DVR Purge: 6/18-6/28

I was about to take a few weeks off since the only show I'm following live is Halt and Catch Fire which is not a show I'm digging enough to examine weekly alone. Then, I remembered Girl Meets World was premiering (I know I could watch it online before this week but I'm sticking to TV schedules) and a Purge became imperative.

Past Purges 

Halt and Catch Fire "Close to the Metal"
Someone's going to have to explain to me why anyone puts up with Joe. He's functioning somewhere between mastermind and lucky bastard and I'm not particularly enjoying it. Watching the smartest man in any room is only fun for so long or if the plan is inspiring. That's the difference between Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve. Eleven had a brilliant plan in which everything was masterfully staged and I love rewatching it again and again. That's how I think the show sees itself. Twelve had a master plan that was haphazard, convoluted, and left to chance too much and I've had to learn to watch the movie for the things it does right while ignoring the sloppiness. That's the show I feel like I'm watching so far. Joe's entire character is dead stares and craftiness. Gordon and Cameron are going through the same self-destructive cycles almost weekly. I'm waiting for something to play out in a way that surprises me more. I'm willing to give it a while to see if that ever happens.

Girl Meets World "Girl Meets Boy"
Talk about a show I can't fairly assess. I'm so far outside the demo that I could have a son or daughter that fits into it. It is a spiritual successor to one of the tentpoles of my childhood that, in all honestly, wasn't that great by its own merits. Because the summer is so dead and it is such a unique perspective for me to watch a show, I'm going to stick with it as long as I can.
If I'm going to pick one thing out of this that bothered me, it's that this didn't feel like a pilot. It felt like episode 10. There's was way too much assumed familiarity with the characters. I assume this is part of the Disney Channel model but it was hard to adapt to. Otherwise, there's a lot of potential to this. The homework strike is directly pulled from an episode of Boy Meets World and that is going to be the show's greatest asset. While it doesn't want to rely on its parent series, I can see mirroring GMW after BMW being very effective. It services the older viewers watching for nostalgia while dipping into a deep roster of proven stories for the primary audience. I'm impressed how much Rowan Blanchard acts like the daughter of Corey and Topanga. Sabrina Carpenter has potential to be a great girl Shawn (btw, that is how I'll be referring to her). Farkle is getting my Disney Channel pass. He's awful but he's not there for me. We'll see how this goes. It's not without precedence for a show like this to work really well. Just look at Degrassi: The Next Generation.