‘Girl Meets World’ season 3, episode 15 review: Is the alternate universe scary, or sad?

With their annual “Girl Meets World of Terror” episode on Friday night, the Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World” continued their tradition of thinking outside of the box. Yet, at the same time they may not have thought far enough outside the box for our personal liking.

This episode focused mostly on the subject of what would happen in the event that Riley and Maya never became friends, and what we were left with was a story where all of the characters were reduced somewhat to archetypes. Riley was the quirky social outcast, Maya the rebel, Farkle the nerdy guy, and Lucas the cowboy. The show could have done more with this from an emotional point of view, at least in terms of how important these people are for each other emotionally. The most we got out of that were a line here and there; or, we could have gotten more in terms of how other aspects of their lives are different beyond just personalities. Does Riley have any further hobbies? Is Maya going in and out from juvenile hall? It just feels like they could have done a little bit more here to make this story stand out.

The other oddity about this episode was the ever-disappearing Auggie storyline, which was actually rather sad to us given that the concept of someone being forgotten about / never being born to us is significantly scarier than anything else the show could be on the air. Obviously, it didn’t end in a bad way, but we almost felt like this was a little too depressing for a Disney Channel show.

To be honest, we’ve never particularly loved the “Girl Meets World” Halloween specials, mostly because they’re in some ways limited by the network they air on, and also by the fact that they tend to be somewhat standalone in nature. We just felt that this one didn’t bring enough new to the table beyond just costumes and archetypes, and the Auggie story was as a whole and a pretty big downer on the night. Grade: B- (which feels appropriate given the Maya bit).