IDEAS FOR A HYPOTHETICAL BOY MEETS WORLD REBOOT
So, recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’d have done a Boy Meets World reboot if given the opportunity and enough creative control and freedom.
First, let’s start with the things that would be still kept from the original without getting into too much spoilers:
- Cory and Shawn’s bromance. Duh, it’s the main reason why a big majority of people keep coming back to BMW. It wouldn’t be BMW without it.
- Topanga being a girl that Cory initially thinks it’s weird, but eventually starts to like her, and finally becomes his girlfriend.
- Shawn coming from a less economically stable and more dysfunctional family that lives in a trailer park, and whose parents like to “go away from time to time”, to put it mildly AND kindly. Because of this, he has tons of issues and thinks he won’t get anywhere in life.
- Chet, Shawn's father, being unhappily married to a woman named Virna, whom Shawn believes is his mother, but who actually isn’t, something that Shawn doesn’t find out until much later, with Shawn’s biological mother being a sex worker he has never met.
- Eric being Cory’s older brother, who initially seems like a vain, self-centered teenager, more concerned with being popular and chasing skirts than his grades or his little brother. Don’t worry, he’ll get better after character development.
- Mr. Feeny being both Cory’s teacher and his next door neighbor, initially seeming like an old-fashioned fun-hating teacher who thinks of the Matthews brothers as nothing more than just two of the many troubled students that will come and go. Ofc like with Eric character development would do its magic again, with each character’s arc mirroring the other.
- Also Feeny being able to find love after he realizes it’s never too late to find a significant other, when he initially believed he was too old to do so.
- And don’t worry, ofc Eric would do the Feeny call. Like with Cory and Shawn's bromance, It wouldn’t be Boy Meets World if it wasn’t there.
- Mr. Turner as the younger, seemingly cooler teacher who would take care of Shawn after Chet basically abandons him, and becomes a substitute parental figure for him.
- Shawn having a long lost older half-brother named Jack, who comes from a wealthier background and becomes Eric’s roommate and friend when they start to go to college.
- Angela as a girl whose lost purse is found by Shawn, who while looking for its owner tries to deduce their personality based on what’s inside of it, which causes him to start to fantasize about meeting this girl whose name he doesn’t know and falling in love with her. And then once he finally meets her in person, starting his first serious relationship with her.
- Angela’s father being a sergeant, and her mother having walked out on them when Angela was younger, which caused her a lot of issues too.
Now let’s go with the things that would make it different from the original, starting with the stylistic and aesthetic choices:
- Instead of taking place in the second half of the 90s like the original show, it would take place from the mid-2000s to early 2010s, which was the time when most people who were born when the original Boy Meets World aired for the first time went from middle school to college, just like Cory & friends during the series.
- It would be animated instead of live-action. Why? Because I want to. Joking aside, I think animation would allow the show to introduce some elements in a much more natural way.
- It won’t have a laugh track like the original did, unless it’s an episode or gag that pays homage or parodies sitcoms from a previous decade. This one is kind of a given, because laugh tracks have gone out of school in recent years, but I still felt it would be necessary to mention it jic.
- And here comes the element that won’t be the biggest departure from the original, but probably the most puzzling one. It would have musical numbers. As in characters dancing and singing. At the beginning it won’t be a lot, as a reflection of Cory’s and Shawn’s attitude towards the idea of singing, but as they start to become more and more comfortable, there would be more. Some would be diegetic, others won’t.
And now to the plot and characters-related differences with the original. Buckle up people, because it will be a lot.
- First a significant change in Cory’s family dynamic. Instead of the show starting with Cory living in the typical nuclear family, it would start with Cory living in the suburbs with his mother Amy, a widow who works a white collar job, and Eric. Then Amy would start to date an employee in the store where she usually buys groceries, who would be Alan, who’d be only slightly younger than Amy and a widower with two kids too: a son with the same age as Cory’s who’s also Cory’s classmate, and a younger daughter who would be Morgan (but I’m seriously thinking about renaming her Megan). Amy and Alan would eventually get married, with a lot of the comedy and the drama from the first seasons coming from Cory trying to adapt to the new situation.
