Danielle and Will are on the side that it wasn’t a trap and Ryder is on the side it was a trap
They asked viewers to send voice memos and such but I just wanted to write my own thoughts here plus I’m very late/behind on the podcast lol
Summary: Cory and Topanga are boyfriend and girlfriend senior year in high school and while the continuity is messy we are going with the story they’ve been together since they were little babies (like 4 years old), on a school trip Cory ends up falling for another girl and talked to her a lot and bonded to the point she kissed him
Before leaving the girl Lauren wrote Cory a letter and the letter made its way to Topanga's hands, that’s how she finds out about what we call cheating causing a rift between Cory and Topanga
Lauren comes to visit Cory so many miles away just to speak to him at the same time Cory is going to try and reconcile with Topanga with assistance from his best friend Shawn
Topanga says if Cory needs to be 100% sure about his feelings he should talk to Lauren which Cory does
After hanging out with Lauren Cory becomes 100% sure about Topanga but Topanga still breaks up with him on the principle he has to test and go see if he likes the other girl more than her
So people think Topanga trapped Cory as she says to go so he went and she’s breaking up with her for listening to her
A lot of other details that matter but that’s the core of it
So was it a trap?
Yes and no
I think the show presents and shows it’s a trap, Shawn even flat out says it. And everything after makes it sound more and more like a trap on Topanga’s part
But I also don’t think what Topanga said was that vague to be seen as manipulation or a “trap”. It wasn’t explicitly clear but I don’t think she was being so cryptic that I don’t think it’s hard to register she wanted him to leave with her instead of spending time with Lauren
My answer is it really is a perspective thing as I think you can trap someone without meaning to so Topanga didn’t think it was a trap while Cory (and Shawn) did due to each side's available knowledge
It’s similar to the we were on a break debate from Friends with the confusion around the word break, Ross thought breakup and Rachel thought pause then it was later clarified that even if it was a breakup sleeping with someone right after a breakup is still bad
So Topanga asking if Cory wants to talk to Lauren is in Topanga’s mind seeing if he’s choosing her or Lauren, while Cory reads it as okay I get a moment to sort things out and then decide
If Topanga understood that Cory wasn’t thinking that was the moment to decide she might of worded it better, just like if Cory knew that was the moment to decide he would of probably answered differently as well
Additional and random thoughts
The situation is already in a bad situation as everyone agrees Cory was in a cheating or cheating-like situation (depending on what you think constitutes as cheating for you)
So the situation alone has the grounds for a break up there alone
Let alone their prior history in the show such as other moments when girls came onto Cory
The trap debate is around the wording Topanga uses as people think if it was worded better Cory would not have talked to Lauren if he better understood what Topanga meant, which was evident by the end of the episode where Cory was upset
Since she wasn’t being explicitly clear it can feel misleading or vague or manipulation and if she was clear they wouldn’t have broken up
My stance is I feel they would of broken up either way
Even if Cory was 100% sure at that moment Topanga was already hurt enough from everything that they probably would have broken up regardless
Now it would have made their eventual getting back together easier to swallow if he hadn’t gone on that ‘date’ with Lauren
But I don’t think Cory leaves with Topanga then everything is fixed and perfectly fine
Cory leaves with Topanga and then they’re still going to talk like they initially planned and then Cory being Cory isn’t going to say the correct things to put Topanga at ease especially since in this scenario he wasn’t able to properly sort out his feelings for Lauren so Topanga would not have been satisfied or even hurt by Cory’s answers and still broken up with him
The Lauren aspect is tricky…
I do think there’s a version where Lauren never shows up so Cory doesn’t get conflicted as it really was bad timing
Whether he felt that way deep down or not, he was ready to get back with Topanga and the moment he does so Lauren appears throwing him off before he could even recover Topanga shows up
If Lauren showed up idk 5 minutes before or after, it would make a lot of things different as it could mean Cory gets a chance to talk to either of them before the other arrives, maybe he succeeded in getting Lauren out before Topanga arrived, there are a lot of possibilities if Lauren didn’t arrive precisely when she does
I agree with Will from the podcast in the standpoint that Lauren is essentially a villain in this whole arc
She flirts with a boy that she knows has a girlfriend, she kisses that same boy, gives him a love letter, and when that boy doesn’t write her back she travels a really long way to see that boy again
If it was framed a different way Lauren would be looked at as evil, crazy, or desperate but the show presents more as somewhat romantic in the lens of ‘wow she travels so far just to see him’ again versus a girl obsessing over a guy she knew for like 3 days who has a girlfriend
Cory…
So it’s been pretty accepted that Cory in the show isn’t the best person
Part of it is that as the main character, he’s put in these ridiculous situations and due to having to learn lessons and such messes up and doesn’t always do the right thing
But the other part is that we see a lot of the characters conform to his reality in a sense
Cory is an awkward teen/young adult who has moments where he acts like he knows what’s going on and either is proven wrong so he can learn the lesson or he acts like he knows what he’s doing and the world conforms around him not learning a lesson
The podcast brings up the universe a lot as the way the characters talk about Love does make it seem like a soulmate destiny sort of thing vs just two people who really like each other have history and compatibility and etc
To the point where other characters like Shawn Topanga and others also think the same thing
