Deciding something was “made for you” is an exercise in just how much crap you can filled with. Blame it on whatever you want but what characters I relate to isn’t necessarily based on “looks like me” because I’ve related more to characters that don’t over ones that, by current definitions, do. And while I often say I don’t need to relate to the aspirational hero, especially superheroes, when it comes to sitcoms (short for “situation comedies”) I don’t have to relate to them either so far as I can follow and connect to their story. However, comedy is one genre where relating is definitely an asset.
Take for example Boy Meets World, the ABC sitcom that was part of their former “TGIF” sitcom lineup. (If memory serves, this TGIF played on “Thank God It’s Friday” but was more like “Thank God It’s Funny”.) The show follows the life of Cory Matthews as he learns about life and his place in it, growing up next to his history teacher who turned out in my opinion to be a better mentor than his father. I just didn’t connect with Cory. He was more confident than I was and his character growth came from learning humility, honesty, and responsibility. That wasn’t my path growing up so I couldn’t relate to him or most of the cast. I liked the show and did watch a bunch of episodes but I didn’t really feel like Cory was a reflection of my own life, which is something I think the show benefits from.
The sequel series however I had better luck with. Produced for the Disney Channel by the same co-creator, Michael Jacobs, Girl Meets World follows the daughter of Cory and Topanga (wow, spell check totally accepted that) as she does her own learning about life and her place in it. This time Cory is the teacher, combining Mr. Feeny and Cory’s own father into him. Topanga is a loving mother, Cory a loving father, and that’s something there sometimes feels to be less and less of in sitcoms. Daughter Reilly is someone I could relate to. She was shy, trying to figure out who she was, and a bit confused about both. Even her best friend, Maya, was an artist, which as a cartoonist (no matter what the art world tells you) I can relate to and I had friends like her. I think her brother Auggie even got more to do than Cory’s sister in the original. Even the theme song is cooler.
In this pilot episode, Reilly and Maya are about to start the new year. Reilly is trying to be more like Maya by riding the subway to school and joining in her protest of homework, but everybody has a little to learn here. We also seem Farkle Minkus, son of Cory and Topanga’s old classmate Stuart Minkus, and Reilly’s new love interest. Enjoy.
5 Other Things That Were “In The Comics”
Do we not remember Jen only got her gamma radiation from a blood transfusion and not a large gamma bomb?
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the comic writers we have now over at the Big Two are just adding things to the comics in the hopes of getting them into their respective movies and television/internet shows. In the past few years we’ve had characters and events that are being used for the MCU for example while stories that became famous and even iconic are ignored or altered. When someone complains about the change made to the character, the defenders, especially but not limited to when social views are included, insists “but it’s in the comic”, probably after looking for the wiki about it because they may not actually read the comics. Otherwise the comics would be doing better. Instead the shows and movies are doing worse. That’s because they’re actually ignoring the iconography beyond surface-viewed symbolism.
What they fail to note is that (A) the ones complaining about it in the movie complained about it in the comics as well and (B) if you really want to go down that rabbit hole there are a lot of things that happened in the comics the defenders ignore when it suits them, like She-Hulk’s actual origin. Though if you really want to get into “this happened in the comics” there’s a lot of stuff that happens in the comics you wouldn’t want to see that they could do as well. Then if you complain, someone can say “but these happened in the comics”. Grab a parachute, Alice, because being sick meant I couldn’t do tonight’s planned story so we’re dropping down the rabbit hole…only instead of Wonderland we’re dropping face first into Blunderland.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 23, 2022 in Comic Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged Alexandra DeWitt (DC Comics), Big Barda, Carol Danvers, commentary, Kyle Rayner, Lois Lane, Sue Dibney, Superman.
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