(Amy’s previous husband and Eric and Cory’s biological father would be dead, just like Alan’s previous wife)
- One in regards to Cory’s physical appearance: He would still have curly hair, but he would be a redhead with his nose and cheeks full of freckles.
- Instead of the show starting when Cory and his friends are in their last year of elementary school, the show would start the last summer before Cory’s first year of junior high, and follow him up until college like the original show (yk, if it doesn’t get canned by then). Also Feeny won’t be able to magically be their teacher from preschool to college. Instead he would be their History Teacher in high school, and in later seasons, eventually the principal of the high school Cory and his friends attend. And he would retire after Cory’s classroom graduates.
- There would be a long character arc about Cory trying to find his passion and eventually finding his passion in the most unexpected places. Initially he would try to join the school basketball team In high school Cory would initially try to join the basketball team, partially because he likes the sport, partially because his father was a star player in high school. (Sidenote: there would also be a recurring gag of Eric being a god awful basketball player) He’s initially rejected because he’s too short, but after he grows up and finally hits puberty, becoming as tall as Shawn, he would still be considered a mediocre player at best, and eventually Cory would have to accept the fact he’s not that good. Meanwhile, he would also join the school newspaper and the audiovisuals club because of a growing interest in journalism, until he realizes he wants to become a professional journalist.
- Talking about the audiovisuals club, extracurricular activities would play a much bigger role. While Cory joins the audiovisuals club Shawn is forced to join the theater club. There would be a little conflict because both clubs have so few members that, because of budgetary restrictions, they’re threatened to be shut down. To save both, Cory and Shawn come up with the idea of combining them, that way making one club with enough members. Also thanks to being in those clubs they start to befriend classmates they initially thought of as nerds and weirdos.
- Topanga would be raised by a single mother instead of a married couple, never knowing who her father is. Although she initially seems okay with it, then when she’s older she tries to find out which one of her mother’s three ex-boyfriends is her father. This is partially to pay homage to the fact that in the original BMW Topanga’s father was played by three different actors at different points of the show, and partially to make a bunch of break the fourth wall jokes about ripping off Mamma Mia’s premise. And don’t worry, Nebula won’t be retconned out of existence this time.
- Jack’s backstory would be changed a little. When his mother finally left Chet, instead of taking her son with her, Jack would actually be left behind in the trailer park with Chet and his newborn half-brother (Shawn’s birth would actually be the last straw that finally made Jack’s mother decide to leave for good). So Jack would spend a good part of his childhood in the trailer park taking care of Shawn, until he became old enough to successfully run away to live with his mother, being Shawn now the one left behind.
- And behold my Jeric shippers, because Jack and Eric would be both canonically bisexual AND end up together. Besides Jack Eric would also have another main male love interest, who’d be Mitchell Davis (yes, that Mitchell Davis), who would’ve known Eric since they were kids but who now goes to another school, the same as Jack’s. He would also live in the same trailer park as Shawn does.
- Lauren won’t be the girl Cory cheated on Topanga with, but instead the first girl he dates after Topanga leaves for the first time. Because despite liking Lauren, Cory concludes he’s dating her to forget Topanga, in other words, for the wrong reasons, so he breaks up with her. Besides, Lauren would go to the same school as Jack and Mitchell (everything’s connected).
- A seemingly very trivial detail: As a trademark favorite food Cory would love pizza so much that the place where he hangs out with his friends after school wouldn’t be Chubbie’s (although it would still exist in this universe, but it would more of a general place where John Adams High students hang out instead of just Cory’s group of friends), but instead a pizza place. Also this last one is a little bit anecdotal, but Cory wouldn’t mind pineapple pizza while Shawn would hate it by principle.
(this is getting quite lengthy, so I’d do a part II. There’s still a lot of ideas I have that I want to share with the BMW fandom)
Edit: Part II is already out. Go check it out
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