I really appreciate that you occasionally criticize the writing on GMW, because often in this fandom the writers are treated like infallible geniuses & to me that's just not the case. I've found Maya's identity crisis arc to be especially clumsy and opaque-- casual viewers shouldn't have to turn to analysis blogs to translate the plot points. If you were writing for the show, how would you have treated this storyline? Which POV would you have given the most weight to?
First of all, thank you so much. Second of all, this may be the best ask I have ever gotten.
I just think that the first two seasons catered to multiple audiences pretty flawlessly. Casual viewers could enjoy what is right in front of them, while those of us actually invested in the show could dive deeper into the context of episodes depicting what was going to happen based on character trajectories, hidden Boy Meets World parallels, costuming, set design, dialogue, etc. It was all extremely streamlined. There was always a clear “surface” message for an episode, while there was also a clear underlying subplot for us to follow along with as the season progressed. I think that the writers did an excellent job setting up where these characters were headed while managing to teach us something completely relatable with the “social” aspect the show. Then they had to re write GM New Year and things got way off course for S3.
I’m not saying S3 has been terrible, because episodes like Permanent Record (and even Jexica) have been pretty stellar. But now those once clear subplots have become extremely convoluted. I think if you really analyze the show, you still can see what they are trying to do with this identity crisis: Maya found hope from Riley, got a little too deep into her world (Rileytown, as they call it) and now has to rediscover her original voice , in order to round herself out as a balanced individual. Unfortunately, if you are a casual viewer at this point, it looks a lot like Maya actually did “become Riley” and that all of the people who love her really just want her to fail out of school and date boys that are terrible for her.
I think Triangle is where it particulary started to get clumsy. I think that by focusing so deeply on Riley’s point of view about Maya’s identity issues, it complete invalidates the feelings of the person who is actually struggling through the conflict.This makes things confusing. Riley is written as an unreliable narrator often, but she also is known to her friends as the “person who always fixes things”. So what is the audience supposed to think? Is Riley right or wrong here? Did Maya really become Riley, and only like Lucas because she did? If you haven’t watched every single episode of GMW and understand how misguided Riley can tend to be, you may actually believe your protagonist. Riley has this extreme resistance for listening to Maya “scream”and as a result, the story(as well as the point) gets very, very convoluted.
The strange thing is, they writers do have Mr. Jackson and Shawn make comments where they diagnose the situation correctly, ultimately showing that Maya just needs to learn balance and she hasn’t lost any of her growth. But Mr. Jackson and Shawn are both secondary characters in this show. If you blink, you miss the point. So what does that leave us with? That leaves us with Riley’s unreliable narration, something that normal viewers are not going to grasp, especially over a multi episode arc.
If I had written Triangle, I would have botched that entire bay window scene between the two of them. Riley sounds crazy and Maya sounds logical but then the rest of the episode plays out to Riley’s favor. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have written Triangle, period. Triangle made no sense to me at all until I watched Upstate and then went back and revisited it. You shouldn’t have to back track episodes in order of them to make sense. Upstate, in my opinion, gave a more clear and concise direction as to where the writers are trying to go with this.They really could have just started there.
If NOTHING else, I definitely wouldn’t have Riley questioning how Maya feels about Lucas- “Do you like Lucas just because I do?”. And then Maya actually possibly agrees with that sentiment? What, writers?! We just spent an entire season building a relationship between Lucas and Maya, a very intricate and genuine one, one laced with Maya’s continuous attempts at suppressing her emotions just so we could bail out with “I just liked him because I became you”? If that’s really where we are going with this, you are using this plot as a copout.
If that isn’t where we are going and they are leading us to a bigger lesson, I think they are dragging it out for too many episodes, where important story points are just getting lost in translation and signals are getting crossed. Regardless of whether Lucas picked Riley or not, this specific arc could have been figured out in a different way, and it should have been figured out probably by the end of last season. You can’t ignore everything you built so beautifully over the previous two seasons and then just destroy it to solve a conflict that’s been dragged out for too long. Well you can, but its frustrating. If we had solved this issue at the end of season 2, maybe by now we would be on to RILEY growing as a character. At this point, she’s almost a caricature of herself. I want to see her date Lucas and learn from the experience, I want to see her the way she was in Permanent Record, or even better the person she was in STEM. I want to get back to that GMW and I want them to stop trying so hard to tie things together in order to have everything “make sense”.
Ultimately, I would have had that jelly bean scene happen sometime at the end of Season 2. I still would have had him pick Riley and then I would have used that to jumpstart Mayas identity crisis. A guy choosing your best friend over you, in any world no matter how much you love her, would be enough for anyone to go on a bit of a bender. This would then allow MAYA to question whether her feelings for Lucas were because she was in “Rileytown” for awhile, or if it was all genuine, rather than having Riley push that on her. It just lends too much credibility to how Riley perceives things otherwise. I would also have Riley and Lucas finally try their relationship and ultimately fail, so that our protagonist(and Lucas for that matter) can continue to grow and move forward in other ways (Probably with the realization of Riarkle, possible reopening of the Lucaya chapter). Season 3 would still be dealing with feelings,but the characters wouldn’t be coasting, they would be growing, and their lessons in perception vs. reality would be ever evolving.
