I’ve been watching The Grinder lately. It’s not the best show, but Rob Lowe is always entertaining and I’m really loving that Fred Savage is acting again! So here’s a little reminder of that time he guest starred on Boy Meets World.
This episode is weird because Fred Savage plays the “cool young professor,” Stewart, and no one notices that he looks exactly like his brother Ben Savage, a.k.a. Corey. This guy is so cool. He treats them like friends and plays pool with them after school. Everything you ever wanted in college was to chill with your professors in the student union, right?
Eric doesn’t like him. This is because Eric realizes he’s not a great teacher like their mentor, Mr. Feeney. Everyone else is too into Stewart’s suave style to realize he’s not that great. So Topanga is super relaxed when Stewart shows up at her dorm room to go over a paper. He has conveniently forgotten to bring Angela’s paper, so she leaves them all alone to discuss the “gray areas” of morality. Even when he starts using his attraction to Topanga as an example of “crossing the line,” she still seems to think he’s just an edgy educator. Then he puts his hand on her hand, which is positioned dangerously close to her crotch and things get a little intense on Boy Meets World.
But then before anything happens, he lifts up her hand and says, “See where it gets gray.” Ugh, no that wasn’t gray. That was creepy, Professor Creeper. Then he starts creepily stroking her hair. Yuck. And when she tells him to leave he says, “that’s not what you want.” Ughhhhhhhh this is not how Kevin from The Wonder Years is supposed to behave!
Anyway, Stewart leaves without anything more gross transpiring because Corey comes to visit Topanga and interrupts them. But Corey tracks him down at the student union once Topanga reveals how sketchy their interaction was. Then Corey kind of assaults him in the heat of the moment, which causes Stewart to fall back wards through the door to the student union. Then Stewart announces in front of everyone that Corey will be kicked out of college.
No one really knows what to do, so Topanga approaches Stewart and tells him to make sure Corey isn’t kicked out of college or she will tell the dean that he behaved inappropriately. I feel like she could bypass Stewart on this one and just go straight to the dean, but anyway she gives him this ultimatum and he tells her he’s going to tell the dean that it was the other way around and Topanga was the aggressor. Ultimate douche bag.
I’d just like to say that this is the most depressing episode of Boy Meets World ever. Fred Savage is such a douche bag. And when Topanga calls him out in the hearing the female dean tries to silence her. And then Corey interrupts and gets to speak on behalf of Topanga! Then Shawn gets a moment too! Why won’t the let Topanga speak!!
The dean does seem to figure out what’s up though because she only suspends Corey for one day. Then she tells he awful Stewart he isn’t a teacher. She doesn’t fire him, but she makes it clear she’s going to keep an eye on him. But like. I feel like she should have fired him. Or at least suspended him pending some sort of investigation. Ugh, I’m just going to go back to watching The Grinder where Fred Savage is not an asshole.
Very Special Lesson: If someone you know gets creeped on major then let that person tell you how to respond. I’m disturbed that no one let Topanga have a say in this.
Shawn and Topanga are both going away for the summer, which leaves Cory totally depressed. Meanwhile, Eric has been rejected from every single college he has applied to, and is now hoping North Southwestern San Diego State University (NSWSDSU) will accept him off the wait-list. Eric’s hoping to have some quality time with Corey before he leaves home, but Cory resents Eric for only wanting to hang out with him now that he’s leaving. He plans to pack up his room in a week and spend the entire summer road-tripping to California. Like woah. I did not have that much mobility right after I graduated from high school, but more power to you, Eric.
room they’ve shared for fifteen years–and they don’t even know each other. Um. Okay. False. I get that you’re bummed this is happening but I’d just like to point out that Eric has been a pretty amazing brother to Cory: He’s a guest speaker in Cory’s 6th grade class, he makes Cory and Shawn a guide to high school on their first day, and earlier this season they even planned a rave together. So like Cory is just being super whiny and raining on everyone else’s parade because he’s lonely. But then again he is fifteen, so I guess that’s to be expected.
