Girl Meets World – Girl Meets Sweet Sixteen

By: Kim Olson

In the first part of the Girl Meets World series finale, Riley (Rowan Blanchard) has an instinct to accelerate the clock. In a throwback to when Cory (Ben Savage) couldn’t wait to turn sixteen years old on Boy Meets World so he could drive, Riley wants to have her Sweet Sixteen NOW! Neither Riley nor her friends are actually sixteen years old or turning sixteen, yet. Everyone is actually 15 years old and, as Maya (Sabrina Carpenter) jokes, Riley is eight years old and Lucas (Peyton Meyer) is 24 years old. Instead of throwing a party, teacher Cory Matthews tries to get his students to evolve. According to Farkle (Corey Fogelmanis), “The natural evolution of all beings is to grow and change.” Riley and her friends are to predict what’s going to happen to them after their Sweet Sixteen. Cory hopes, by looking at the landmarks of their lives so far, his students can predict what their next major milestone in life will be. “Have they prepared you for what’s gonna come next?” he asks. “Are you better off letting life surprise you or is there a way to be ready for whatever’s going to happen?”

Everyone is planning their future, except for Smackle (Cecelia Balagot) and Farkle who don’t understand the assignment. They believe they can’t learn anything this way. “What could be calculated by projecting the future? That is speculation,” Smackle says. “Speculation is not scientific,” Farkle adds. Smackle is so confused, she has a literal breakdown! “How are we supposed to measure feelings?! How are we supposed to know what we’re gonna feel when we’re juniors?! What kinda dumb-head assignment is this?! I’m gonna fail this assignment! I’m gonna fail this assignment,” she exclaims. Smackle crashes, like a computer! Click. While the little rainbow wheel in her head is spinning, Riley and Lucas decide they’re hopeful, but not confident, that they’ll still be together in two years. Even though they know there’s vulnerability in that kind of relationship, they still hold hands. On the other hand, not that anybody missed it, “Riley and Maya are more important than Riley and Lucas,” says Zay (Amir Mitchell-Townes) while playing with crashed computer Smackle. Riley and Maya are sure that, in two years, they will absolutely be better best friends than they are now. They’re forever. Riley’s confidence in her relationship with Maya is far stronger than her confidence with Lucas, which gives Lucas hope for all of them.

They all know college comes after high school. The question they’ll face in high school is where to go. Smackle thinks she has her life all worked out. She’s going to go to Stockholm University so she can be nearby to pick up her Noble Prize. Her boyfriend, Farkle, is going to Princeton. They’ll talk, in Swedish. The rest of them aren’t so sure where they’ll end up. Riley knows wherever she’ll go it’ll be with Maya. She does not want to end up like other juniors, who say they’re all going to be friends forever even though they’re all going someplace. Riley assures Maya she’s not going to college without her. Maya will just go to the little one next door if need be. Shocking Maya, Riley would even go to a lesser school so they can always be together?! “What kind of an idiot gives up a top school for someone else?” Topanga (Danielle Fishel) asks. “You. You gave up Yale for dad,” Riley reminds her. Optimistic Riley is determined she and Maya will get into and go to the same college. Realistic Maya isn’t as sure. “What if I need to go to Europe or something to study art?” she asks. Riley and Maya realize the world lied to them. Sweet Sixteen isn’t sweet at all. If anything, it’s bittersweet. “We’re supposed to think like juniors. That’s when we know we’re not supposed to stay together forever,” Maya tells Riley, breaking both their hearts.

Realizing she probably won’t be with all her friends after high school, Riley is sad. “Why do we make friendships if they’re only gonna go away?” she asks. Deep down, Riley knows the answer to her own question: People change people. It’s why she’s so sad to potentially leave her friends. They’re still learning from each other. “Why do they have to go away?” Maya responds, trying to make Riley feel better. It doesn’t. Upset, Riley exclaims, “Sweden? Princeton? What’s the difference? They’re going away. Why do people become friends if it’s not going to be forever?!” Riley doesn’t care if it’s the opposite of life, she doesn’t want anything to happen to any of them at all. She doesn’t want any surprises. “I don’t want anybody to go anywhere… Nobody move. Nobody move at all,” she says.

