Girl Meets Mr. Feeny

May 15, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 5 Comments

“I both hate and love this show,” said my boyfriend as we sat down to watch THE MR. FEENY EPISODE! “I hate myself for watching it but would be totally crushed if it were canceled.” I don’t feel that strongly about it. I’d feel a sick satisfaction if it were canceled, but I also like getting to see the adult characters I love and bitch about the children.

In 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.

When they unpack the time capsule, Corey finds a love note that Topanga buried. At first, he thinks it’s a teenage confession of her love…but it turns out to be a note that she found from “Lauren” a.k.a. Linda Cardellini (who Corey cheated on Topanga with at a ski lodge). It turns out Topanga put the note in the capsule because she was immature and threatened, and hoped to one day be able to open the time capsule and tear up the note (which she does).

Maya gets all upset when Shawn reminisces about the items he and Angela put in the time capsule. Riley calls him a jerk. And Corey is all like Shawn she wants you to be her father figure! So then Shawn is all like Maya I’ll be your father figure either way! It’s a little forced, I think, but I also cherry-pick the episodes I view, so it could make more sense to a regular viewer.

We only got to see Mr. Feeny for like 12 seconds, but it looks like they’re finally giving Topanga more screen time. Eric will be in tomorrow’s episode! Yay!

That Time I Tried to Be Open-Minded

April 8, 2015April 8, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 5 Comments

I just got home from work. And as I unlocked my door, I said to myself: “I should blog about the one thing that could possible make me change all of my opinions on Girl Meets World.”

You see, yesterday I learned that they would finally provide some closure to the Mr. Turner story. This is all I have ever wanted from Girl Meets World. It’s the primary reason I was interested in a reboot. It’s the only thing that could make me rethink my scathing reviews of it. And so I was going to sit here and say, “Hey! Reboots just might be okay!”

But then I learned that some idiot is remaking She’s All That and I immediately decided that I am still pissed about reboots.

I’ve never even seen the original She’s All That. I remember it being heavily parodied in Not Another Teen Movie, and my bff in middle school was pretty obsessed with the movie. But really, I never wanted to see the movie. And I’m okay with that. I’m not okay with the 21st Century appropriating my childhood every time I turn around!

Why do we need all of these reboots? Why can’t we all just watch reruns and blog about them??

Disney Episode Showdown: Blossom vs. Boy Meets World

January 10, 2015January 10, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ Leave a comment

Blossom really captures the whole Disney spirit. The episode is narrated by someone who sounds exactly like Snow White, and they even manage to make The Hall of Presidents interesting. Yep, seriously. The episode is the only one in the competition to take place at Disneyland, and (taking advantage of the smaller park size) they have all of the characters interact with the Disney characters/attractions in a very comprehensive way. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of the episode, does anyone find it odd that I’ve never once covered a Blossom episode on The Very Special Blog? I mean, she is the queen of very special episodes, right?

Well, there is one simple reason for that. You see, I got in trouble in elementary school for watching Blossom. It was that episode where Blossom and Six go to a make-out party and after that it was like the Blossom police lived in my house! I did manage to see this Disney episode though, but I remembered pretty much only the part where she sees her boyfriend kissing another girl from the Sky Buckets.

That’s pretty much the only plot in this episode. Blossom sees Vinnie kissing someone (who turns out to be his cousin) and she flips out. When he tries to explain that it was a totally innocent situation, she doesn’t believe him. This makes her kind of an ass, in my opinion, but he’s been acting really weird all day, so her suspicions are not without merit. It also turns out that Vinnie has never been to Disneyland before and is incredibly afraid of heights–which he’s been trying to hide since he’s a cool guy and all that. Other than that, we get to see Joey try to get a date with Sleeping Beauty, who tells him that she’s engaged and so are all of the other princesses. (Sheesh, stop hitting on these women while they are working!) Then he gets stuck riding the rides with a nun all day since they are both alone, and it’s pretty great.

Blossom’s other brother (the not Joey Lawrence one) has brought his girlfriend to the park with them and every character in one of those full body-suits is into her. That’s really weird. I mean like fine if she’s soooo hot or whatever, but in that case shouldn’t the princes be trying to get with her? It’s like only Tigger and Dopey are into this girl and yet this dude gets jealous. Luckily, Abe Lincoln sets him straight in the most interactive Hall of Presidents ever in the history of halls and presidents. Six also gets with the Jungle Cruise guy who they happen to know from high school. Then they discover that their father is actually an Elvis impersonator performing center-stage at Tomorrowland. It’s boring and the only reason I’m pointing it out is that he makes out with Belle at the end of the episode in which there is a montage of make-outs. (There really was SO much kissing on this show.)

