On ‘Boy Meets World’ And Why We’re Still Not Over Shawn and Angela
With the resurgence of 90’s pop culture coming on a particularly potent wave of nostalgia admist our presently troublesome decade, it seems that reaching for something familiar from a bygone era isn’t just in fashion, it feels a bit like survival. And I recently found myself, many years post adolescence, ready to submit myself once again to the sermons of Mr. Fe-heh-heny. Boy Meets World may have all the frills of a 90’s sitcom, complete with inconsistent storylines and some problematic moral messaging, the show possesses a tenderness that doesn’t wag its finger at the emotional calamity that often befalls youth. But, however perfectly imperfect the show remains as a monument to the long-gone confection of the sitcom age, there is a blight on its legacy so pronounced that even the pardons of the retrospective can’t forgive it — and that’s the uncoupling of Shawn Hunter and Angela Moore.
Whenever a new listicle conjures up the greatest TV romances of the 90’s, Shawn and Angela might not be top of mind for many, but they hold their own against the Rosses and Rachels of the world. Boy Meets World may be lauded for its compassionate study of teen angst and youthful folly pushed through a PG-13 filter, but there’s something about its handling of Angela and Shawn that’s still the source of umbrage decades later. This was made evident last March when a photo of a reunited Rider Strong (Shawn) and Trina McGee (Angela) made its rounds on social media following a 90’s convention in Hartford, Connecticut, renewing a quarter of a century long heartache for fans far and wide.
In its conception, Boy Meets World was meant to center on Cory Matthews, tween Philadelphian suburbanite and oddball middle child who’s nearly lifelong love affair with effervescent overachiever Topanga Lawrence became the heart of the show in its young adult years. But it’s Shawn Hunter, Cory’s best friend and primetime’s favorite wayward teen, who became the show’s soul. Unlike his counterparts, Shawn was the antithesis of the ideal 90’s all-American teen. Having survived a childhood riddled with poverty and neglect at the hands of a chronically troubled father and two runaway mothers, Shawn’s emotional vacancy became a badge of honor. His rebellious nature was often self-destructive and became the perfect catalyst for some of the more notable social moral messaging episodes.
When Angela arrives in Season 5, radiating a graceful and easy-going charm, she manages to dent Shawn’s armor. Despite her laidback demeanor, Angela is reluctantly romantic (she did carry around a book of Shakespearean sonnets in her purse) and her misgivings about long-term intimate relationships complicated her willingness to be vulnerable in matters of love — a parting gift left to her by her mother, who abandoned Angela and her father when Angela was young. My first encounter with Boy Meets World was during its early ’00s syndication, just off the heels of the decay of the original TGIF line-up and at the end of the 90’s Black TV renaissance era. Angela, the only Black cast member on the show, came to me as I was entering my own pubescent madness and becoming more aware of the shrinking space mainstream media held for Black teens. On the show, Angela occupied predominantly white social spaces, but she didn’t fully succumb to the usual tropes of tokenism — she was a young woman with her own grievances with the world.
Shawn and Angela’s union was a rocky one. They danced around each other’s emotional minefields, haunted by the failures of their own lovelorn parents. They dealt with death, addiction, and other general horrors that come with peeling back the layers of intimacy. Over time, Shawn and Angela’s shared distrust of love and all of its trappings slowly gave way to hope, however fragile. Their final separation took place in a single episode, the second to the last of the series, much to the displeasure of BMW’s loyal fanbase. BMW’s Showrunner Michael Jacobs has routinely defended the decision as a means to preserve the realism of the show; only one couple was meant to survive the bumpy terrain of adolescence into adulthood and that spot was reserved for Cory and Topanga. (I think a decent counter argument here is realism on Boy Meets World went out the window with Eric’s prophetic sneezing and that one episode where Shawn is hexed and turned into a frog by Sabrina of Teenage Witch fame, but I digress.)
