Girl Meets World, 2014-2017.

It's over. 

No need to defer or speculate anymore about the future of Girl Meets World. It's been reported on Entertainment Weekly, IGN, and other news outlets that Disney Channel has decided not to renew the show for a fourth season, meaning the episodes coming this month will mark the end of the series.

The writers commented on this on Twitter last night in a way that we all expected: "We gave you our best," among other things. Honestly, I'm a little more sad about the news than I thought would be. In spite of everything I've said about the show, I was still a fan. All I wanted was for it to realize its potential. Unless another network (or Netflix) picks it up in a power move, then it will never have the chance to.

I would say more, but there's plenty of time for that on January 20 when the show airs its last episode. And no, I don't know why Disney Channel would ever make a decision like airing its entire live-action block two hours earlier because apparently, it's still 2006. But yeah, if you want to catch new Girl Meets World episodes this month, tune in at 6:00. It's prime time for the Mountain time zone, I hear.

Yeah, but anyway, since the show is dead, I'll resume my job of reviewing every episode. "Ski Lodge" still gives me nightmares, but I might as well somewhat finish the job. I was already going to stop after season three, so I'm just going to give these last few episodes my attention.

I still haven't seen the Christmas one.

For someone who's studied the industry and its habits (and by that I mean I read a lot of TVByTheNumbers - before Screengrabber turned it into an absolute shitshow, thank you you incompetent greedy, grubby morons - and TVGrimReaper.com and MaskedScheduler.com) the handwriting was on the wall sometime in the middle of Season 2 so it's been something that I could reliably predict when it was coming (and Sean and Christian themselves said as much they could make that same prediction). I respect the work Sean and Christian do - their blog is the direct inspiration for this one and GMW is their show, so I think it's only fair they make the big announcement even though their readership admittedly far outsizes ours - hence why I've waited until now to say something (well, a few days after Mike made the post to factor in some laziness). Despite what Mike thinks no I don't hate the show per se - at least not enough that I'm overtly happy that it's three and done. But I do have a lot of thoughts and I've been working on an essay or two about those specifically, so I'll post my thoughts there.

Unlike Mike I won't be bothering joining in on every review because I really don't feel like doing that kind of chore (and I mean just watching the episodes, not including reviewing them).Besides I think I'll sum up all the thoughts I possibly can have pretty soon anyway. 

As for the future of this blog, this changes absolutely nothing, and that's by design. Like I said GMW was Christian and Sean's show, but for us it's just one of many. We'll try to cover Liv and Maddie and Thundermans as best we can until they close out, and we'll be here for Bizaardvark, Bunk'd (I guess), Stuck in the Middle, etc. as we at least feel like it (it's becoming increasingly harder to stomach an entire season's worth for any particular show) along with DCOMs and other movies and special televised events on these networks.

I probably should have seen this coming since early 2016 when Disney finally renewed the show for a third season after waiting so long. The show earned a second season in August 2014, a little over a month after it started airing. I honestly think the network lost faith in it at some point, but like I said, I don't want to talk too much until inauguration day. That's going to be a strange day, Unknown. Trump gets sworn in and Girl Meets World has its series finale.

I thought about the state of this blog after January 20, since most of my reviews have been GMW episodes. But I guess to prepare for that, I'm going to have to start becoming more invested in other shows. Tomorrow, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, & Dawn returns for season three.......and I don't know anyone particularly looking forward to it, but it will make a good Part 3 for Mike's Quest. 

I actually teased Christian and Sean about it because I was able to get this post up before they could. Once it was confirmed, I knew I had to get the exclusive story. Besides, most of the people that read GMWReviewed probably don't even know that this blog exists.

I am interested in hearing your final thoughts. I never thought you despised the show, but whenever it comes up, you definitely don't have anything nice to say. 

I'm debating over whether or not I should review Rufus 2. I didn't even see the first one entirely, but I don't think this sequel has much to do with the original movie anyway. 

Eh, Nickelodeon (or at least Teen Nick) has been rerunning Rufus 1 incessantly so hopefully you'll have chance to catch it.

Why the hell can't I get the green color to stick?

I'm pinning that very last thing on you, Mike. Thanks for deciding this blog needs to look like a Christmas tree. Anyway, where the text gets a different font, that's Mike. He has a lot of great things to say so I really want credit where it's due, hence why I think it's important people know which words are his.