The plot of this episode isn’t the cool part though. It’s really great how they feel so genuinely connected to this place. They are a family with memories there, and that makes it the most realistic of all of these promotional episodes. Six talks about feeling a little sad because the park reminds her of spending time there as a kid before her parents split up. Blossom and Six make a b-line for the Sky Buckets because they have traditionally always started their days there. It just feels really sincere in a way that the other episodes don’t. And since Disney is a place where sincere and fake come together to form magic, then I think this episode really nails it on integration of setting.

The overall plot of Boy Meets World, is a little more intricate, but that doesn’t make it better. Basically, Corey has been dating every single girl in school since he broke up with Topanga and that makes her not want to date him again. No shit. Anyway, he follows her to Disney World after she and two other classmates win a contest to study dolphins in Epcot. The other two classmates are alleged cult-leader Andrew Keegan and a girl who Corey recently went on a date with right before the trip. This girl also has a bad habit of showing up when Corey is professing his intense feelings for Topanga, and mistaking them for his thoughts about her. Corey sneaks away from Philly without telling his parents, Eric covers from him surprisingly well with a really stupid looking life-size plush, and Corey manages to stalk Topanga all over the place while posing as Disney workers and sneaking into unauthorized areas.

Now, I can take a lot of ridiculousness for an episode (i.e. Michelle gets to be a Princess and total asshole to her family for a day) but this is just too much. Someone on the Disney side of things would have shut this down and put him in Disney jail until Alan an Amy could get on the next flight to Orlando. Also, I’m not buying that they didn’t notice he was missing. They’re like the most hands on parents in the 90’s ABC family. Ridiculous things happened in Full House but since Snow White found Michelle almost as soon as she disappeared and Danny was rich enough to live on Alamo Square and take 10 people to Disney World–I figured they had special circumstances.

Anyway, Topanga isn’t down for Corey’s stalking, and it’s only after he bumps into Stacey Keenan (we’ll see her later in Step by Step) who has decided to “hang back” alone after a guided tour (ugh yeah right) and becomes best friends with a sad dolphin who has lost her lover that he stops acting like a maniac. Corey realizes that he needs to chill out and let Topanga live her life, which is of course when she decides to date him again. Other than Corey/Shawn sleeping on Splash Mountain (so ridiculous), we see a few choice locals but nothing is really integrated into the plot. Almost by default, Blossom gets the point for plot. While Boy Meets World may be more intricate (sort of), I want to yell at it a lot.

The fashion point totally goes to Boy Meets World though. I would have expected Six to bring this one home for Blossom but she wears a really weird purple sweat-headband the entire episode and I’m not on board. Plus, Topanga’s outfits are rocking the entire week she is in Disney. I especially like her sea-foam green crop top and pants set. I can’t find a picture of that so here’s a picture of another one of her cute outfits:

Blossom also gets the point for music because they had a live performance form a band called The Party which is made up of former MMC cast members. I didn’t particularly like their music but their cool 90’s choreography won me over. Plus, BMW didn’t have any music at all.

Point Break Down:
Boy Meets World: Vacation Attire (1 pt) 1 pt

Blossom: Integration of Disney Setting (1 pt) + Overall Plot (2 pts) + Music (1 pt) 4 pts

Very Special Winner: Blossom

*While this was not a “very special episode of Blossom,” Snow White does say that they’re going to the park for a “very special day.” Also, what is this trend of good costumes bad everything else? Maybe I should run some analytics on this. Maybe the next bracket challenge will even have seeds and statistics.

Boy Meets World: A Very Topanga Christmas

December 9, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 1 Comment

Topanga spends Christmas with the Matthews and is basically the worst houseguest ever. I know she’s known Cory since like birth, but doesn’t she even want to try a little bit to not totally piss off his parents? Isn’t she like looking to one day marry this guy? She brazenly changes out all of their Christmas traditions with her own. She makes them drive six hundred miles to Vermont to get an evergreen instead of the aluminum tree that they have used for the past twenty years. She scorns their eggnog and sends them on a mission to get hot mulled cider. She even brings her own tree topper, a snowy white angel, instead of their cardboard macaroni noodle star.

