Girl Meets World: Season 3/ Episode 7 "Girl Meets True Maya" – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

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Overview

After people questioning who Maya is, whether she is copying Riley and if she lost herself, she finally gets some real solid ground on who she is. All thanks to seeing some old friends and realizing how life would have been without Riley.

Major Characters

Maya | Riley | Auggie

Main Plot (with Commentary)

Topic 1: DOY! (Auggie, Topanga, Doy, and Officer James [Reginald VelJohnson])

With Ava pretty much dominating Auggie’s storylines for most of his screentime, it is easy to forget Doy. Though, let’s be real, what does Doy really bring the show besides some cuteness and the occasional laugh? Well, in this episode he helps bring a cop into the lives of the cast and one can only hope VelJohnson is like Jackeé Harry’s character where, yeah, they are infrequently on, but they at least have memorable appearances. For while the placement on a friendly cop is a bit eyebrow raising in times like these in America, being that it is a familiar face it is hard to not welcome him back to the small screen.

Focusing on Doy’s situation, he stole some candy. Well, to be exact, he has been stealing candy for a full year. Which, thus far, has added up to $300. But being that Cory isn’t involved in this, and Topanga rarely gets the same heavy storylines Cory does since he deals with the girls, all this storyline does, as noted, is help introduce Officer James who plays a decent role in Maya’s storyline.

Topic 2: What Could Have Been (Maya & Riley)

She is going to explode! That is what is said for after dealing with everyone trying to say she isn’t herself, she is copying Riley, and her just giving in, now she wants to be bad. The question is, though, how will she prove old Maya has comeback and is here to stay? She slips and talks about being to school on time, and she even makes it seem as Cory speaks about Pompeii and mentions the volcano which exploded, she knows the name of the mountain! This scares Riley for, as I have said ad nausea, Maya is her sense of entertainment, her counter weight, and the person who forces her to experience life. Yet, Maya talks about exploding and proving herself, thus leading to a few more kinks in Maya and Riley’s relationship.

What kinks you ask? Well, it is the question of what Riley thinks Maya is capable of. Pulling the fire alarm? Granted, I think she would do that. However, stealing $100 from Topanga’s bakery shop, while her mom is working, that is when you have to really wonder how bad does Riley think Maya can be? Maya is impetuous at times, formally lazy, and definitely doesn’t fully apply herself, but a thief? To me, it is red flags like this which make me question Riley and Maya’s friendship.

However, Maya, be it because she knows Riley means no malice, or because she’d rather put up with the mean things Riley says, innocently, than be without she can offer, she puts up with it and none of it is made into something big. Especially since, as she is within moments of using a hammer and brick to mess-up a local park, she sees some old friends. Friends from before Riley was around, which confused me since I thought Riley was Maya’s soul friend.

Anyway, the two girls, Carla and Renee, are little street punks Maya’s age and you can tell, due to Renee making it obvious, all of them need some Matthews family love. In fact, with it being clear how much influence they, and Riley especially, have had over Maya to the point she went on a different path, you have to only hope that Renee and Carla aren’t characters we only see once. Something I say because let’s face it, everyone is likely to be paired off eventually and while Farkle has Smackle, as long as he stops kissing Maya [1], and Lucas will likely be with Riley, there remains who Maya and Zay will be with. I vote they get together, but who knows if Disney wants a gender-swapped Angela and Shawn. So, who is to say, Zay, with his Cory like goofiness and insight, couldn’t be the one to maybe change those two girls lives around? Perhaps that is just a dream, but considering the officer takes note of Maya’s vandalism, which is making the park she was going to tear up nicer, and how he says he isn’t going to give up on Carla and Renee, we can only hope that as much as this show likes cast members from Boy Meets World coming back, they’ll have original characters from their show make appearances every now and then. Much less, being that Renee and Carla didn’t get the Riley treatment, it would be interesting to see how they cope with likely having parents similar to Katy.

 

Things To Note

1. For reasons I can’t fully explain, Farkle kisses Maya on the nose and while it was kind of cute, he is quickly reminded that he is with Smackle and it seems he doesn’t care if Maya tells. Which leads you to wonder if Farkle is going to become a butt hole soon.

 

Collected Quote(s)

Places, like people, offer wonderful peaks and valleys [and] It’s up to you to understand what you’ve chosen to live with. Learn from Pompeii. As you live next to each other, understand that every once in a while, things explode. That’s nature and that’s human nature.

—        “Girl Meets True Maya.” Girl Meets World

Review Summary

Highlights

•  Though Renee and Carla’s role was small, I’m glad it was established that there was life before Riley, what would have happened if Maya never connected with Riley, and that through Renee and Carla, hopefully, we won’t have to suffer through a “What If?” episode.

Low Points

• You know, often any criticism I have with this show is pointed at Riley and it is only because how well Rowan Blanchard plays her in combination of with how she is written. Blanchard is able to show complexity when it comes to Riley yet often time she is written in such a puzzling manner. It is like Blanchard is in a constant battle between making Riley seem unlike your usual stereotypical Disney character and her just giving in and letting her be a naive ditz. With this comes this weird character who bounces back and forth between maturity levels from episode to episode, if not from scene to scene.

Something which, granted, isn’t helped by episodes airing out of order, but this problem is persistent season to season. Now, the reason this is brought up with this episode is because the fact Riley has known Maya since elementary school and yet she thinks Maya is capable of stealing money. Things like that wipe away anytime I think maybe Riley is just playing up being special, maybe she just is making herself smaller to make others feel comfortable. But no, I honestly think there is this true to word constant battle between the Riley that Blanchard perhaps wants vs. the one Disney desires and she is consistently on the losing end.

On The Fence

• While I get Katy is working hard trying to keep a roof over her head and Maya’s, sometimes I wonder if she would qualify for a bad mom or not. Ever since she seemingly passed things on to the Matthews when it came to raising Maya, I see her in a whole new way. As if Maya was an unspoken burden lifted from her soldiers by the benevolent Matthews family. I mean, they gave her a job, take care of her kid, she basically is like an indentured servant sometimes. Heck, they even introduced her to her future husband.