Wizard Meets World

If kids in the 2000s had “Harry Potter”, then kids in the 1990s had “Boy Meets World”. When I sent out that observation on Twitter, it got retweeted quite a bit. Not to make us feel old, but “Harry Potter” is currently celebrating its 15^th anniversary.  J.K. Rowling was on the Today Show, celebrating the occasion. Meanwhile, TV writer Michael Jacobs has been doing some celebrating of his own, with the spin off “Girl Meets World” in the works, and a reunion of the cast at ATV Television Festival in Texas. It’s hard to believe that “Harry Potter” is 15 years old and “Boy Meets World” has been in continuous reruns for 20 years. This brings up some points. For example, what other TGIF shows have been in syndication for 20 years? The reruns of “Family Matters” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” have floated around cable, but what was the last time someone mentioned “Step by Step”? “Harry Potter” has had the same staying power, constantly on the bookshelves in reprints at Barnes and Noble, and constantly selling.

Before I talk about the power of coming of age stories to stick around, lets talk about the differences and similarities of  “Boy Meets World” and “Harry Potter”. Lets start with the obvious. Mr. Feeny is Dumbledore of the 90s. Okay, Mr. Feeny couldn’t preform magic, but like Dumbledore, he always explained the lesson of the episode to Cory and his friends. He also stayed with them, pretty much through all 7 seasons. He was a trusted adult, father figure to Shawn and Topanga and a constant voice of enlightenment and reason, just like Dumbledore.

Another similarity is the obvious two boys and a girl. Corey, Shawn and Topanga were the three main characters. In fact, only Corey and Shawn appear in all 158 episodes. In the Q&A at the reunion, Rider Strong (Shawn) revealed that there was supposed to be three boys, but they constantly kept changing the boy character, until they noticed that Danielle Fishel had great chemistry with Ben Savage and Rider Strong. They decided to keep her on as the third member of that core group.   

Now, consider this. Harry and Ron had Hermione. Topanga and Hermione have a lot in common. Hermione and Topanga start out the same. If you remember the earlier books of Harry Potter, Hermione is a nerd that the guys really don’t look at. In the later books, she becomes a girl the guys want. Topanga is a nerd, in the early seasons, and a bit of a nerd in the later seasons too. She goes nuts when she doesn’t get straight A’s. So does Hermione. However, Topanga becomes more normal, in the later seasons. In the earlier seasons, she was considered weird.  Hermione, in the earlier books, was also considered weird. In the later books, she is considered attractive and more mainstream.

           

Ron Weasley is Shawn Hunter. J.K. Rowling hints in the books that Harry Potter has more money than Ron. Ron isn’t poor, up to the level of Shawn, from “Boy Meets World”. However, Ron does show some jealousy towards Harry. Him being a star and having money left over from his parents will. We also say Corey is Ron, because Corey wants to be as cool as Shawn, but isn’t. Despite everything, Corey and Shawn are best friends, just like Ron and Harry.   

The differences, of course, are pretty obvious. Corey has a good family, unlike Harry Potter. He has Alan and Amy Matthews. Alan Matthews is one of my favorite characters on Boy Meets World, because William Russ did a wonderful job playing him. He also has his older brother, Eric and a younger sister, Amy. Harry Potter is an orphan, with a horrible family, the Dursleys. I’m not making the case that Harry Potter and Boy Meets World are exactly the same, but they do have some striking similarities.

Another similarity is the way the shows and books are structured. Boy Meets World ran each season as a year in the life of Corey Matthews, as each Harry Potter book was a year in the life of Harry Potter. Corey and Harry have such wide appeal, because they aren’t very special, and I don’t mean that as a knock. Harry and Corey are very every kid. Harry is famous in the wizardering world, and that subplot is an obvious difference from Boy Meets World. Boy Meets World is about the regular world. However, the bigger point is both have staying power because of the coming of age storytelling.