Meanwhile, Shawn and long lost brother Jack are trying to figure out what they have in common. They accidentally discover that they both like iceskating and everything is just fine. They leave Cory sitting on their couch alone, and he falls asleep to dram A Christmas Carol-style. He has left Topanga on Christmas Eve (which is a douche move even though she was being insufferable). She says she will be waiting for him at his parents’ house, but Cory remains at Shawn’s nevertheless.

Here’s what happens in Cory’s dream:

He and Eric live in Shawn and Jack’s old apartment. He’s very fat because all he eats now is the last meal that Topanga ever made for him: Christmas tree pancakes, no syrup, dusted with powdered sugar. Eric is bald (sad).
Topanga and Jack are happily married in suburbia. They have three kids, open presents on Christmas Eve (not like Cory’s family), but they do have an aluminum tree. (She is capable of compromise!)

Cory wakes up from his dream and delivers the promise ring to Topanga. OMG she also gives him a promise ring for Christmas! I feel like in real life Cory’s parents would have been like don’t come to our home and ruin our traditions way before things ever got to this point.

Very Special Christmas Lesson: When you love someone, you start to make your own traditions. And sometimes that means having an aluminum tree.

GIrl Meets World: The Shawn Episode

December 7, 2014December 8, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 5 Comments

Agh where do I even start? This is the 3rd episode of this show that I have ever watched While it was way better than the other two, it once again demonstrated that it totally fails at having organic heartfelt moments. It seems like Girl Meets World is all about WE ARE HAVING A BIG HEARTFELT MOMENT RIGHT NOW whereas Boy Meets World was just awesome and that is frankly all that I can say about this in terms of a critical in-depth analysis. This show is just so obviously forced and superficial that there is nothing else to say about it.

Except that Rider Strong has made a guest appearance and we need to talk about that. It’s Christmas Eve and Amy, Alan, and their son Josh are visiting, but Corey is most excited about Shawn coming over. Josh is the ridiculous fourth child that Amy and Alan produced in what was (I think) the last season of the original show. The writers clearly had nothing else to do with their characters, so they used a plot tool…ugh. But they did cast a cute actor to portray older Josh and his entire job is just to be “cool.” That makes sense to me continuity wise because two older parents raising a fourth surprise baby are probably pretty chill.

But something that does feel like a bit of a failure to me is that Amy is a total jerk to Topanga form the get-go of this episode. I know that Boy Meets World has committed some egregious character continuity errors over the years, but Amy was always like the best boyfriend’s mom/mother-in-law I could possibly imagine. Even when Topanaga stayed with them in high school and virtually destroyed all of their Christmas traditions, Amy was incredibly cool about it. But in the present day, all she can do it criticize Topanga’s cooking. Like come on people, why can’t we see Amy being cool Grandma with the kids? Why does she have to be a jerk? (Eventually, we learn that Amy is being awful because she misses having Christmas in Philly and feels useless or something like that but whatever.)

So I’ve hated the “girl Shawn character” from the first moment she showed up. But now I extra-super-mega-hate her because she’s so clearly a plot device and also because she is obnoxious. Shawn shows up and like doesn’t know how to talk to children. He talks to Josh who is like only four years older than Corey’s daughter, but apparently those four years are the difference between Shawn being able to form a sentence and well…being rude I guess. But like Shawn isn’t actually rude. You know what he is? He’s your dad’s friend who comes over for dinner and is clearly into hanging out with your dad. And that is totally okay because he is your dad’s friend. Like what thirteen year old girl is offended that a thirty-five year old man won’t hang out with her? That’s messed up.

But anyway obnoxious friend gets all plot device-y and accuses Shawn of hurting Riley (the daughter) with his lack of interaction. Then they dramatically leave the room all very special moment like and Shawn is left sitting on a window seat with Cory, thinking about his actions. Then in another scene they wake Shawn up from a nap (rude) and demand to know why he doesn’t like Riley. He’s all like what is wrong with you weird kids? I like Riley just fine. And then Riley demands that he tell her when her birthday is and what her favorite color is as if he is some bad middle school boyfriend. Like when would you ever talk to your dad’s friend like this? And what kind of parent would allow this level of disrespect? But like Cory is all calm and don’t worry Riley, Shawn knows your b-day. And then Riley gets all like offended and doesn’t believe him, so Shawn takes her and the obnoxious friend to a bakery where he tells them about Riley’s birthday. (December 8th. Tomorrow. I won’t be celebrating.) Riley’s birthday was also the day that Shawn left NYC for good.

