Gonna get on my soap box for a minute, which I haven’t done in a while so, fair warning.
Look, don't get me wrong. I had my issues with GMW and, ending where it did, it failed in a LOT of respects, but this whole trend since Andi Mack aired of trying to make it out like everyone involved in GMW who said the show was held back by Disney were liars and that the reality was that it was just a shit show is such an oversimplification of the situation.
Ryder, Jacobs, Rowan, etc all hinted to varying degrees that Disney stunted the show's growth and/or held it back from being what its audience needed it to be.
“We were pushing down all kinds of walls at Disney, I don’t think they expected or had really ever seen – we would have kept going. But it becomes problematic because I think the mandate of that network is younger kids. If you examine what happened, it’s okay, no harm, no foul, we simply outgrew that venue. That’s why I perceive there might be interest somewhere else, because of the types of stories we could tell.”-Michael Jacobs
"We've had some very dramatic episodes [of Girl Meets World]. I don't think as dramatic as Boy, mostly because we're on Disney Channel and they won't allow us to. I think had Michael had his way, Girl Meets World would have swung just as extreme."-Ryder Strong
“I will continue to fight to not be talked down to by the shows and books and movies that are aimed towards us. I am sorry that this channel is just not able to understand that.”-Rowan Blanchard
GMW was created under entirely different circumstances and the big thing that I think people aren’t realizing is that GMW helped the network to better understand where children’s programming was headed. Kids don’t want to be talked down to. They want programming that feels real and relatable. In a lot of ways, I think there’s been this shift back towards what children’s TV used to be in the early 2000′s (before the whole pop star/insta fame thing took over), with the added benefit of being more progressive because society as a whole is more progressive now than it was 15+ years ago.
Anyways, I’m digressing. My point is, GMW provided the network with insight about where they needed to go next and what changes they needed to make as a network. While this means great things for the network going forward (if they’re willing to stick with this trend,) it was too little too late for GMW (mainly because of where it was in its lifespan.)
People's ignorance and complete lack of understanding about the different circumstances under which the two shows were created is unfortunate, but not surprising at all.
If you think the show was shit because it was poorly written, featured unnatural dialogue, didn’t offer enough representation, etc, that’s totally cool and I get it! In fact, I agree with those points. It did struggle with weak dialogue, an over abundance of meta and not as much representation as it should have had (especially for a show set in NYC of all places), but to come at it for essentially “lying” about being held back is a total non-starter.