The next morning Cory says goodbye (almost tearfully) to Shawn and Topanga. Eric shows up just after they leave and finds a lonely Cory playing basketball and talking to himself. Cory apologizes to Eric about being a jerk. He also admits to stealing Eric’s college acceptance letter from the mailbox because he didn’t want him to leave. He feels like they’re finally getting to be friends (I guess the rave earlier this season was a real bonding moment) instead of being just brothers. Only, it turns out that letter is a rejection letter, and Eric has nowhere to go.
Eric admits that his expectations were a bit unrealistic, since he slacked off for all but the last few months of his high school career. But Cory encourages him to take a few classes over the summer, and apply again to an even better school. That’s still a major uphill battle for a guy who barely graduated from high school, but that’s not the point. The point is that Eric’s always been the supportive big brother for Cory (even though he’s been whining for this entire episode) and now it’s Cory’s turn to be the supportive one. That’s the first time in this entire 30-minute bitch-fest that Cory has actually demonstrated the kind of friendship that he demands from Eric. Omg. The feels. I think I’m going to cry. But seriously, what other hilarious sitcom is also this real in terms of human emotion. Certainly NOT Girl Meets World. New Theory: Boy Meets World is Cheers for the children of the 90’s. It’s all fun and games and harassment until you really need someone and they’re surprisingly deep.
Then Eric decides that Cory should come on his road trip with him and Amy and Alan bankroll the entire thing because they’re going to look at colleges across America. Like as a potential-one-day-maybe-parent I’m a little freaked out by the idea of an eighteen year-old and a fifteen year-old crossing America alone together in the days before cell phones, but if my kids were Eric and Cory, I’d like to think I’d be open to it.
Those rascally kids at John Quincy Adams Middle School have scared off their English teacher! And so they get a lady version of Mr. Turner. She walks into the room wearing leather of the motorcycle variety. Her first English lesson involves handing them all band new copies of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. So. I would like to sign up for this 8th grade English class please.
This should be no surprise at all as it seems that literally everyone from John Adams High has made the 90 minute trek up I-95 and relocated to the village. Even those people that we haven’t seen in a freaking decade. So Mr. Turner is all like, “I taught the X-Men on my first day.” And the principal is all devastated that he has clearly screwed up here, but who gives a crap? We’re finally getting the answers we need about Mr. Turner’s post-accident days!
Only, Cory doesn’t know about these plans, so he gets his license alone with his friends. Then his dad says he can have the car after her runs a few errands, which will take two hours tops. But he comes back five hours later to an extremely pissed off Cory. Alan offers Cory the keys to his car provided that Cory be back in time for his birthday dinner in 45 minutes. Cory is livid because he hadn’t agreed to a birthday dinner and now he has no time for his road trip. But they’ve been having a birthday dinner every year of Cory’s life so Alan doesn’t understand what the fuss is about. Eric tries to tell Cory that his dad is just upset because Cory is his last son. But Cory is an insensitive teenager, so he tries to ditch his own birthday party.
When Shawn tells Alan that they’re trying to make a movie and need to leave the party, Alan informs them all that they have to be seventeen to see an R-Rated movie. And when he finds out they were trying to go to Atlantic City, he freaks out. And Cory freaks out too and is all like meh I just turned sixteen and that makes me an adult, and I want to leave my party and hang out with my friends. And Alan is all like really? “That’s the first ‘adult’ decision you want to make?” Hint: It’s not very “adult” to ditch the party your entire family is throwing for you.
le, Alan is feeling pretty bad about how everything unfolded. Ever the level headed mother, Amy tells him that Cory is just growing up and isn’t doing anything wrong. Alan says that he’s growing up too, and Amy reminds him that he hasn’t done anything wrong either. They’re both just figuring out how to shift into a new part of their relationship. And that’s why this show is so awesome! Mr. Feeney tells Alan about Cory (who has called him instead of his father), and Alan drives down to the courtroom.
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.
The Very Special Blog 