Cory and Topanga show up at the Tnemtrapa where they expect to be greeted by a "Welcome Home Salami." The "salami" part isn't what confuses Rachel and Angela, but rather the "home" part. ONCE AGAIN, Rachel has given away a room at this place without consulting the person who owned it. Holy shit what the shit Rachel. Seriously.
Everybody stop what you're doing.
Listen to me. What the fuck, Rachel. Fool me once, shame on me. Give away an occupied apartment room twice, what the fuck Rachel. It's unbelievable.
So yeah Shawn moved in here, and Cory and Topanga are pretty upset that they have nowhere to live now. There was clearly a breakdown of communication by all parties, not just Rachel, but I still find myself feeling bad for the newlyweds.
In a complete disregard for how dorm assignments work, the couple believe that they can still live in Cory's old dorm. Not so.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh there we go! This is great, this is the Jack/Eric dynamic I've wanted to see again. I think the paradigm example of this relationship is in First Girlfriends Club. That episode is bogus, but it has the perfect version of the Jack/Eric dynamic. It's doubly reminiscent of that episode since the boys are now quickly joined by three attractive women. That was nice. That was a nice scene that gives me some comforting false hope for this season.
That piece of paper in the gif explains that married couples can only live in a married-couples-dorm, so Jack and Eric have taken command of this one.
Next stop is home, but Alan is adamant that Cory can't stay with them now that he's married. Alamant... Alanmant... There's another scene with Alan at the end, so we'll talk more about him when we get there.
Alan: "Cory don't make me beat you up in front of your wife."
Amy asks her son how he could just not prepare for this situation at all, and his response is bullshit because Amy is completely right. Cory's taking the mantle of responsibility, but Topanga utterly failed to prepare as well, so she's equally (and uncharacteristically) to blame. Now that I think about it, it's genuinely surprising that Topanga could let this happen. Keep that in mind though, because I have a theory about it that's gonna come up later.
Later, at The Union, our heroes learn from Angela and Shawn that, due to a homicide, a couples' dorm is now available for them to live in. I'm not a fan of them lucksacking into having a place to live, but fine. What's more interesting is the way the couples' dorms are presented. Look at this hallway.
There's no reason in the universe that these hallways would be so awful looking, especially this palette of There-Was-A-Fire-Here Brown. Inside the rooms, sure, but come on. And there's the sad guitar music playing. It's a full force attempt at making us feel bad about this place, but it's so overbearing that it ends up being silly. Like it feels like an after school special, like a police officer is about to tell me not to do drugs.
And there's a toddler standing out here in the hall, played by Michael Jacobs's kid in a sweeping display of either nepotism or budgetary constraints. Or both. He informs Corpanga that he sees dead people, which was probably funny back then, like Eric quoting South Park.
The inside of the dorm is comically bad, just like the hallway. I'm going to be calling this The Dorm from now on, even though it's not much of a dorm at all, it's more of an apartment. They've got a fridge and an oven and everything right in here. Normal tiny dorms are already highway robbery, so this place must cost a fortune.
Some random ass woman walks in here and contributes nothing to the plot for a whole minute and then she leaves. Fantastic.
Who uh, who is this one, Jacobs's daughter and granddaughter? His wife? Why'd we do this?
So we're in Feeny's class now, it's history this time, and the newlyweds are disheveled and exhausted. Feeny dismisses class to try to give them advice, but none of it really sticks.
Cory: "What are you, a fortune cookie?!"
Topanga: "Who has cookies?"
Okay, theory time. I'm sitting here wondering why I'm enjoying this, with the fact that Topanga was inexplicably irresponsible for once, and then by the end of this scene with Feeny it hits me. Topanga is acting like Shawn. This whole thing feels like a Cory/Shawn adventure. Topanga is being dopey and snarky and... sidekick-y. That's the secret here, they wrote her like Shawn rather than herself. And aside from being completely disingenuous, it's actually working. And it sure doesn't hurt that Cory isn't bitching about sex anymore.
As Corpanga leave the classroom unsatisfied, Feeny admits to himself that he is a fortune cookie, which is totally not true.
Meanwhile, Eric and Jack are playing some sort of billiards-hockey in The Union.
Absolutely fantastic. That's the kind of silly-dumbness that I enjoy from Eric, rather than some in-your-face he's-an-idiot thing, as well as the easygoing sidekick from Jack, rather than the judgmental heckler. Good good good. Rachel is there asking them how everything's going, and the triplets walk in right on cue. They're quickly stolen away by a set of male triplets though, leaving our boys all alone once more.
Eric: "You wanna go volunteer to be experimented on?"
Jack: "Sure."
Over at Brew Lagoon, Shangela are having coffee with Corpanga, and it's a continued complain-a-thon. There are some funny bits until Topanga starts crying and runs off... which is more like Shawn than Topanga, so we've still got that going on. Cory complains to Shawn that he can't provide for or protect his wife, and honestly the whole thing makes Topanga sound so weak and helpless, and the way she's acting only makes it worse. I don't like this very much. Cory even pointed out to her at the beginning of the episode that she has suddenly abandoned her ideals of an equal partnership.
Cory: "Talk about how I've been... married for one week and I already can't protect my wife?"
Cory insists that Shawn can't help with this problem, and that he himself has to take care of this on his own. But then it immediately cuts to him asking his dad for help, so I dunno. But once again we're seeing Alan's brand of awesome parenting. Cory is a married man now, and Alan needs him to understand and accept the responsibility that comes with that. This scene is awesome, and really lives up to the name of the series. He thought he was ready to get married, so now he has to deal with it. Granted, this all comes from a COMPLETE lack of any sort of preparation on his or Topanga's part, but the idea is there. And we haven't had a good life lesson from Alan in a while.
Alan: "This is your life. Deal with your life."
You can see Amy's legs back there on the stairs, she doesn't want to be a part of this, and initially she wanted to let Cory stay with them. That's interesting, since back in 6x01 it was Alan who wanted to coddle Eric, and Amy who insisted that he couldn't stay with them.
Back at The Dorm, Cory tells his wife they'll have to see this through on their own.
During the credits, we see some bloopers of Jacobs's kid flubbing his line, yet another display of either nepotism or budget constraints.
Plot: 0.5 - Cory and Topanga are idiots. Rachel is a bigger idiot. Simple communication could have prevented all of this, and then even when a miracle lands Corpanga one of the marriage dorms, they still spend every second complaining. What's weird is the huge shift in tone after Topanga starts crying. Their misery is supposed to be funny for most of the episode, and then suddenly we're watching Les Mis.
Character Development: 0 - Topanga turned into Shawn, I don't know if that's development though.
Humor: 1.0 - The misery was funny until Topanga started crying, plus Jack and Eric were consistently enjoyable. I seriously love that billiards hockey whatever they were playing.
Life Lesson: 1.0 - "Deal with your life."
2.5 out of 4.0. It's enjoyable for the most part because, like I said, Topanga is serving as more of a Shawn-sidekick than the Topanga we're used to. Jack and Eric were exactly what I want from them, but god dammit I still can't believe Rachel gave away a room again. What is her problem.
Thanks for reading, see you Monday.
All images used under Fair Use.
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