‘Girl Meets World’ episode 6 review: Cloris Leachman and a Topanga throwback

Tonight, “Girl Meets World” did a pretty good job of mimicking in many ways a “Boy Meets World” episode from so many years ago, where Cory got invited to a party and Shawn didn’t … only to later discover that it was a geek party not one with the popular kids.

The funniest thing about this “party” Riley was invited to was that this set almost looked like Sheldon and Leonard’s place from “The Big Bang Theory,” and Cory could not be happier about this news. The story from here on out was a little bit easier to telegraph… sort of. The last thing that we expected was for Farkle to try to convert her to his army. This apparently included multi-colored hair, glasses, and participating in spelling bees.

There is a sort of interesting social commentary in here on being yourself, given that right now, being geeky has actually somehow transcended to being cool. Sometimes, you really shouldn’t have to appeal to any peer group if you can be happy with yourself. That’s a nice message, since it shows that the popular kids aren’t the only cliche in school.

Also, hooray for flower child Topanga! This was a nice little throwback to go with the return of Willie Garson so many years later, and you add to that Cloris Leachman as a bakery owner trying to save her business, and you had one of the most ambitious episodes to date. We appreciated the effort here to give us more of Topanga after she spent a good bit of time in earlier episodes.

Overall, cheers to tonight’s episode! It tried the hardest to please fans new and old, and thanks to that we had a half-hour that was both funny and meaningful. Grade: B+.

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Photo: Disney Channel