In January 1988, after airing a particularly uneven Super Bowl to 80 million Americans, the ABC network in the US premiered its new coming-of-age show, The Wonder Years. Starring 11-year-old wunderkind Fred Savage as the wide-eyed Kevin Arnold, the program was applauded for its rich and nuanced portrait of middle class suburban adolescence, set against the political upheaval of the late 1960s.
As the sixth and final season wound to a close in 1993, ABC tried its luck for a second time, casting Fred’s younger brother Ben as middle class suburban kid Cory Matthews on its new sitcom Boy Meets World. Hey, if it works once ...
The show premiered as part of ABC’s much vaunted TGIF lineup to a staggering 16.5 million viewers, flanked by ratings smashes Family Matters and Step By Step. It was another home run for the network, and for the young Savage family – and it’s available to watch in Australia on Disney+.
At the height of its power, Boy Meets World was out-rating the hopelessly verbose Dawson’s Creek: a teen phenomenon that courted controversy, but failed to reflect the lives of its audience in any real way.
For a show now owned by Disney, the subject matter of Boy Meets World – which ran for seven seasons – is surprisingly adult: teenage lovers lose their virginity; a distraught runaway deals with a violent father; and the interracial relationship it featured broke ground in the conservative TV landscape of the 1990s.
Underaged drinking isn’t merely tssk’d away, but explained as a coping mechanism likely to lead nowhere good, while sexual harassment is dealt with at a high school level – then again at college. Like growing up itself, Boy Meets World is hilarious and emotional; messy and joyful and sad.
Season one is cute but aimed at 12-year-olds, so it can be safely skipped (unless a 21-minute episode about a child yearning for an expensive water pistol is up your alley).
As the show progresses through the years, so do the characters. Cory moves from sixth grade, through high school, and onto college, while the impressive supporting cast all receive meatier storylines. His girlfriend Topanga (Danielle Fishel) morphs from a tofu-eating hippy to a glass ceiling-smashing feminist, while best friend Shawn (Rider Strong) struggles to find an anchor as his dysfunctional parents abandon him, bouncing between various authority figures as his resentment festers and occasionally explodes. Cory’s goofy older brother remains the comic relief but is challenged to better himself, while the Matthews parental set navigate their own marital dramas.
It’s all treated with the weight it deserved, while being wrapped around quickfire jokes that stand up over two decades later, wacky subplots that exist purely to amuse, and a fun array of mafia-style school bullies. The show is extremely self-aware, pointing out plot holes and loose ends, while the tone swings from pure silliness to pathos while never cheapening either. Heartthrob Matthew Lawrence joins the cast in later years; assumedly there was a Screen Actors Guild law that required at least one Lawrence to be on the set of every teen property during the 1990s.
But the beating heart of the show is Mr Feeny, the ever-present school teacher, who not only teaches Cory’s class throughout primary school, high school and college, but who also lives next door to the Matthews family. Expertly rendered by William Daniels (the voice of KITT in Knight Rider), Mr Feeny doles out life advice and homework in equal measures, and becomes a surrogate parent to all. It is Mr Feeny who the children turn to as they struggle and he never overplays his hand, deftly avoiding the syrupy lesson-learning of most family sitcoms. He also hands out foot-long rulers to trick-or-treaters.
The final scene finds the now-adult students back in their sixth-grade classroom, trying to pry one last nugget of wisdom from their mentor. Like the entire seven-season run, the scene is funny, it is tender, and it will make you cry.
• Boy Meets World is streaming in Australia on Disney+
