MovieChat Forums > Girl Meets World (2014) Discussion > My thoughts on the finale and show in ge...

My thoughts on the finale and show in general

posted 8 years ago by Disney15
9 replies | jump to latest

I used to defend this show, but ever since the "not a love triangle" drama, I wasn't interested in the show anymore. I just watched as a casual viewer not really caring about what happened. That is probably when I realized how unrealistic the show. Have you ever run into middle school or high school kids that talk like the kids in this show?

Teen 1: Let's go this magical window in my room that makes everyone say their deepest thoughts!

Teen 2: Sure, that makes perfect sense.

Or:

They just talk about how complex life is.

I was also getting annoyed at parts of the fandom treating the show/franchise as perfect and anything bad could be blamed on Disney Channel. When the pilot for GMW came out, everyone was saying "Give it some time, it needs time to set it's footing". Whenever a new show has a pilot: "AHHH, CANCEL IT NOW, THAT FILTH HAS NO RIGHT BEING AIRED ANYWHERE NEAR GIRL MEETS WORLD". Also, they feel they have the right to hate on all other Disney shows, but act like it's a sin if you say anything negative about GMW.

Thoughts on the finale:

The "move to London" plot point was pointless. They set it up as a big cliffhanger in "Sweet Sixteen", but the fact that the cast/crew where hoping for a renewal, I pretty much knew Topanga was going to refuse the offer. The final episode was like 20 minutes of Riley saying goodbye to everyone and the final two minutes was "Never mind" and "Let's have a connection to the BMW in case we don't get renewed." "By connection I mean let's have a flashback to Cory's monolouge to Joshua from that episode and repeat it word for word to the GMW characters - including the meta joke at the end becuase having the same joke back to back is obviously hilarious!"

A joke in another Disney show recently, in that new show "Bizaardvark", reminded me straight away of Girl Meets World:

This girl was watching an in-universe terrible movie called "Keyboard Camp" and you hear one line of dialouge from the movie "The thing about keyboard camp, Brendan, is that when you're friends here, you're friends for life."

Right when I heard that line, all I could think of was Riley and Maya talking about how "We're going to be friends forever!" and "We're never going to leave each other!"

Connecting to my earlier point of the fandom hating on other shows, Bizaardvark also recently had an episode dealing with the overall lesson "Even if you feel a show is stupid, that doesn't mean there aren't people out there that love it just as much as you loved another show." To me, that lesson felt more relatable to people these days then anything GMW has taught.

[–] TMC-4 8 years ago

http://forums.previously.tv/topic/3753-gmw-in-the-media-girl-meets-media/?do=findComment&comment=2904043

I'm glad it's being cancelled. Not because I want to see actors out of work, but because the show was not very good. You can blame Disney for a lot of things, but unless they have a clause in their contract that prevents Michael Jacobs from writing stories that make sense, then a huge chunk of the blame falls squarely on the writers. The concept of the show was fine, the execution was awful, and if Jacobs is as proud of the show as he claimed to be, then he should not be writing TV anymore. The "world" that Jacobs depicted on this show was a joke. It wasn't funny, clever, thought provoking, or relatable in anyway. A lot of it was forced. You couldn't sink your teeth into anything because instead of showing you something, they told it to you (i.e. Shawn/Katy love each other randomly rather than letting the audience get to fall in love with them as a couple.....or Riley and Maya are best friends because they tell us that on every friggin' episode, etc). There was so much potential for this that they wasted, and it's not the fault of the actors. From Shawn/Angela's relationship, to the "triangle", to Shawn/Katy's sudden love for each other, to Eric's childish story arcs, etc, etc, everything was done in the most lazy way possible.

The only way to continue the show would be to retcon everything that happened on Disney. Seriously. Every single thing. Mold the show like Fuller House where the adults are the main characters and the audience can slowly start to get to know the kids rather than throwing the lovable characters in a side role and putting the unknown kids in a spot they have no chance of ever living up to.

An adult remake of Boy Meets World would have been fantastic. Girl Meets World will be known, at least to me, as a show that had potential but was let down by the writers.

[–] Educator07 8 years ago

An adult remake of Boy Meets World would have been fantastic. Girl Meets World will be known, at least to me, as a show that had potential but was let down by the writers.

Not if the final seasons of BMW is an indication. The show became sillier and the Cory and Eric became caricatures. We saw Cory become even less mature on GMW. I can't imagine him ever disciplining a child, he's one himself.

There was nothing wrong with the premise of the BMW cast taking a back seat to a new generation. It was all about the execution, it failed. All talk, very little tell.

What do we want? More Asian actresses and actors. When do we want it? Yesterday!

[–] crotchrocket 8 years ago

Oh and here we go back to link spamming instead of actual original thought. You work for Buzzfeed by chance?

[–] first_rule_of_fightclub 8 years ago

Teen 1: Let's go this magical window in my room that makes everyone say their deepest thoughts!

Teen 2: Sure, that makes perfect sense.

Ha ha. This exactly.

I hated that whole bay window thing. That was so stupid.

So many problems with this show.

Rowan Blanchard thinking she's so much more famous and influential than she actually is.

The horrible writing/preaching. I know a lot of people thought it was on Disney but a change to another network wouldn't have made it any better. You people didn't want deep subject matter, you wanted melodrama. Not the same thing.

