Eric is running for Senator of New York and he wants Riley and her friends to run the campaign. It turns out that this is a great idea (well in the world of this TV Show) because the incumbent senator has taken money away from the school budget and “given” it to his “rich friends.” (We only find this out because the dude who unearthed all of this fiscal drama happens to be sitting in Topanga’s bakery while Eric is talking to the kids.) They all decide Eric has a change at winning the election because he cares about schools.
Um. Right. For a show based in New York, I guess they forgot about Zephyr Teachout. Moving right along…
Anyway, Harley Keiner (former tough guy at John Adams High in Philadelphia, current custodian at John Quincy Adams in New York City) somehow gets involved in the situation. He’s mostly just there so Eric can not recognize him as Harley but think he looks a lot like Harley and then say some dumb stuff about how he wished he had beaten up Harely…only to realize he is, in fact, talking to Harley. But Harley handles it with grace because he’s mellowed and matured.
Shortly thereafter, Eric comes to realize that he was selected to run for senator by someone from the incumbent’s campaign because they thought he would fail. He then becomes very depressed and Riley and Maya have to entice him to get back to work with cocoa puffs, milk, and chocolate syrup. Very reminiscent of this:
So then they have a debate at JQA Middle School and the Senator is basically like: Eric Matthews has no experience, he has no children of his own (which is his entire platform), and lowering the voting age is kind of stupid (oh yeah the middle schoolers want to lower the voting age and it is kind of stupid). But then Eric is like just ’cause I don’t have my own kids doesn’t mean I don’t care about kids. And then the Senator is like “prove it.” And then the dude from Topanga’s bakery who had discovered all of the Senator’s fiscal shenanigans, is all like I can prove that Eric cares about kids! And it turns out that he’s actually Tommy, who you all may recognize as this kid:
And at this point everyone in Girl Meets World should
like wonder if they’re living in the freaking Twilight Zone because like wtf. But yeah. It does sort of tug on my heart strings, if only because Will Friedle is so lovingly like “Tommy?” And for some reason Topanga is in the background fangirling about this child she barely knew from like a decade earlier that Eric mentored. But then they actually play a clip of Boy Meets World in order to show who Tommy is because he was kind of a minor character and why on earth would kids who watch Girl Meets World know or care about him? I’ve come to accept that the Eric episodes are written for the grown-ups, thank God. And then Tommy is all like Eric gave me up because he loved me. And he talks about how he ended up with a great family and blah blah blah Eric is great with kids. Meanwhile, all of the tweens are filming this on their smartphones.
And like Eric and Tommy walk off arm-in-arm and somehow he now has a chance of actually winning the election? So Topanga and Corey pack up to leave the country just in case, leaving their children behind. The end!
Very Special Lesson: Remember how I mentioned The Twilight Zone above? Yeah, I think Girl Meets World is all just like a Twilight Zone future for the characters of Boy Meets World. Or like Eric is in a coma and dreaming this shit. Or something. But it’s like…it’s weird.
Last night on “Girl Meets Hurricane” Maya harasses Shawn into giving her fatherly advice. I haven’t watched this show since Eric guest starred, so I’m not sure if this relationship is even reasonable. I have a feeling that it isn’t. She starts mock-beating him up and the clucks like a chicken when he won’t give her advice. So disrespectful. Kids these days.
But what could possibly make Shawn not want to play Dad, right?? Well, Angela shows up. Corey announces her presence and then she just shows up in Topanga’s bakery. It’s really odd and unexplained. Corey’s kid Riley is a total jerk to her because she’s upset that Angela might take Shawn away from Maya’s mom. Smh. Go to the mall and do kid things and stop being so obsessed with the grownups in your life!
THIS is the weirdest television episode ever. While Maya and Riley sit with their parents eavesdropping in the courtyard, Angela tells Shawn that her husband wants to have kids. She’s nervous and needs her ex-boyfriend’s reassurances that she would be a good mom. I don’t know about you but, if I was a Disney Mom I would not want my kids watching this demented shit.
I discovered today that 
I started reading The Princess Diaries series in middle school. It is by far the most endearing, light-hearted, and comedic book series I have ever read. This book series basically ruined all other “fun” book series for me forever. For decades, I have been trying to find the kind of book that’s fast-paced and silly, but in a way that doesn’t make me feel like an airhead trying desperately to care about vapid and annoying characters. So I am super excited that Meg Cabot wrote a new installment in the series but for adult readers.
