Today, we look at Boy Meets World and how the show decided to retcon two years in its second season.
In Abandoned an’ Forsaked, we examine stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically “overturned” by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent) with a retcon (retcon stands for “retroactive continuity,” but we’re specifically talking about retcons that contradict earlier stories).
When the family sitcom, Boy Meets World, debuted in the fall of 1993, the concept of the show was that the “boy” of the show, Ben Savage’s Cory Matthews, was starting sixth grade, while his brother, Eric, was in the tenth grade.
Savage and Rider Strong, who played his best friend, Shawn Hunter, were both playing younger than their actual age (Savage was 13 and Strong was 14) at the start of the show. In that first season, the show then added Danielle Fishel’s Topanga Lawrence to the cast of sixth grader and she and Cory had their first kiss in that season, when Cory was 11…
After Season 1, though, the show decided that with the actors actually being high school age now, why keep them in junior high? Especially since now the kids could ostensibly start doing dating plotlines (although obviously it wasn’t until Season 3 that the dating stuff became a major part of the show), so Season 2 saw Cory, Shawn and Topanga enter high school, skipping seventh and eighth grades completely….
Now, you could say “It’s not necessarily a retcon, since two years could have just passed offscreen,” but it WAS a retcon because Eric was now just a junior in high school, thus he went from being four years older than Cory to two years older. Also, in the first season, their teacher, Mr. Feeny, says that they will be the high school graduating class of 2000, but they graduated in 1998.
Also, when Cory and Topanga later discussed their first kiss, it occurred when they were 13, not 11.
The show just retconned out two years. It’s pretty funny, really. I think it worked for the show, but it’s still funny.
If anyone else has a suggestion for Abandoned an’ Forsaked, drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com!
Boy Meets World was never really big on continuity. They more or less went with whatever direction the writers wanted to go with. The biggest example in my mind was when Shawn went from growing up in a strict household with a father who threatened to send him to military school to being a latchkey kid in a trailer park.
It became a very different but much better show after season 1
They did skip two years, but it’s not when you say it was. They mention a few times in season 2 that they’re in 7th grade. Apparently their school district doesn’t have middle school, so they went from a K – 6 elementary school to a 7 – 12 high school, which does happen in certain school districts. The missing years happen sometime between the end of season 3 and the beginning of season 5 because the end of season 2 shows Shawn moving in with Mr Turner and the end of season 3 has Shawn moving in with his dad, who they say was chasing after Shawn’s mom for one year. The next time we get a hint at their ages is the first episode of season 5 when they start their senior year of high school.
Everyone is close. But they skip two grades between season 3 and 4. In episode 3 of season 4 Cory tell his dad that he is in 11 grade.
I always assumed they went from 7th to 9th to 11th. In season 3 mr turner says Shawn is 15. You’re not 15 in 8th grade.