Not that it doesn't deserve the accolades. Boy Meets World was an exceptionally good coming-of-age sitcom, up there with Happy Days and The Wonder Years. (It seems to me that most coming-of-age series take place in the past, which probably bears some relationship to the inherent nostalgic appeal I just commented on.)
The series creator Michael Jacobs seems to have made a specialty of this sort of thing. Boy Meets World premiered just a few months after the cancellation of Jacobs' previous show, the soulful and underrated The Torkelsons. Cory Matthews, in his awkward likability and adolescent earnestness, took after Dorothy-Jane Torkelson, and Mr. Feeny was the Ivy League equivalent of the genial, grandfatherly Boarder Hodges, whose subtle wisdom provided the obligatory moral of many an episode.
(I bet the previous paragraph constitutes the most effusive praise ever uttered about The Torkelsons, and you know, I'm satisfied with any superlative I can achieve.)
Boy Meets World took the coming-of-age business very seriously, even going so far as to compress Cory's six-year middle and high school career into four seasons just to make him come of age faster. I think that was a big mistake, especially since the college episodes are so inferior to the high school seasons. (And yes, I know some people hold the preposterous opinion that the college episodes are the best of the series.)
At the same time, the characters all went through major personality changes: Cory went from troublemaker to insecure teenager to 90-year-old college student; Topanga went from latter-day flower child to all-American girl next door to sanctimonious buttinsky; Shawn went from airhead to tiresomely sensitive soul; Eric went from girl-crazy to dream-hunk to blithering manchild; younger sister Morgan transformed into a different actress; and Mr. Turner, Mr. Williams and Minkus just disappeared. The only constant was George Feeny, who dispensed words of wisdom year in and year out.
But I'm supposed to be talking about the holiday-themed episodes. There were several of these, and I'll cover all the ones I can think of.
S1 E10: Santa's Little Helper: David Trainer, 1993
IMDb rating: 8.4 out of 10
I couldn't tell you how they came up with the title for this episode, unless they were just thinking of the Simpsons' dog. I assume the "helper" is Cory, who tries to bring good cheer to Shawn by giving him a Christmas present after Shawn's dad gets laid off. He learns a valuable (albeit somewhat rushed) lesson about the difference between doing a good deed in the expectation of gratitude and doing it with no possibility of taking credit.
Actually, maybe Santa's Little Helper is George Feeny:
S3 E10: Train of Fools: Jeff McCracken, 1995
IMDb rating: 7.8 out of 10
I'm cheating with this one, because it's really a New Year's Eve episode. But it aired in the middle of December, and besides, when will I ever have a chance to talk about this?
Eric Matthews has somehow managed to get a New Year's Eve date with a teenage supermodel called Rebecca Alexa, played by 30-year-old former Miss Universe laureate Angela Visser. Eric and Rebecca have the misfortune of sharing a limo with Cory, Shawn and Topanga, and the further misfortune that the limo turns out to be a hearse. (That's kind of a tired joke, isn't it?) This forces the gang to resort to the subway to get them downtown in time for the big party. Rebecca Alexa ditches Eric when she discovers how desperate he is to be seen in public with her, which is a weird plot development.
They spend most of the episode stuck on the train due to mechanical problems. This is what's called a "bottle episode" (or so I'm told), where they make as much use as possible out of one set. Shawn has to recruit a pizza delivery man to help deliver a baby in an adjacent car, some guy keeps saying the word "par-tay," Topanga desperately tries to keep up spirits by calling people "Buckers" (and then immediately pointing out the ridiculousness of calling people "Buckers"), and Eric disguises himself as Steve Jobs:
There was a B-story in this episode about two of my favorite characters, Jonathan Turner and Eli Williams, trying to enjoy a bachelor's night in and being interrupted by Jonathan's exes. According to a DVD commentary, these characters were introduced in a self-conscious effort to appeal to 20-somethings. I guess it didn't work. (And I guess the cat's out of the bag now: yes, I have listened to the Boy Meets World DVD commentary tracks.)
S4 E10:Turkey Day: Jeff McCracken, 1996
IMDb rating: 7.7 out of 10
Now I'm really cheating, because not only was this not in any way a Christmas episode, it didn't even air at Christmas time. This is unequivocally a Thanksgiving episode.
Well, whatever. No jury will convict me. This is a good episode, mostly because it prominently featured another one of my favorite characters, Frankie—or, as TV.com identifies him, Francis "Albert" "Frankie" "The Enforcer" Stechino. Old FAFTE Stechino was one of the three bullies introduced in season 2, all of whom looked like 1950s greasers and spoke like they'd just stepped out of a Damon Runyon play. But the Faft stuck around after his fellow rowdies had been written out, reconceived as a misunderstood gentle giant with a poetic side. And his dad was Big Van Vader:
This Thanksgiving episode was about the class differences between Cory and Shawn's families, and it was decent. But isn't it weird that Big Van Vader, who played himself and was supposed to be a famous pro wrestler on the show, would live in a trailer park? I mean, he's not exactly the silver spoon type, but he must be reasonably well to do.
S4 E12: Easy Street: Jeff McCracken, 1997
IMDb rating: 7.8 out of 10
I'll just quote you IMDb's description of this one: "Cory gets a job at a restaurant controlled by the Mafia; when Shawn tells him who owns the restaurant Cory quits. Shawn takes Cory's job to earn money for Christmas."
Read that a couple of times. Especially the first sentence, about the Mafia.
Needless to say, Shawn eventually learns that indispensable life lesson that surely every teenager can relate to, namely the folly of associating with mobsters. But can anyone explain to me why Buddy Hackett and Soupy Sales played them?
I'm happy to say that the file name of that photo was "Mafia.jpg".
S5 E11: A Very Topanga Christmas: David Kendall, 1998
IMDb rating: 7.9 out of 10
I don't really remember this very well. After the fourth season, the show became more and more committed to bludgeoning its audience with the eternal cosmic significance of the relationship between Cory and Topanga, and I recall this episode as typically heavy-handed. I always found this love story particularly uninspiring. I liked Cory and Topanga individually, but what were they supposed to have seen in each other? They were one of those couples that seem to bring out the most irritating in one another. The irony of it is that I'm sure we all had high school friends like this in real life, who got into a serious relationship and then bored us to tears by endlessly dwelling on it.
Aw, all right, I guess they're not so bad.
S6 E11: Santa's Little Helpers: Lynn M. McCracken
IMDb rating: 8 out of 10
The main story in this episode was some boring thing about Cory ruining Shawn's relationship with his girlfriend Angela (who was 29 years old in real life—would you have ever guessed that?), but what was more interesting was the secondary plot about Eric and an orphan kid named Tommy. This time, I'm almost certain it's Eric who's the little helper:
Oh, Helpers this time? I don't know then.
I think that's all. I've really stretched this one as far as it will go. It was a great show, and I guess over all I would call these episodes
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