But seriously, where did it all go wrong?

This isn't Moonlighting (sorry for the old 80's reference).

IMDB taught me: cynicism is praised. optimism must be stamped out wherever it can be found.

I think where it went wrong is that it shouldn't have been on Disney Channel proper to begin with. It should've been on the Family Channel (err Free Form whatever they call it now)

There is an art to writing children's shows and it seems Michael Jacobs does not know how to do that anymore... Especially shows for kids born in 2000+ where the world *has* changed so radically and teaching life lessons are more important than ever, but not in such an obvious and melodramatic way.

The majority of other kids shows on both Disney, and Nickelodeon are far better at teaching life lessons and do it in a much more organic, non-heavy handed way like GMW did.

As stated by others, GMW took itself way too seriously because of the legacy of BMW, and it relied too heavily on nostalgia to carry it. This is all because Michael Jacobs doesn't know how to write for kids in the new millennium and is still stuck in the '90s. This is why the whole show feels like a '90s, After School Special like somebody else stated. The whole series is insincere and didn't earn any of the "aw shucks" moments it tries to constantly push as so-called drama.

Austin & Ally was even worse shipping. It *beep* ruined the show.

From there we get into the actual problem that they were catering to too old of an age group. There should of been less BMW, more things like Sabrina performing, crossovers, special guest appearances from Disney's stars not Angela or Feeny. We can say it was on the wrong network but that implies someone else would have picked it up. BMW was not as popular as Full House I don't even know if Netflix would have picked it up years down the road. Disney was their home and they had a better job engaging that audience.

like a lot of people, I'm sure, I was a BMW watcher then, and now I watched this fairly regularly with my 9 year old. It was a tough watch in pretty much any episode that didn't include Shawn, Eric, or Mya's mother. I would imagine Riley being so over the top annoying and pretty much projecting an often insufferable archetypal melodramatic entitled suburbanite academic overachiever type didn't help matters. One of those "oh I'm such a dork" types (like every character Zooey Deschanel has ever played), but in the end everyone somehow adores her and any problem that she has was never even close to a big deal. Maybe you have to be in that age range to appreciate what Riley is supposed to bring to the table, but she was just often too annoying to like anything she ever did on screen.

That said, and this probably only applies to those of us who were BMW watchers, this show badly lacked a Mr Feeny. I get that Cory was supposed to be that for these kids, but he really wasn't. Maybe because he's too young to have that worldly wise old man vibe, but his "teaching moments" didn't do much for me. They were about as cliched as they come quite frankly and they would have fit into the original Saved By the Bell episodes they were so predictable. A large part of that problem probably stems from having his kid in his classroom every single year. The teaching and parenting separation isn't there like it was with Mr Feeny & Alan.

Another issue with Cory, he was essentially playing 3 characters. He was Cory, he was Mr Feeny, and he was Alan(Cory's dad), and he couldn't pull off any of those characters other than Cory. Whether that's due to the writing or his limited acting ability or whatever, it was beyond noticeable all the time. The Cory character isn't intelligent enough to be Mr Feeny, and he's too immature and goofy to be a strong good traditional dad character like Alan usually was.

And even though the writers long began to write Topanga's hippie dippy goofiness out of her character back in the late high school and then the college years, they made her a complete sitcom cliche on GMW. How is it possible she's more self-absorbed and rude as a 40-ish year old mother than as an 8 year old? Bad writing there. She was every mother character on every family/light-hearted sitcom in the 80's and 90's all rolled into one. There was really no depth there, and like others have said, she pretty much only appeared for interaction with Augie and the little neighbor girl..Eva or whatever her name was. Very few memorable scenes with her and Riley or Mya. It was always Cory. Her interactions with Cory were nothing memorable either.

Minkus was so much better than Farkle, and I guess in the GMW/BMW spectrum, Lucas is supposed to be the Topanga character. Is anyone even remotely entertained by Lucas compared to young Topanga? I can't imagine that's the case outside of his fan-girls. There's really no difference between Lucas, Farkle or Zay other than the Farkle emo-dork thing as opposed to Lucas being the thoughtful jock type and Zay sort of being the more grounded voice of reason/pull everyone back from their nonsense type...but in the end their dialog is exactly the same. Same personalities, same interactions with the other characters. Though you can probably say that for all of those kids with the exception of Mya, maybe. Farkle's girlfriend is just female Farkle.

So where did it all go wrong? Bad/lazy writing coupled with highly tired cliches. Maybe some budgetary issues on not being able to bring back Shawn, Amy & Alan or Eric more often. Should have been predictable given this was a Disney vehicle, and that's what it ended up as considering they perpetually clubbed the viewer over the head with the heavy-handed life lessons. It was just probably too difficult to pull off trying to rope in the BMW fans who either just want to see Cory & Topanga again(then promptly being disappointed at where those two respective characters have been written into a puddle of cliches) or those of us who watch now with their own children, and then trying to build a new fanbase based off of the same BMW characters with a new audience while doing that under the Disney brand with writers who probably still have one foot stuck in the 90's style sitcom archetypes.

I've enjoyed the show mostly because my daughter loves it and we watch it together. My daughter is very sad to see it go and so am I because she loves it so much.