‘Girl Meets World’ season 3, episode 4 review: A bad grade challenges Riley

There are some episodes of “Girl Meets World” out there that do tackle some difficult themes and topics, and there are others that take on some key character relationships.

For Friday night’s new episode entitled “Girl Meets Permanent Record,’ we had one that was all about education. Specifically, whether or not one bad grade can doom everything, or encourage someone to work harder. After Riley got a “D” on her first weekly test in Spanish class, she did everything she could in order to convince the teacher that she could get another shot at it. The same goes for Cory, who was upset because he knew that his daughter was a “good student.” Eventually, they realized this wasn’t going to happen, and what mattered most for Riley was that she improved.

Ultimately, it may be best to consider what happened to Riley a wake-up call, and even for Cory the whole issue of Spanish class caused him to realize that he could be better.

Overall, this was one of those “message” episodes that really served a singular function. We all learned something, and while that is great, we do prefer “Girl Meets World” to give us at least some sort of further story development. In this particular case, we found the whole discussion of permanent records murky; while we know the point here is that progress is more important than the record, they could have done a better job making it clear precisely how the system worked. Also, Auggie’s story did not really add much this week to facilitate the conversation. Grade: B-.

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