Boy Meets Cult

Since posting about my shirt pertaining sexual relations with Ben Savage about a month ago, Alice told me that eir coworker's friend is now dating Ben Savage. Ben Savage, you get around. Apparently, I could have put the shirt on eBay and made money off it from the inevitably competitive bids. So much for maintaining only one love throughout his life, as he did on Boy Meets World with Topanga.

Growing up, I loved TGIF, the Friday night television line up that featured such gems as Family Matters, Full House, Step by Step, and, of course, Boy Meets World. It was appointment television. I remember having a second cousin who told me he went to church dances every Friday night. My immediate reaction was to ask why he would go to dances at the same time TGIF was on. He answered "girls," so I immediately felt dorky, but I still, silently, had trouble understanding why dances took precedence over Boy Meets World.

Like most family programming, Boy Meets World is often preachy, including significant life lessons such as the importance of studying, being honest, relying on your neighbor, and not joining cults. Yes, even not joining cults. Though I had seen the episode only once, it's stuck with me more than a decade later. It's definitely always been my favorite episode because it's so extremist and out-of-character; I imagine it was billed as a "very special" episode for the whole family. Rather than the typical "Corey snuck out after curfew" plot line, Shawn inexplicably gets sucked in by a cult.

Whenever the topic of Boy Meets World comes up, I always bring up this episode in the hopes that someone can discuss how ridiculous it is with me. Alas, no one ever seems to recall it (sounds like a case of cultish brainwashing to me), so I started to wonder if I had perhaps made it up. Fortunately, I found it on YouTube today and had an opportunity to watch the show in its entirety.

Remember, this is a show for the whole family, so gather your nearest and dearest around to watch this one, and be prepared to discuss the weighty issues at its conclusion. Or, at least, it's more fun to chuckle at its absurdity with someone else.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Not only is the message dumb, but it's pretty sloppily produced, as well. Shawn goes from disinterested in the cult to fully immersed. The cult is watered down and hardly frightening, its activities seemingly consisting of little more than hanging out and giving hugs. Nevertheless, everyone Shawn knows responds hostilely to his participation in the cult. In my opinion, the cult gets a bad rap by the main characters, and their judgmental, blind intolerance of Shawn making new friends implicitly gives the message that the cult might actually be right. I know that's not the episode's ultimate point, but when everyone is quick to raise eir voice and tell Shawn he's wrong instead of attempting to understand his perspective, it seems to prove the cult right. In order for the message to come across, the cult should have been vilified far more and the friends who supposedly love Shawn "better" should have demonstrated some compassion. Furthermore, if the goal is to portray the cult as scary, the show probably should have axed the laugh track to stress the levity of the situation.

In spite of that negative review, now that I work with high schoolers, I would still screen this episode for my students. Teenagers deal with a lot of issues these days, most of which revolve around joining cults. Every time I see my students hug, I give a call home to the parents to make sure their children haven't been exhibiting other cultish behavior. Thank you, Boy Meets World, for bravely addressing a topic that ravages our teenage population, but is so often ignored.