‘Girl Meets World’ season 2, episode 17 reaction: The importance of ‘Girl Meets Rileytown’

“Girl Meets World” season 2 has touch on a variety of different issues over the course of its run, and we were interested in seeing how they were going to tackle one as important as bullying during Friday night’s new episode “Girl Meets Rileytown.”

We did have a concern going into this, mostly because when you look at the media, bullying is one of the most oversaturated topics of conversation out there. Almost every person out there already has their position on it, and has heard countless stories. One point that the show made that was certainly effective in our eyes is that there is a difference between criticism and bullying. Not everyone who has something to say you don’t like is necessarily bullying you. That’s what Riley had to realize when Maya was trying to help her, and was getting upset over the word “Rileytown” coming out of her mouth.

Basically, someone was threatening to expose Riley for being weird and different to the school, and she did eventually overcome it in a fun celebration of herself. What we also appreciated about this is that the show never showed who was actually responsible for the bullying. It doesn’t matter, and maybe the producers knew that in the age of social media, whoever they cast in this role would end up being bullied themselves online just for playing a part on a fictional TV show. It was yet another smart move here to tell a familiar story from a different angle.

Sure, we prefer episodes of “Girl Meets World” to be more connected to the original, but there was a spirit of “Boy Meets World” here at times. Also, we feel like the writers handled a serious topic with grace and never made it too preachy.

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