Nostalgia not enough to carry ‘World’
Ready to feel old? Remember Cory and Topanga, the cute schoolkids from “Boy Meets World”?
Well, they’re all grown up (and still played by Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel), with kids of their own. In fact, their adolescent daughter Riley (Rowan Blanchard) has her own sitcom, “Girl Meets World,” debuting on the Disney Channel today at 9:45 p.m. The show’s regularly scheduled time will be Fridays at 8:30 p.m.
It’s about the trials and triumphs of the seventh grade. Just goes to prove: The more things change, the more you need a laugh track.
Living in Manhattan, Riley is testing her independence for the first time. Luckily, she has a bestie, Maya (Sabrina Carpenter), to show her the ropes.
Unfortunately, Riley also has her father for a teacher at John Quincy Adams Middle School.
What Cory is teaching remains a mystery. He’s a folksy instructor without portfolio, his daily sermon conveniently tailored to whatever tiny personal crisis Riley is going through in that episode.
“Girl Meets World” is hammier than a Smithfield Foods factory. And Savage is the primary pork purveyor. He seems to think that playing a sitcom dad means talking much louder and slower and putting your face through constant calisthenics.
Topanga is now a lawyer and the primary caregiver to the couple’s painfully precious younger son, Auggie (August Maturo). That effectively means Fishel gets about three lines per show.
Among the young cast, Blanchard has a way with the more emphatic and physical comedy but seems timorous in the more emotional moments.
Carpenter steals the show, maybe because she has two roles: Maya the fiery rebel and Maya the voice of caution and reason. All too often she plays both in the same script, which is confusing. But Carpenter invests each with winning energy.
“Girl Meets World” has been dropping sitcom legends – like Jackee and Cloris Leachman – into early episodes as cameos. Presumably all the troupers from “Boy Meets World” eventually will show up in this spinoff.
The character I most look foward to seeing revived in a future episode is good old Mr. Feeny (William Daniels), Cory’s sagacious teacher and mentor. He had a firm but fair answer for all of life’s dilemmas.
Feeny is the reason I always admired “Boy Meets World.” It was the only TV sitcom in history to treat the teaching profession with respect.
“Girl Meets World”? Not so much. Seeing Cory clown around in front of a classroom like a “Last Comic Standing” reject just doesn’t inspire the same confidence.
If nothing else, this show may establish a new TV genre: Next Gen comedies. Imagine a snooty private school attended by the precocious and quirkily neurotic kids of the “Friends” crew. Or the comic adventures of the daughter of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” a girl only too happy to embrace her magical heritage – with disastrous results.
Or an orphanage where the children learn that they were all abandoned by the “Saved by the Bell” brats.
These ideas practically write themselves. Which in Los Angeles is good enough to get you a 13-episode commitment.