This week put the “Girl” back into Girl Meets World.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Generally speaking, Girl Meets World has been great in terms of fairly depicting tolerance, equality and social justice — especially compared to its predecessor, which often taught similar lessons. In “Girl Meets STEM,” the series jumped headlong into gender politics, while still maintaining its charming sense of humor. And, hey, Zay was back this time around!
It was actually kind of refreshing to see this episode start out in science class, which we’d never seen before — not to mention a new teacher, Mr. Norton (Jeff Doucette), who made a fun addition this week. And while the lesson itself was heavy-handed — not to mention a little presumptive on Mr. Norton’s part — the results, as they say, were clear.
Baseline as it was, this episode did a pretty good job of showing different sides to Riley’s initial argument, with Maya and Farkle representing the statistical norms. I thought it was also nice how it raised awareness of the fact that most middle-school girls begin to lose interest in STEM subjects around this time, via Topanga’s ever-flowing wisdom.
But again, parts of this episode felt a little too on-the-nose, which has sort of become an unwelcome trend on Girl Meets World. The idea that every single girl was chosen to drop the marble didn’t seem very realistic, let alone how it drove a wedge between the girls and the boys. The whole thing felt more in service of the story than it did the characters.
That said, the kids did bring up some very good points throughout the episode, particularly Riley. Her bay window conversation with Maya, for example, offered some of the most compelling arguments in favor of a well-rounded education and gender equality. (“Our guy friends are pretty great. Maybe it used to be easier to see that before we looked at each other as boys and girls.”)
Meanwhile, Auggie’s B story was another typical distraction with paltry laughs. Granted, these subplots are never outright bad, but it would have been nice to see something different. God knows Danielle Fishel could use more screen time, even with her awesome “girl power” moment this week.
This week’s Girl Meets World tackled feminism and education this week, with mostly positive results. While the kids’ science experiment was a bit too fanciful, even by Girl Meets World standards, the arguments and discourse led to some strong moments for Riley specifically. Although, I could have done without this week’s Auggie/Ava storyline.