It is time to present their findings to the class. Farkle and Smackle reveal they’re going to Princeton together because they’re people of science who have feelings for each other they must figure out. If it takes forever, fine by them. Lucas and Zay’s friendship will never change, even if Lucas does peak in his sophomore year and it becomes “Zay time” – a period in which everyone loves Zay, genuinely surprising him and making him so happy. Zay adds a little antidote to their presentation, telling Lucas, “I pull you around in your little red wagon. You’re like ‘What happened to me?’ and I’m like ‘I don’t know! It’s Zay time! Stop bringing me down!’” If things ever really do go bad, Zay will be there for Lucas. “So when did things start going bad?” Lucas asks. “Oh, the triangle took all the life out of you,” Zay tells him. For Riley, it’s bare-your-soul honesty time. She tells her classmates, “I didn’t want us to go anywhere. I wanted us to sit still. But that’s not life. We’re freshman, exactly where we’re supposed to be. We should enjoy this now, that’s life. Sweet Sixteen will be a lot sweeter when we are sixteen. But, right now, we’re protected. We know exactly where we’re gonna be for the next three years…. What our landmarks have shown us is that we picked the right friends and we’ll always be together…. What we do control is the people that we want to keep in our lives and a party at any age is just another chance to be all together.” A plus, everyone! Class dismissed. But life isn’t over. As Topanga tells them, “You can make all the plans you want. The truth is, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Smackle and Farkle don’t do well with feelings because they’re people of science. They wonder if regular friends have stronger relationships than boyfriends and girlfriends or if those types of relationships are so new they simply don’t understand them yet. “Maybe that’s why we take up a whole lot of high school trying to figure them out?” Farkle proposes. Smackle doesn’t realize her constant flirting with Lucas, like joking it’s her destiny to end up with him, right in front of Farkle is hurting him. Farkle promises Lucas, “If it’s you she wants I would step aside…. And if Smackle is into you I won’t take it out on you. I’ll just clone you and do terrible things to the clone.” To get Smackle to admit how she genuinely feels, Lucas and Farkle trick her. While Smackle is at Topanga’s, reading Dummies for Geniuses, Lucas sits right next to her, invading her personal space like a Hun. Smackle doesn’t like to be sat right next to, except by Farkle. Lucas implies he only sees her as a “steaming cauldron of woman.” She lets him down by telling him her heart belongs to someone else. He asks her to please say it louder. Believing she’s torturing him, she adds, “I just always say those things because I guess I’m a little insecure that Farkle doesn’t really, really like me as much as he says. So, I guess I’m just trying to protect myself.” That makes sense, since early in the series Smackle was jealous of Riley and Maya, Farkle’s close female friends, because she had the biggest crush on Farkle. She probably doesn’t believe that Farkle could like her as much as she likes him. To Smackle’s surprise, Farkle pops out from behind the counter and tells her, “You don’t have to Isadora. I like you exactly as much as I say. It’s possible I might even like you more than like you. I don’t know. Right now that’s just a hypothesis.” While hiding nervously behind the counter, he had a lot of time to think and came to the conclusion that they’re a perfect match. He likes her so much that when he’s sixteen years old he’ll tell her to go study in Sweden, if she really wants to, and she likes him so much she’d rather go to Princeton with him.

If Topanga Lawrence had her life to do over again, she would do everything exactly the same thing. She was a unique, young girl who met and fell in love with a boy named Cory Matthews. She was a good student, who had the opportunity to go to Yale University, but gave it up to follow Cory to Pennbrook. During their high school graduation, she proposed to him and they got married during college. After school, they moved to New York, where she is an excellent attorney and he is an excellent teacher. They have two children they love, Riley and Auggie (August Maturo). She kept some of her friends from her youth, but some she doesn’t see so much of anymore. Career wise, she got a good job at a prestigious law firm and moved up fast. Looking back at the landmarks of her life, no, she wouldn’t do it over.

The one thing she always wanted though was to be partner. Well, her law firm just named her partner! She’s going to be the head of their London office! Cory is so proud of her! Her children, on the other hand, are worried about what this means for them. Auggie refuses to go to London. “I don’t even speak the language!” he exclaims. Maya and Riley are clearly crying. Being split up is their nightmare! Living in different countries seems like a cruel and unusual punishment for two best friends who would be roommates if they could be! Riley asks her mom, “What did you tell them?” Before Topanga can answer, Maya stops her so she can hold Riley’s hand through the bad news. Topanga tells her family that she informed the company she needs some time to think about it and talk it over with her family. Cory asks if they offered her a raise in salary and Topanga secretly shows him a number. It must be big because he exclaims excitedly, while everyone else is crying. Topanga assures her children this decision has nothing to do with money. She promises them, “We’re gonna make the right decision.” Yes, there’s a decision.

Best Lines:

• Riley: I didn’t get my Bat Mitzvah. Maya: You’re not Jewish. Riley: I didn’t get my Quincinera. Maya: You’re not Latina.
• Cory: Zay brings up an interesting point. Zay: No I don’t.
• Riley: I agree with Zay…. Zay: What? You agree with me? Riley: Yeah. Zay: Aww!
• Riley: What if we don’t care about our boyfriends as much as we care about each other? Maya: No, we’ll just care for them in a different way. Riley: What different way? Maya: Less.
• Topanga: What happened to all those As you’ve been getting? Maya: I only got one A in Spanish. Topanga: You’re not getting into a good college with only one A in Spanish! Maya: You loved me once!
• Riley (to Maya): Life knows we’re forever, doesn’t it?
• Riley: Life loves our house!
• Maya: I thought life loves us. Riley: Surprise.