Then Riley and her obnoxious friend proceed to armchair analyze Shawn in front of his face, and then Riley forces him to look at her. (Ugh this girl would be like the worst girl to date in middle school because look at how she behaves with grown men! Can you imagine if you forgot to cover her locker with wrapping paper for her birthday?) Then she says, “Every time you see me, does it remind you of what you don’t have?” SO OUT OF LINE, MAN! I imagine this is supposed to be some “from the mouth of babes” shit but like no way dude. This is so inappropriate.

After this ridiculousness, they go back home where Riley proceeds to force a bunch of heart to heart chats first between her father and Shawn and then between her obnoxious friend and Shawn (since they’re the same person or whatever). No actual kid has this much authority. And kids that do have an inappropriate amount of authority end up being drug addicts or assholes.

Very Special Lesson: Do not ever watch this show. Except for when WIll Friedle makes his guest appearance. We should all watch the Will Friedle episode.

Boy Meets World: Turkey Day (A Very Special Failure)

November 15, 2014November 15, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 2 Comments

This was a really offensive episode. That’s why I’m writing 2 Boy Meets World posts in a row. I couldn’t even be funny about this. I’m confused as to why this episode exists in the world in this manner.

Cory and Shawn bring in the most cans for the food drive at school, so they win a turkey and stuffing. They cannot decide who will take which (they both want stuffing) so they decide to combine family dinners. The Matthews are very snobby when they get to the trailer park. They mistake the “Unters” trailer for the “Hunters” because Alan assumes that the H has fallen off. This alerts the Trailer Park Home Owners Association to the fact that yuppies are on their turf, so they call an emergency meeting. They are snobby in their own way, you see, and they tell Chet to get rid of them.

(Mr. Feeney started this episode off with a lecture about the Burundian Civil War between the Hutu and Tutsi, which preceded/devolved into the Rwandan Genocide of 1994…because that’s so comparable to snobby suburbans right? Ugh. I can’t even. This show. Come on.)

(Okay, well I guess it’s sort of the banality of evil or how prejudice and hate should be tolerated at any level. But still. Omg. Are you serious, Boy Meets World?)

Chet and Verna (Shawn’s parents) are embarrassed that their forks don’t match so they make everyone eat with plasticware. We find this out because Alan was a total jerk and whined about using a plastic fork. Instead of just being like we don’t care that your forks don’t match, Amy made some condescending comment about how their forks didn’t match when they were “just starting out.” Finally, the kids have their own Thanksgiving dinner with tough-guy from school Frankie and it’s only when their parents stumble upon the meal that they realize how terrible they’ve been to each other.

At the end of the episode, Feeney makes Shawn read his paper to the class. It starts off like this: “This past week I spent Thanksgiving with the Hutus and the Tutsis, which was a real surprise to me because I live in Philadelphia and I thought that kind of prejudice only happened in undeveloped countries.” Not only is the comparison (for obvious reasons) insanely awful, but also I particularly hate how the characterization of Burundi as an “undeveloped” country. They could have said developing, under developed, whatever you want to do to mark the dissonance between what we as Americans think of “civilized” countries to be…but ultimately I think they did this because it’s scary to think of genocide as happening among modern countries. Of course we know that isn’t true, and that genocide can and does happen in developed (albeit desperate, perhaps) countries.

