Is New Girl The Spiritual Successor To The Boy Meets World Throne?

Of all the parallels I perceive these two shows having, though, most important of all is one which is altogether more vague than everything else I’ve mentioned thus far – New Girl is rare in that it’s one of the few shows to nail the same level of camaraderie that made Boy Meets World such a lasting part of popular culture. Whether they’re in a state of harmony or discord, what never fails to come through is that these characters love and befriend one another. That, I feel, will never change.

Schmidt and Winston recently worried that Nick was the glue holding them together, and that Jess would drive them apart from Nick and, by extension, one another. Cory scrambled to prevent the same sort of thing from happening with him and Angela when her and Shawn broke up. And in both instances, they came to the eventual realization that their friendship was more than a byproduct of another friend, that it could exist separate from them. In the process, they only became closer still, which I think speaks to them more than anything.

While strife would break lesser friends apart, it only draws the casts of Boy Meets World and New Girl closer together. A crisis might fracture them temporarily, but think of it as blocks being beaten into Legos, their matching wounds making it so they can fit more snuggly together. Few shows manage that feat with as much grace as these two, and Girl Meets World is going to have to leap through the same hoops if it ever wants to claim a spot in my heart alongside them.

That being said, even if it doesn’t recapture the magic, I won’t bemoan the show for it as long as it succeeds at bringing back the unforgettable characters from the original series without ruining what they were. Similarly, I just hope New Girl is afforded the opportunity to stick around for as long as its spiritual predecessor, Boy Meets World, and that the next generation will be talking about it like I and others talk about Boy Meets World.