Farkle Time.
Warning: Full spoilers from the episode follow.
As with previous episodes, this week’s Girl Meets World tackled a difficult subject — autism — and handled it nicely, thanks to good writing and good performances. In addition to being a solid entry for Corey Fogelmanis as Farkle, this storyline featured the return of Farkle’s parents Stuart Minkus (Lee Norris) and Jennifer Bassett (Terminator 3’s Kristanna Loken), the latter of whom was actually Shawn’s ex-girlfriend in Boy Meets World. And if you remember Jennifer’s two episodes on that show, then her relation to Farkle makes a lot of sense!
Anyway, “Girl Meets I Am Farkle” began with an amusing tie-in to Belgium 1831, which officially marked Farkle’s knowledge of everything and going up on the board along with “idiots” Mozart, Einstein and Jobs. At the same time, Farkle was waiting to hear if he did indeed fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. Of course, part of what made this episode so heartwarming was Riley, Maya and Lucas’s undying support for Farkle. (“I’m here so it’s not just the girls.”) The initial scenes of them trying to justify Farkle’s behavior were sweet, if occasionally too sentimental. But overall, it was good to see the GMW writers taking the time to explain just what autism was and how it coincidentally aligned with Farkle’s uniqueness.
However, said uniqueness wasn’t coincidental for Smackle, whose own return here was rather timely. After going over the symptoms of Aspergers, it was pretty obvious that Smackle was autistic too, and her comforting Farkle during his waiting period was an effective way of fleshing out the main storyline. And while her JQA sit-in felt a little forced and unnecessary, I enjoyed the followup at the Matthews’ household, where Smackle told Farkle the truth about her own diagnosis. Also, I got a kick out of Smackle’s recurring bit with Lucas, who was apparently “smothering” her with affection.
Farkle’s closing speech was also very strong in this. Though it turned out he wasn’t autistic after all, it was a nice touch adding that the guidance counselors didn’t know what to make of his quirks, which segued into a humorous but touching “I am Farkle. Thank you.” Overall, this episode hit on all the right emotional beats while also examining an important topic that had yet to be explored on the show. And it was also fun to see the adults play their part in the storyline, specifically Cory realizing Jennifer wasn’t so scary anymore after seeing her compassion for Farkle.
While it teetered into melodrama at times, “Girl Meets I Am Farkle” was a great episode for Farkle, whose potential autism diagnosis brought out the best in his friends. It was also cool to see the return of Stuart Minkus and Jennifer Bassett, both of whom were given some added dimensionality in this. In the end, this episode was another key installment with a good message behind it.