Both have this strange power of being really re watchable and being really re readable. Both audiences for Boy Meets World and Harry Potter re-read or re-watch the episodes and books over and over again. I’m not saying Boy Meets World or Harry Potter is perfect stories. Many say Harry Potter is stretched out too long, and Boy Meets World was obviously stretching out too long towards the end of the series. The whole Topanga and Corey get married in college plot was a bit over the top but hey; Hermione did marry Ron at the end of Harry Potter. The later seasons of Boy Meets World became a bit too obsessed with the whole Topanga and Corey relationship. While they did have great chemistry, keeping them as simply long term boyfriend and girlfriend would have been more believable than a full marriage. However, let me point out: isn’t that why people hate Twilight? Don’t they hate the overkill of the high school relationship between Edward and Bella, ending in marriage, even though they are kind of young? That’s another essay.

It’s odd, though, isn’t it? This show and this book series seem to be coming of age stories that have been in constant reruns or re-reads or finding new audiences for a long time now. They aren’t one hundred percent the same but they are similar in their goals, of not just entertaining, but educating and telling a coming of age story. Now, Boy Meets World, while dealing with some serious issues, did not have wars or death. It was a Friday night kids sitcom in the 90s, so of course not. An obvious difference is Boy Meets World doesn’t have a villain while Harry Potter has Voldemort.

The 1990s and 2000s are different in the way they are structured. I think the 1990s type of stories that Boy Meets World reflects are simpler than the magic based stories that Harry Potter reflects. The thing I am saying are Boy Meets World and Harry Potter having very much the same core, though. The coming of age story told well through 7 books and Boy Meets World through 7 seasons. Of course, Harry Potter was ended by J.K. Rowling while ABC probably canceled Boy Meets World. There was no way J.K. Rowling’s publisher wanted the series to end. Boy Meets World even joked openly in their show about ABC changing their time slot in one episode. The kid Cory and Topanga babysit yells they are trying to kill his favorite show.

That’s another thing Harry Potter and Boy Meets World have in common. There’s a lot of Meta humor in both of them. Harry Potter has winks to the audience from J.K. Rowling that kept the adults from rolling their eyes but the time they got through 700 pages about wizard kids. Same with Boy Meets World, which made a lot of jokes openly in their later seasons about some of the more nonsensical elements of their show.

That being said, the thing that Harry Potter and Boy Meets World have in common the most is they have really good characters that grow and change, and are in the great traditions of coming of age stories. The stories one grows up with, over a series of books or episodes, seem to stay with one and when they come on in reruns or are found on the bookshelves, one likes to revisit those stories. They have staying power, and I’m sure TV writer Michael Jacobs and author J.K. Rowling will be making money for a long, long time, if not forever from reruns and book sales. We all know J.K. Rowling is a billionaire, and it’s safe to say Michael Jacobs is probably a millionaire.

So, Boy Meets World and Harry Potter have obvious differences but also have a lot in common. I can’t say J.K. Rowling watched Boy Meets World, but I know when I write young adult fiction, I think a lot of both series. Maybe I think of Boy Meets World a bit more, because I grew up with that series, but I also think of Harry Potter. My favorite scene in “Boy Meets World” is in the finale, actually, when Corey has a hard time saying goodbye to Shawn, and Shawn goes “Are you nuts? We have to say goodbye for a hour!” That’s the way many people feel when they grow up with a book series or television series. The core elements of Boy Meets World and Harry Potter the same, forgetting the magic or the normal environment.

            

For a coming of age story to work, the elements are almost always the same. The growing up part is a formula, almost, that always works in a story if it’s done well. Now that’s I’ve written this essay, I expect a Harry Potter/Boy Meets World crossover fan fiction craze to start on the web. No, I don’t only expect it. I demand it. Now, get writing and make me Internet famous.

    

On a more serious note, though, at the reunion of Boy Meets World cast, Michael Jacobs made a good point that there is no television that really speaks to kids anymore. He said it's a audience he cares about. He is right about that. The closet show I think that speaks to kids in that way is The Big Bang Theory, which in it's self, is a coming of age story. The Big Bang Theory is a coming of age story for late bloomers, because the elements the characters experience in that show are pretty much the same  the characters experience in Boy Meets Wold. It's just they happen to be older and smarter. It speaks to a lot of younger people, because a shoe like that provides a safe place were they don't feel ashamed, because if those older guys can experience it, so can they. I think television is a important medium, and he's right. I also see, though, that a lot of the charm of Boy Meets World has moved to the book medium because of the charm of Harry Potter.