“Boy Meets World” ran on ABC for seven seasons, from September 1993 to May 2000, and it did the thing most sitcoms never manage: it grew up with its audience. Michael Jacobs and April Kelly created the series for Disney’s youth-oriented TGIF block, and it follows Cory Matthews, played by Ben Savage, from an 11-year-old middle schooler in Philadelphia to a married man. That is 158 episodes of homework, sibling fights and first love, and the show treats all of it as material worth taking seriously.
Trailer, via hollywoodgirl2005.
Cory Matthews and George Feeny
The engine of “Boy Meets World” is the relationship between Cory and his neighbor, sixth-grade teacher and eventual principal, George Feeny. William Daniels plays Feeny as a man who hands out life lessons the way other teachers hand out detention, and the show never apologizes for it. Cory learns to cope with social and personal issues of adolescence, and Feeny is usually the one who names the lesson out loud.
Cory’s family carries the rest. Older brother Eric (Will Friedle) is scatter-brained and obsessed with dating; younger sister Morgan was played by Lily Nicksay in seasons 1 and 2, then by Lindsay Ridgeway from season 3. Parents Amy (Betsy Randle) and Alan (William Russ) hold the house together, and Alan moves from grocery store manager to running a camping goods store. The domestic scenes are the show’s spine.
Shawn Hunter and Topanga Lawrence
Cory’s best friend Shawn Hunter (Rider Strong) comes from a troubled family, and that contrast does more work than any single episode’s plot. Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel) starts as the nonconformist classmate and becomes the romantic center of the series. Cory and Topanga admit their feelings and start dating in season 3. By graduation, Topanga turns down Yale to stay near Cory, then proposes to him.
Cory and Topanga admit their feelings for each other and begin dating in the third season
That decision to keep Topanga in Philadelphia is the show’s clearest statement of its values. It is also the kind of choice a lesser series would have dodged.
Jack, Angela and Rachel
Later seasons expand the cast, and the additions mostly earn their place. Jonathan Turner (Anthony Tyler Quinn) arrives in season 2 as an unorthodox English teacher while Feeny becomes principal. Eli Williams (Alex Désert) teaches alongside him in season 3. Eric starts college in season 5 and moves in with Jack Hunter (Matthew Lawrence), who turns out to be Shawn’s half-brother. Shawn’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Angela Moore (Trina McGee-Davis) and college friend Rachel McGuire (Maitland Ward) round out the group.
The later seasons get crowded. More characters means less time for the core four, and the show sometimes mistakes a new roommate for a new idea.
What holds up
“Boy Meets World” is not subtle, and it does not want to be. Its themes are family, friendship and discovering your own identity, and it states them plainly through Feeny, through Alan and Amy, through Cory’s worst decisions. The first three seasons are the strongest because the stakes are small and real: a class, a crush, a brother who stops hanging around.
What makes the series last is that it lets Cory be wrong. He is witty and speaks his mind, and the show punishes him for it often enough to stay honest. The later seasons lose some of that tightness, but the arc from sixth grade to marriage holds together better than most seven-year runs.
This is a show worth returning to, and worth recommending to anyone who thinks a family sitcom cannot carry a character all the way to adulthood.
On TMDB, the audience score is 8.3/10 from 591 votes.
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