In their final episode together, aptly titled Angela’s Ashes, Angela gets an opportunity to travel Europe and reconnect with her father. She makes the painful decision to end her relationship with Shawn, who has his own dreams of studying in New York City. Perhaps it’s the grinding stone of adulthood or maybe the bite of reality that comes from lived experience that alters one’s perspective, but, in my adulthood, their ending seemed poetic and fitting. Shawn and Angela were both young, wounded, and missing some essential part of themselves that they needed to find on their own. In the end, despite his desperation to hold on to Angela, Shawn lets her go with love. And Angela, the girl who initially feared any serious romantic commitments, doesn’t say goodbye to Shawn. She only says, “I love you.” They took off on their own separate journeys out into the big unknown, but the ending was just ambiguous enough at the time for overzealous pre-teens (ahem) to imagine a future storyline where Angela and Shawn may be reunited.
And in 2016, Girl Meets World, a reincarnation of sorts of Boy Meets World starring the teenage daughter of Cory and Topanga, set the fansphere alight at the possibility of a Shawn and Angela reunion. Shawn did return, still full of that trademark Ennui. Angela also made a very brief return, as a married woman in search of advice from the lover she left for Europe all those years ago. If that isn’t the start of a Richard Linklater film, I don’t know what is.
To the dismay of many OG BMW fans, Shawn and Angela’s reunion episode missed the mark widely in a surprisingly unkind way. Despite being a beloved character from the flagship show, Angela’s return on Girl Meets World was treated like an obstacle to Shawn’s happiness. They spent decades apart, but still seemed to complicate one another despite physical distance and time.
Angela returns because she needs Shawn’s confidence that she’ll make a good mother; Shawn’s unable to move forward romantically with anyone else because he’s still recovering from the disappointment of losing Angela and his ever-present fear of dissatisfaction. Shawn quells Angela’s fears about becoming a mother and in return Angela releases him from the decades long burden of heartache by showing her support for his new love interest and then leaves as quickly as she came. After her departure, Shawn — despite being visibly heartsick over the encounter — theorizes that perhaps his love for Angela wasn’t really love at all, but rather an emotional decoy constructed from his desire to find a love like Cory and Topanga’s.
A big part of Boy Meets World’s appeal in its heyday was its ability to balance the brightly colored absurdities of the sitcom world with the harsher realities of experiencing young adulthood and Shawn and Angela’s relationship provided some of the most salient moments on the show. Watching them fall in love despite their obstacles felt like a victory, even if their relationship wasn’t meant to endure. I can accept things ending. I can even accept them ending abruptly (I am a card-carrying member of the Cordelia Chase fan club) but there’s a great insensitivity at work in boiling down Shawn and Angela’s relationship to an imitation of romance rather than a first love. On Girl Meets World, the idea of Shawn having loved Angela before meeting the woman who would become his wife was swiftly batted away— a strange motivation given the couple’s popularity and fan reverence for Angela’s character.
We all know we’re supposed to love Cory and Topanga — and we do. Their love story is manufactured that way. But we root for Shawn and Angela because their love was never a sure thing. They represented two fractions of people whose stories are often overlooked or diminished, and their love required a greater leap. Their separation gave us one of the most honest and compassionate lessons on the show — that love can be transformative, even if it doesn’t endure our initial hopes for it.
I still believe Shawn and Angela deserved a reunion that showed more reverence for their history. And if I could rewrite it, for the sake of my inner adolescent, I think it would go a little like this:
We’re on a bustling street in Paris (because Paris is the magical otherworld where all old lovers are destined to meet again, if ever, right?). Maybe somewhere in Montmartre. We find Angela seated outside of a café, reading from an old, tattered book of Shakespearian sonnets. Just across the street, in a sea of people, we spot another familiar face — Shawn Hunter. He’s scribbling away in a notebook and sipping at an espresso. He looks up and sees her. She looks up and their eyes meet. Then there’s a low buzz over the chattering of life that surrounds them. Maybe they don’t make their way to one another right away. Maybe they don’t move at all. They just sit and observe, and, after a moment or two, smile at each other with a world moving between them, marveling at the coincidence of it all.