As the poll from last week’s Friday Face-Off proves, this crowd is more of a “Come on, Get Happy” than a “Sunshine Day” group. That’s right, The Partridges won the Friday Face-Off, but I’m going to throw you Brady fans a bone today. As I said when I started the Reboot-O-Rama series, I’m not just attempting to complain about television and kids these days, but it’s really all been an elaborate ploy to write a post about The Brady Brides.
The Brady Brides is a terrible series that I somehow caught in reruns as a kid and determined to be the best thing ever and potentially “better than The Brady Bunch.” In hindsight, this was patently false. This show is bad. The jokes are flat. It’s weird that Maria and Jan live together with their husbands after their infamous double wedding. And all of the other, more interesting, Brady children are absent except for in the pilot movie.
But so rarely do we get a piece of kitsch quite to this level, that I think it’s high time we all stood back and appreciated The Brady Brides in all of it’s glory. Take for example today’s episode, in which Marcia and Jan decide that their adult mother cannot spend the night alone in her ranch house while their dad is on a business trip. So against their husbands’ better judgement, they invite Carol to stay over.
Then Carol comes over and they all sit around discussing the girls failures–Jan when she felt sorry for Marcia’s goldfish as a kid because they were cold and wet, so she dried them off and let them “sleep” in her bed–and Marcia who didn’t realize she needed to unbox the TV Dinner she had tried to make the night before. Then her husband Wally says, “Marcia’s best cooking is never done in the kitchen.” And they make out in front of Marcia’s sister and mother. Carol stares at them (nonplussed) and Marcia giggles and tells Wally to cut it out because Carol is watching–to which Wally replies, “Well, she’ll just have to wait her turn.” …
Then a cop brings a neighborhood boy over to the house because his mother isn’t home. And then the cop gets caught up in a game of “who’s on first” with who is married to whom and who is the mother-in-law. Ugh. Then all of these white people tell this black child that they don’t like him out on the streets at night (ugh the poor child with the absentee mother–social commentary!) and all of the white people care for the minority child. So they put the child in the bed with the two men even though Wally definitely isn’t wearing anything under that robe.
I’d like to point out that I have noticed a couch and a love seat in addition to the cot in the living room. The small child could easily sleep on the love seat and Carol Brady could sleep on the couch which looks way more comfortable than the cot. BAM solved your problem Bradys. But no, they want to make this episode into a particularly awful rip-off of Three’s Company. 
Stupid Eric is exceedingly funny, but I always loved the charming thoughtful Eric years of his high school to early adult days, personally. I did enjoy his ridiculous behavior in the college years, but it was such a departure from his original character that my brain had trouble reconciling it.
Anyway, Eric does remove his Squirrels outfit and try to help the children work out their friendship issues. (Plays with Squirrels was classically helpful with friendship, if you recall the original series). He comes to school with Corey the next day and is still full-on goofball, putting scotch tape on his face and forgetting what he’s said seconds before. My heart mourns for the loss of the sensitive, intuitive Eric we once knew.
n this episode, Corey plots to dig up the time capsule he and his friends buried fifteen years earlier in Mr. Feeny’s yard. He wears a miner’s headlight and makes a t-shirts that say “shovel,” which led the bf and I to discuss one day how we will have the disposable income to make ridiculous t-shirts and wear them around like people wear those shirts you get from a 5-k or a fundraiser but it will just be like some arbitrary thing that only four of our friends participated in and received a commemorative shirt for.
Corey also has a set of shovels (one for him and Topanga, duh). We soon realize that a third shovel is for Shawn, who rushes in thinking Corey is ill from the urgency of his phone call. When he sees all of the shovels on the wall (thinking it’s a matter of “life and death”) he assumes that Corey wants their help in digging his own grave. I laughed out loud. Anyway, someone mentions Angela while Shawn is talking to Corey’s daughter’s bff’s mom (apparently there’s some romance there). And the kids say that they must come on the trip as well.
Mr. Feeny finds them all digging up his yard, and then Maya and Riley attempt to do “the Feeny call.” HAVE THEY NO SHAME! You don’t irreverently yell in the face of an old man whom you have never met in a mockery of his name. You need to know someone and love someone forever before you get to yell in that person’s face in a mockery of that person’s name! Then they also oddly swat and/or hiss at him.
You may have heard by now that 
Like when they tried to replace Jan in The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.
The Very Special Blog 