I was originally going to post this closer to Thanksgiving, but it’s just too depressing for the holidays. Then I was going to not post this at all, but then I decided that I wanted to go ahead with it. Why is that? Well, it’s pissing me off and I want to get on a soapbox and I want to do that because:

This was recent. This was only 20 years ago. Yet I don’t think people are all that informed about it and this show didn’t help any.
This was a current affair at the time this episode aired. I get that it’s a “kid friendly” attempt to approach the subject matter, but all it did was make a specific and devastating genocide trite. And I hate trite.
I love this show, and I like to make fun of things I love. But this is not something to make fun of and yet I still want to post about it. I don’t like that western popular media attempting to teach western children an important lesson about an African genocide and succeeding only in making it condescending and petty. And maybe that’s because western media didn’t want to portray this any more gravely than it did not only because it’s disturbing, but also because the international community did surprisingly little.
In my opinion, if you’re not going to cover something accurately then don’t cover it at all. Boy Meets World could have taught us this life lesson without this. We could have skipped the entire Feeney lecture thing. He could have given them the turkey and we could have still seen the class struggle between The Matthews and The Hunters and we still could have learned from it. We could even have heard a lecture on how important it is to respect people at every level of interaction because things can go so horribly wrong if we forget that as people and as a society. But no, I don’t think these didactic false syllogisms are at all appropriate. Unfortunately, every human has the ability to be oppressive on any scale, but The Matthews/Hunters were never in danger of contributing to a genocide over Thanksgiving dinner. Honestly, we don’t all have to get along that much, and I don’t think that their snobby behavior did anything to warrant a comparison to unabashedly annihilate another race. This is so beyond an epic fail that I’m totally shocked that someone was paid to write this episode.

Very Special Lesson: Comparing socioeconomic disparity amongst best friends’ families in a sitcom to genocide will undermine the validity of your argument every time.

I didn’t proof this and I don’t plan on it. I don’t want to reread it and I want to go back to loving Boy Meets World as much as possible.

Boy Meets World: Uncle Daddy

November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 4 Comments

97.9%* of Boy Meets World episodes are about Corey, so I wanted to review a very special episode about Eric. Eric was definitely the funniest character, and Will Friedle is pretty funny in real life too. I don’t have twitter but that doesn’t keep me from reading his. You see, sometimes very special episodes are about not birthing a child before you’re ready. Other times, they are about not adopting someone else’s before you are ready.

In “Uncle Daddy” Eric is dating an older woman. When he asks her out three times in a row, she reveals that she has a son. She introduces them and tells him that he has to have a relationship with her son if he wants to have a relationship with her. Like what? Three dates in a row and suddenly it’s time to join the family? This poor kid! His mom is totally going to tug on his heart strings because we already know the Eric is the best big brother…and erm maybe father figure? Also, I’m pretty sure this kid is the kid from Liar, Liar.

Eric is awesome with the kid. No surprise there. This is during his My Date with the President’s Daughter phase (a.k.a. his perfect phase) which quickly degrades into his “Plays with Squirrels” phase. (Actually, now that I have reached that age, I’m pretty sure he was just having a quarter-life crisis.) He’s so great that he decides to read the kid aa bedtime story instead of going to see a Jim Carrey (omg from Liar, Liar!) movie with Cory and Shawn. But he totally falls apart when he can’t turn down a game of foosball and leaves the kid sitting at a table alone. Then he bemoans the fat that he has not hung out with grown ups all day, which the kid overhears. So he asks Eric for money for ice cream and the kid runs away (presumably to wait for the bus). When Eric notices he’s lost him, he realizes that he can’t be a dad just yet.

He explains everything to the MILF and she’s like super cool about it. She’s not at all mad at him for leaving her kid unattended and she’s totally understanding of the fact that he’s not ready to be a dad. So she breaks up with him. Because it is the fair thing to do. Because she is the coolest woman ever. Like wtf. He should marry this woman.

Eric gets home from his breakup and finds Cory mouthing off to his parents about taking the car when he wasn’t supposed to. Eric tells him to chill out and give his dad a break. (He’s maturing!) And then he decides to study and retake the SAT’s (more maturing!)

Very Special Lesson: You will meet the perfect woman. She will have a perfect kid. But you’ll be a manchild and it won’t work out. Sorry. Them’s the breaks.

*based upon a study in which I was not entirely paying attention run over the course of the past fifteen years.

Mashup Monday

November 10, 2014October 30, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 3 Comments

I hope you guys liked my Saved by the Bell & Baby-Sitters Club mashup book covers. I liked it so much that I’ve decided to do it again with Boy Meets World and Sweet Valley High. I got the light box out for this and it turns out I’m realllllly bad at writing in the letterman style of the book covers. The first one was so painstaking that I gradually strayed from them until I ended up with the burn-book style cover for the last one. The covers are (in order) the stand off between Harley and Griff (Adam Scott), that time Shawn joins a cult, and that time that Topanga dated Jonathan Jackson.