And I do have nice things to say! I said a whole bunch of nice things about World Meets Girl! I'm literally the only person in the whole world to do so! Girl Meets The Only Person in the World to Like World Meets Girl: The Saga of the Unknown Blogger. Original memoirs, please do not steal. I loved Meets She Don't Like Me, bad grammar, Smackle's censored potty mouth and all, and spoiler alert I named it the best single individual episode of all of Disney Channel for 2016. If that episode had aired in 2015 or 2014 I don't think I would've changed that accolade either (I'm trying to remember if 2014 - Jessie's last good year, Good Luck Charlie's last year period and when Liv and Maddie was starting to really hit its stride - had any episodes that could compete with Meets She Don't Like Me. I don't think GLC did since, well, it was starting to phone it in that last year. Jessie was starting to phone it in too, at least compared to its really great first season and even compared to the second season, but at least it was still entertaining and worthwhile to watch unlike its final season which was "hey, at least it's tolerable" at best and at worst, well.... Lights, Camera, Distraction! was an earnest effort at something GMW would try to pull off, but even I'll admit the writing style of its head writers was not holding the show back but turned what should've been GMW-Lite into something with outright mean-spirited undertones, one of the underlying complaints of the show during its entire run. Kathy Kan-a-Rooney was an amazing episode, and the first episode that really convinced me that this show was headed for greatness, so it's not like 2014 was competition-free. As for 2015 you can see in the appropriate post for that, it had stiff competition from Rate-a-Rooney, Detention-a-Rooney and Ask Her More-a-Rooney but those were episodes that could stand toe-to-toe with GMW's ideal, rather than the other way around. See I just said another nice thing about GMW! Wow, I stuffed the hell out of these parentheses). As for other nice things...well, I think I have nicer things to say about individual episodes than the series as a whole. I loved Meets Money. That was brilliant everywhere, up and down. Not nearly as brilliant as She Don't Like Me but close enough. There were other episodes I really loved. But I guess I just have more fondness for these individual episodes than when asked to think of the series as a whole. When I'm asked to think of the series as a whole, it just brings up how frustrating the whole is with its wildly uneven quality and - here's the thing - the amount of baggage the series came with. Baggage that I don't think people were really anticipating, or at least the people who should've anticipated it really thought through. You'll have to wait for a future blog post for that one, but if any of you guys reading this read Christian and Sean's blog as religiously as I do, you might get what I mean. If you read some of Christian's first posts when he started that blog, and Sean's first posts when he joined that blog - no, you won't get a sense of the baggage that I'm getting at, but you will get a sense of why dealing with that baggage is important. Jacobs and his staff failing to deal with that baggage was a massive disservice to the fans, and if you go back and read those posts I asked you to read, you'll see it's a major disservice to Christian and Sean above any other fan on the planet. It's almost as if I were to, say...experience the horror that was Jessie, Season 4.

And it wasn't just a disservice to the fans, it was a disservice to the network itself. I've PM'ed some of my thoughts to some people about what I mean exactly by this...but the rest of you will have to wait for its own post. It's going to be a doosey, although I'll probably try my best efforts to rein it in (and still fail). It's a pretty emotional topic which I'll get to in a paragraph or so. 

Like I said in...this post? Another post? A post I haven't even published yet? Yeah I'm disorganized aye-eff...we'll be here for the forseeable future. There are other shows to write about, though the quality grounds seem to be getting more and more fallow. Hopefully the That's So Raven spinoff following on the heels of the Fuller House/GMW nostalgia can live up to the hype for once along with the Ricky Garcia/FIYM vehicle coming up. I hope Christian and Sean bother to, too, but it seems like they're going to call it quits after they wrap up Meets Goodbye. That's sad, if not outright wrong, and I mean it. But cest'e la vie, amirite? They weren't good bloggers; they were excellent bloggers. Even given Sean's propensity to use...dank as aye-eff image macro-based memes (and yet I'm the one who just typed out "dank" and "aye-eff.") But on the other hand GMW was the only show on either network we cover that they were interested in. Even after trying the other shows, they just can't. I don't even know what shows on the mainstream broadcast and cable networks or even premium networks they'd want to bother to cover (yet another GoT blog? Given all the random GoT-references I randomly throw out Jessie/Bunk'd style this very blog at times seems like yet another one).

Mentioning Kathy Kan-a-Rooney, Bro Cave-a-Rooney, Rate-a-Rooney and Detention-a-Rooney reminded me how I had kind of sunk back into a bad place at that time and as silly as it sounds those shows were actually a major help and comfort. I'm not kidding, it got to the point where watching those episodes on Watch Disney Channel was the only way I'd be able to get to sleep. And I've written a few posts dedicated to my weird relationship with Jessie (which, come to think of it, when I was commenting on their blog may have weirded Christian and Sean out a little...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) But you can read on their blog their thoughts on Boy Meets World, which when it started out and even until it ended (when it desperately tried to grow up with its audience and failed miserably...and it looks like the writing quality didn't necessarily improve in-between then and GMW) it was pretty much of the same ilk as what's on Disney Channel today, maybe just not under the lens of today's hyper-exaggerated sensibilities. It was an important show to them, too. I think it's possible to end up having a lot of surprising sources for inspiration and comfort, and especially when it comes to comfort the "recommended age" label starts getting ignored more often. Back in '12-'13, when I started "guilty pleasure-watching" or "comfort-watching" it wasn't uncommon to hear a lot of confessions from other adults doing the same, and of course when GMW was announced all bets were off, it was now mainstream (or at least more mainstream). Aside from the...sigh...rather annoying GMW nostalgia crowd it's not uncommon for adults to unabashedly admit they watch Liv and Maddie or Thundermans (unlike iCarly it seems Schneider's most recent works, especially Game Shakers, fails to carry on the critical adult street cred but meh). I guess we can write about that. I keep making vague references to some new career move I've been making that's been taking up my time and...well it turns out I'm switching careers from the teaching field to the publishing industry, specifically in editing (although it's not set in stone so it could be another job) and the experiences that ultimately lead to the creation of this blog are very much related to that. Since I'm specializing in the young adult genre a lot of my time has been devoted to keeping up with those trends (which you'd probably figured out in our 100th post/1 year anniversary post and the follow-up posts to that) which means a lot of time not spent here. I was going to make a more detailed, prominent mention in another post but eh shoving it on the ass-end of this old post nobody's going to read anymore works too, I guess. But I'm hoping I'll have more time in Feb and March to catch up, hopefully to at least turn in some final thoughts on GMW when they're still relevant.