So the things is Cory in this scenario has the weird blend of reality of yes it’s possible to actually like someone that’s not the person you knew since you were 4 years old but also in the world where Cory and Topanga love each other to the point they are that old married couple at 16 years old and after this would be engaged shortly after would also never entertain someone else
This is a storyline that would have made more sense earlier on like season 3 but it being at this specific point is what makes it messy
I don’t want to defend Cory here but I also feel this is just his personality good or bad as this similar thing has happened before like the Topanga sick episode, and on one side yes he should grow out of this but on the other, it just seems a part of who he is
Topanga
So Danielle’s main point is that the writers threw Topanga’s character under the bus since they couldn’t make Cory too much of the bad guy to the audience and viewers so they changed it so it was more like a trap even if the way it was said didn’t imply that
The beauty and tragedy with Topanga is she truly does love Cory and probably understands him more than even Shawn as she’s been one of the only characters that has been able to see his true intentions even in his mistakes
On one hand, I can see how making the usually articulate smart character in Topanga not be as articulate and more emotional as character assassination
On the other, I can see a character like Topanga who has just as much if not more fed into the whole that she and Cory are destined to be together, be that emotional and shaken up to break up with Cory but still remain friendly and eventually get back together and ask him to marry her
Like Cory is the focal character and for a good chunk of the show Topanga is a recurring character and is barely even in some episodes so we see his viewpoint on love and much more
But Topanga is arguably worse than him as she’s the one who stays with him after that first kiss scandal when younger, she’s the one who moves away from her parents so she can stay with him, she’s the one who claims she’s afraid to be alone with him because she doesn’t think she can contain herself sexually, she’s the one that eventually asks him back and she’s the one that proposes
Topanga is arguably more in love with Cory than Cory is with her (the whole Cory x Shawn thing lol)
So I think in the lens of this character who loves this other character more, then yes I can see logic going out the window in this tense situation
While Topanga’s character has changed over the show at a certain point her romantic subplot with Cory has been pretty consistent I feel
I know a lot of people would never even entertain Cory again but I also think Topanga views Cory differently than us
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Final thoughts
It’s interesting when first watching the episode the trap question didn’t even appear in my mind lol
But as I think about it and listened to the debate about it the whole thing is so manufactured and unbelievable their break up here doesn’t even fully register as a breakup, especially with future knowledge
This is like those hypothetical questions that you get in trouble with but for the characters, it actually happened
Like what would you do if you start to bond with a new person to the point of catching some feelings and that person kisses you?
Then you’re literally forced to pick between the two when you’re feelings are at their most confused
I think there’s the simple/ideal answer of staying with your existing partner
Then a more realistic answer of trying to sort out your feelings better and need time and so on
This brings up a lot of other questions like were they ever truly in love if there was doubt, she kissed him so is it the same as he kissed her or is there a difference, would it really matter if he told her immediately about the kiss?
Etc etc
Edit 11/21:24: completely forgot about the Starry Night episode lol
Which basically reframed again the whole talk all night and kiss thing by flipping it on Topanga with the boy Ricky
And I guess my final somewhat updated thoughts about CoryxTopanga are…
The show whether due to different writers or it’s general inconsistency with the lore (like one writer knew about the Lauren thing but didn’t know all the details when writing the get back together episode) wants the take away to be about the surface level issue of talking all night and she kissed him being while not great is ultimately harmless in the name of love, I guess kinda similar to how some think a person should never dance with anyone other than their partner and when they do it can be seen bad but maybe not permanent breakup worthy
And I think the writers or maybe even the viewers at the time didn’t equate what Cory did to cheating/infidelity as they keep not framing it that way
And I think it really does get down to the whole how are we looking at “love” as they are like 17 here so it’s part of they’re so young let them date other people and what they feel isn’t actual love or shouldn’t be taking it as seriously like they’re 30+ married and etc
And the podcast episode about how if this were a married couple with kids and together for 15+ years then yeah maybe the whole starting to like someone else might not be an automatic divorce due to the circumstances but it being in high school should mean you should be over that person and move on and etc
And I know the podcast is very critical on the whole destiny viewpoint on love and think and feel that’s not what love is and think it’s actual detrimental to especially the kids that watched it growing up
But I guess to me a lot of kid/teen shows that had an actual romantic subplot also did this so it’s not a Boy Meets World thing, maybe some lines are way more explicit in BMW than other shows like literally saying the universe wants them together but I don’t think it did any real harm than other shows
Plus maybe hot take but I’d rather people take from Cory & Topanga journey on “true” love than plenty of other shows takes on romance as at least Cory and Topanga check almost all the boxes you would want in a couple
And I think there’s a general conversation to be had about cheating as some people think it’s the worse thing you can ever do and some think it’s forgivable and I don’t know what that percentage is in the world but in the podcast they all are mostly on the same page so it would be interesting to hear someone that has the viewpoint of what Cory did was forgivable be heard in a conversation as I feel that’s what they writers were feeling at the time at least