An Open Letter to Cory Matthews

October 15, 2014October 17, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ Leave a comment

An Open Letter to Cory Matthews (when he was a World War II G.I.),

I have a few questions, which I will illustrate with a series of images. First of all, where did Shawn get his late 90’s shirt in the early 40’s? He is so fashion forward, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less from Shawn Hunter.

Secondly, it’s so cool that your mom is a riveter! But was it common practice for women to rivet with military grade machinery in their backyards? I am surprised that there were not more regulations about that, but you know: anything to help the war effort!

Finally, why are you in a trench? Are you sure that you are in the right war?

Also, you might not want to pick up any more strange cats at school. Hopefully Salem won’t stray so far from Sabrina in the future. I think he had a pretty rough time too. Salem and Cory

I think it’s pretty crappy that you got your engagement ring for Topanga from a crackerjack box even if you are in the middle of a war zone. It’s also really weird that you asked your best friend (with whom she is totally incompatible) to marry her if you died. Don’t you think she could have found someone other than Shawn to marry? I feel like you’re really selling Topanga short, or you would just like her to be in a friend-zone marriage of convenience rather than with someone who might rival her affections for you.

Ultimately, I’m glad that you two ended up together, and that you didn’t stay with that girl in France that you only dated because you had amnesia. Also, I’m pretty sure she was like twenty years older than you, but that’s cool if you’re into that I guess. Also, Eric is super cool in the 40’s and this whole time travel situation made me realize how great it would be if he and Jack were a couple.

Sorry if this letter takes forever to get to you. I’m sending it from the 21^st Century in which I am currently in a very weird mood.

Boy Meets World vs. The Brady Bunch

August 28, 2014August 20, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 4 Comments

This is some stiff competition, you guys. The final semi-final round is upon us. This is the penultimate post before we find out once and for all which of our six sitcoms took the best vacation to Hawaii! As you may recall, all of the Brady’s got to go to Hawaii on business with Mr. Brady. They almost died because of a “tabu” amulet, but luckily they managed to return the amulet to a creepy cave, thus avoiding total destruction, and ended up having a lovely family vacation.

But over at Boy Meets World, Corey and To boy-meets-world panga are finally on their honeymoon! Eric messes up their wedding night by sending Corey and Topanga to a honeymoon suite pretending to be another couple. The best-man/wacky-brother decides to make it up to them by lightly stalking them on their honeymoon in order to make sure everything goes perfectly. Corey and Topanga have such a good time on their honeymoon that Corey pressures Topanga into not returning to Philadelphia and instead spending the rest of their lives at the Hawaiian resort. Corey manages to make enough money painting celebrity heads onto coconuts, which all of the tourists love. They actually end up being pretty rich and very popular. The island is really weird to be honest. Everyone relocated from Ohio and managed to remain pasty white. They also use soup as deodorant?

Eventually, Corey and Topanga realize how much they miss their family. Mostly, because Corey paints a couple of coconuts to look like Shawn and Mr. Feeney and has absolutely no memory of doing so. (As it turns out, Eric actually painted them and then was held captive by the Ohioan-Hawaiian clan.)

I think these two episodes will be hard to compare, but here we go! The Brady Bunch clearly wins on integration of Hawaiian setting. I’m pretty sure everything except for 4 seconds of stock footage was filmed on a soundstage in Boy Meets World. They also win on overall vacation attire as well, in part because the late-90’s prep fashion can never compare to late-mod meets suburban-hippie garb. Even though I love the “adorkable” Brady’s, the writing on Boy Meets World is (unsurprisingly) much tighter and manages to be genuinely heartfelt even when it is ridiculous, so they win on overall plot. The Brady Bunch soundtrack is solid and even features Don Ho singing to little Bobby and Cindy, which of course the canned elevator music of Boy Meets World‘s Hawaii just cannot match.

Point Break Down:
The Brady Bunch: Music (1 pt) + Vacation Attire (1 pt) + Integration of Hawaiian Setting (1 pt) = 3 pts

Boy Meets World: Overall Plot (2 pts) = 2 pts

Very Special Winner: The Brady Bunch

The as yet undefeated Bradys advance to the final round. Will they have the best Hawaiian Vacation ever??