Having Cory be a basic moron. Somehow he teaches class and the kids are supposed to look up to him and respect him but he acts like an idiot. And the Belgium 1831 thing that they've been teasing for quite a while was just a stupid payoff, if you can call it that.

A night after watching the finale, I watched Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn. The kids wanted to be on a reality show so they could be famous like the young girl on the reality show that they watched. So they made their own reality show and it was done perfectly. It was produced like a reality show. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer had the set for the Merv Griffin show in his apartment. I was really entertained by this episode and found myself smiling and laughing quite a bit.

GMW got so tied up with its preaching that it forgot to be entertaining. And I know people are going to say, "But GMW was deep. Not frivolous comedy." But as much or more can be said in comedy as can be said with drama. Just look at a movie like Dr. Strangelove. Look at ancient Greece. The comedies were produced well after the tragedies. It takes a higher intelligence to understand jokes and to be able to laugh at oneself. That's something that always develops later in a society.

GMW didn't get renewed because it wasn't entertaining.

[–] Disney15 8 years ago

I felt the same way that you felt with NRDD with other Disney shows. I decided to catch up on other shows, mainly Stuck in the Middle and Bizaardvark. Both of those shows were more entertaining to me than anything from GMW.

I've started to realize the whole "Meets World" franchise is very overpraised. For me, BMW pretty much became "The Cory and Topanga Show" around the beginning of S3. The creators tried doing the same thing with the "triangle drama" on this show, but it turned out way worse.

My biggest problem is the cast and crew are part of the people who treat the show like gold, and nothing could ever be better than it. I usually don't like being negative towards actors, it I feel Rowan has done a good amount of "Biting the hand that feeds them" with getting mad at Disney for releasing episodes early even though they've been doing that for years before GMW started. I think her thank you letter to the fans mentioned something about how "the network didn't understand what the show was about"

Another kid's show, An Amazon Prime Original show, Gortimer Gibbons Life on Normal Street, a show about kids having supernatural adventures was more realistic than GMW. They had an episode dealing with a main characters mother, a recurring character, died in a car accident. It wasn't like most shows would they would touch o. It in a special episode, and never be brought up again.They had the big episode dealing with, but the show was able to reference it more, because realistically , you can't get over something like that in a short amount of time. It was brought up a good amount of time, but not too much too disrupt from the comedic half of the show.

[–] crotchrocket 8 years ago

I used to defend this show

Realmark here I probably would like this show better except the fanbase ruined it for me with their constant whining about Disney Channel and Freeform. It *beep* me off so much I decided *beep* it I'm gon' troll.

[–] polyfootball08 8 years ago

Honestly, I have mad respect for you. Most trolls can be seen as aholes and I've never got that vibe from you. Granted I haven't read all of your posts. I can tell that you were trying to open up people eyes about the show because many people here were somewhat delusional about the show because of its ties to BMW.

When I post, it's mostly hypothetical stuff about how would one write or direct the show differently. Because it's clear that the writing isn't on the same level as BMW seasons 1-5, nor is the directing and too some extent acting. It's not something that changing networks would do much to help. Potential was there for a great show but the execution is what killed it for me, even for being on Disney Channel.

Part of me would love to discuss what you really thought about the show without the blatant troll job that you're executing.

[–] Utpe 8 years ago

Have you ever run into middle school or high school kids that talk like the kids in this show?

Heck no! This was one of several issues with GMW. These problems (if you can call them that) Riley and Maya face are completely unrealistic. Sure, some of them, such as cyberbullying, are pretty common, but the way they execute it on this show is absurd.

When the pilot for GMW came out, everyone was saying "Give it some time, it needs time to set it's footing".

I was one of those people. I truly believed that, in due course, it would eventually have the same feeling of BMW. After an entire season of the same shtick, I was convinced that Michael Jacobs had forgotten how to truly write genuine episodes. And, yes, I also blamed Disney for severely limiting the writing.

"By connection I mean let's have a flashback to Cory's monolouge [sic] to Joshua from that episode and repeat it word for word to the GMW characters - including the meta joke at the end becuase [sic] having the same joke back to back is obviously hilarious!"

You're right. And, as I had stated under a different topic, it was a way to shoehorn Michael Jacobs's son, Daniel, into the flashback sequence. It was like, "Hey, don't forget, my son portrayed Joshua Matthews in the original series!", just like having the two actresses return to play the character of Morgan Matthews.

"We're going to be friends forever!" and "We're never going to leave each other!"

In almost every. Single. Damn. Episode.

To me, that lesson felt more relatable to people these days then anything GMW has taught.

Really, what did GMW teach us? Something about letting go of a teddy bear? Having a talking tater tot? Yeah, some real, serious issues right there!

[–] Riarcus 8 years ago

Girl Meets World is as special as it is flawed. Which means that although there are far more consistent shows, ones that are way more well rounded, many of them are forgettable in comparison.

Yes, the humor often missed the mark. It's handling of romance was rarely any good. Even the positive aspects got repetitive. That's why I skipped almost all of season three and just watched the finale.

However, despite that, I'd still rank Maya and Riley up there with the most memorable of TV and movie friendships. Sometimes I really liked the family and other friendships as well. For all it's deep and cavernous imperfections the show at times managed to make up for it with an impossibly big heart.

The finale was underwhelming. It was missing a better plot device or maybe the execution was just wonky. But it was nice seeing Maya appreciate Farkle and overall I don't mind the book being closed on the page it ended on.