meets World in this article because it’s a recent thing, and this is mostly an expose on my personal feelings concerning the show. It was cancelled after its third season. By contrast, Boy Meets World ran for a total of seven seasons. Let me say before we jump in that I in no way want to minimize Boy Meets World with this article. My intention is to hopefully bring to light some aspects of Girl Meets World that I feel make it a strong show, and that I feel people need more of in their lives.
Now, when I first heard that Disney was making a spinoff of Boy Meets World, my initial thoughts were that they were just going to make a silly show with no soul that was just a cheap exploit of a wonderful part of my youth. You know the usual reboot gripes. Along that line, Boy Meets World really was a pretty big deal for me growing up. I didn’t get to watch nearly as much as I would have liked, but the episodes that I did see helped to introduce me to new life concepts that I had yet to encounter on my own, and also to reinforce moral axioms that I had been taught all of my life. Also, coincidentally, I was just a little bit younger than the cast when the show started so I grew up with the cast as the show was running. Feeny was almost as much a mentor to me as Captain Kirk and Captain Picard were, and I saw a lot of myself in Cory. Through Cory and the rest of the cast, I learned what it meant to be an honest, and compassionate person. I got to experience situations vicariously that helped me to better understand how to deal with the curveballs of life. The show was generally optimistic, but in its 90s kind of way, it didn’t shy away from some pretty heavy topics, either. It was a good balance in narrative subject matter.
As I said before, my wife and I picked up Girl Meets World when it came to Netflix. I was skeptical at first, obviously. However, I was quickly won over. The characters were well defined, the stories were interesting, and the themes were surprisingly still informative. I realized pretty quickly that, for me, the show was an extension of the previous show, and that as an aging young man, the lessons that Cory was learning in this show were lessons that I could file away and take with me because I’m probably going to be there before I know it. I’m sure that I’ll have kids of my own in the future, and that I’ll have to carefully navigate the dangerous waters of parenthood personally. What I liked about the presentation of GMW in particular is that it didn’t attempt to glamorize anything. Hollywood has a nasty habit of taking the mundane and glitzing it up to make it seem more appealing. The moral there is never make a life decision based on what you’ve seen in TV, or a movie. It will probably end badly. But seriously, I’ve experienced this in my own life, primarily with college. How many movies have you seen where college is just a non-stop frat party, and no matter who awful things get, the characters manage to do well anyway? It’s pretty much its own genre. I’m not saying that I was so naive that I thought college would be exactly like that, but what Hollywood failed to mention was how much work is involved in doing well in college. I put around 30 hours a week into just keeping up with my five courses. It’s exhausting. GMW could very easily have stuck to that glamorizing formula, but instead, it was very frank about the struggles involved in being a parent, and being in a family. No one had anything particularly easy, and everyone certainly had to struggle to maintain forward momentum. The show also did a good job encouraging people to take joy in the mundane things. It’s an uncommon message to see these days.
Now the main reason that I’m pretty sure I don’t quite fit the target audience of GMW is because these are the main characters:
While I am male, it’s been a lot longer than I generally like to admit since I’ve been in high school. Also, as the title entails, the girls are the primary protagonist characters. That said, the show does a fantastic job making each character pretty universally relatable. It’s easy to see characteristics of any one of the characters in oneself. Their struggles are universal, and so any lessons learned can be applied to anyone. It’s a tough line to walk trying to accomplish that without coming across as bland, but GMW did it exceptionally well. This brings me to the main motivation behind this article. GMW is really optimistic in its view of the world. So much so that some might find it nauseating at times. It’s also kind of silly at times, but then so was BMW. The main main character Riley, is practically incapable of seeing bad in anyone. The character has a penchant for compassion, and seeing the good in people that borders on superhuman. However, I spend my week critiquing TV shows and movies, and I see a lot of negativity and criticism around me. This is the crux of this article. This is why I feel like the world needs more of these shows.
In a world that is constantly attempting to bombard you with negative, and demeaning messages, we all need a source of optimism. This may be unpopular, but we also need a source telling any who will listen that the traditional way of things, and traditional morality are still okay. And GMW does that. Riley has two parents. One is a man, the other is a woman. They’ve been together since they were in middle school, and they’re more in love with one another in the more recent show than when they were in the original show. There are traditional moral principles being offered, and no one attacks any of that in a truly malicious way. It is teased harmlessly from time to time, but at the end of the day, it’s just accepted that that’s the way things are, and that that’s okay. A lot of that negativity, and vitriol that gets spewed around today is focused on ‘changing’ the traditional way of things, at least here in the US of A. Now don’t get me wrong, I feel like as long as your way of life isn’t doing direct harm to another human being, you should be able to live your life however you see fit. But so much effort is expended to undermine more traditional ways of life because… ...Because. Just because… I haven’t actually ever heard anyone give an explanation why that I’ve found objectively satisfactory. I guess being traditional just isn’t cool these days, but that’s not a good reason to start lashing out at people who choose to maintain those traditions for themselves and their families. And GMW does a good job creating an atmosphere where even when things happen that challenge those moral traditions, characters come to the conclusion that they need to accept others as they are, and those others need to just accept the characters as they are. It’s stupidly simple and optimistic, but it’s a message that needs to be shared, I think. We all need to realize that we can accept each other as we are, and we can live lives that don’t hurt others, but that also don’t necessarily conform to the morals of others and that’s okay.
Girl Meets World got cancelled after its third season, but this blogger is sincerely hoping that the producers can get it picked up because once I do have kids, I want to have plenty of show to show them that reinforces that their world could be more positive, compassionate, and accepting. Speaking of tradition, stay tuned for next week! We’ll be moving into summer, and I’ve got some exciting reviews lined up!
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