Girl Meets World is Disney Channel's Best Series in Years

Mitchell Stein- Disney Channel currently lives in the darkest of timelines, making actual good entertaining shows almost impossible to come by. Every show is just so awful and brings the whole former glory of Disney Channel to an ultimate low, and it seemed as if it were never going to be redeemed. Then enters Girl Meets World. 

Finally, an entertaining show with actual entertaining humor, good story-plots and likable characters. Girl Meets World takes place nearly a decade after Disney's 90's hit show Boy Meets World left off. When it was announced, many people were concerned it would just be another disappointing Disney Channel tween show, but man does it soar so far above all of that. For the first time in many years, Disney delivers a good, fun, entertaining family comedy enjoyable for all, but leaving out the general stupidity that surrounds the channel today. Okay, maybe not all of it. It still has some Disney Channel stupidity, (which mostly generates from Farkle) but about 80% of the show is real family entertainment that hasn't been seen in many years. Most of the time, it feels worthy of being on primetime TV, where Boy Meets World was home to for many years. Maybe not yet, but if it continues to step in the right direction, it would easily be worthy of it.

The show centers around Riley (Rowan Blanchard), a middle-school aged teenage girl facing the many challenges of life and growing up, in many of the same ways Boy Meets World did, normally tackling every-day situations and coming of age. Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel reprise their roles as Corey and Topanga, now living in New York and the parents of Riley and her younger brother Auggie. It has a ton of fantastic call-backs to it's original predecessor, though not always quite living up to the original. It's great to see where the characters ended up after these years, and ironically, Corey ended up as a teacher in Riley's school, showing what kind of major impact Mr. Feeney had years before. We've been told that Shawn will make more cameos in some upcoming episodes as well.

Currently the show is in middle of it's first season, and on August 6th, it was announced the show had already been renewed for a second season, which I am thrilled about. Disney has finally created a masterpiece with Michael Jacobs at the helm (who worked on dozens of beloved Disney television shows including Dinosaurs, The Torkelsons, and Boy Meets World).

It's impossible to not have only positive things to say about this series. It's practically perfect in every way, with a great cast of characters, hilarious humor and great and emotional story-plots, and paved a whole new potential future for Disney Channel. I'm hoping that Disney Channel will get back on track eventually, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.

News Update: April 11th 2014

Starting off the news this week, the first teaser trailer for Disney Channel's Upcoming show, Girl Meets World has surfaced the internet. The show is a spin-off of the Disney Channel show which ran from 1993 to 2000. Characters Cory and Topanga return to the spin-off show, this time playing the parents of the main child characters. Watch the first teaser here:

Season two of the new Mickey Mouse shorts premiere on Disney Channel today, April 11th! Make sure you keep you DVRs running at 9:00 EST to catch the new wonderful shorts! 

This week, the Disney Parks celebrated fifty years of the famous "It's a Small World' attraction with a major worldwide celebration. The folks over at Inside the Magic have the full scoop, which you can read right here. Coverage of the entire event can also be found over at The Disney Blog as well right here. 

Toughpigs.com published this great article setting the record straight: The Muppets are still puppets, and no CGI was used in Muppets Most Wanted, contrary to internet rumors of the Muppets being replaced by CGI in some scenes. You can read that great article right here.

Speaking of Muppets, our friends over at This Happy Place Blog raised an excellent idea. What if the abandoned "Wonders of Life" exhibit became "Muppet Labs?" Make sure to check out their creative and exciting new ideas of what could quite possibly be of use for the abandoned building in a new, fun and creative way. You can read the article here: 

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is the show on TV that just keeps getting better and better. This week, ABC aired an episode leading directly off of last week's new film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The episode includes spoilers of the film, and this seems to be the new direction that the show will be taking from now on. Marvel released this all-new video where the cast and crew of the TV series talk about the new direction the show will be taking. Spoilers ahead. 

An all-new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse adventure will be hitting DVD shelves May 20th 2014! Around the Clubhouse World takes the Fab Five on a journey through France, China, Italy and more, and learn about different countries and cultures, with lots of song-filled fun, and will feature a slew of bonus episodes from the series. 

The date draws closer for the opening of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in New Fantasyland in Walt Disney World, and today, Disney Parks released a thirty-second video taking a look at some of the impressive new Audio-Animatronics that will be featured in the attraction. 

UPDATE: Disney Parks ALSO released this 16-second CGI ride through of the attraction. Now we'r really, really excited. 

Disneynature's Bears opens next Friday, and in anticipation for the release, Disney released two more clips from the film, two of some of my favorite clips from the movie. In fact, the whole film is wonderful. We'll be reviewing the movie in it's entirety later this week. 

Speaking of Disneynature, the trailer for their next big film has been released yesterday online. The film, Monkey Kingdom will swing into theaters Earth Day 2015.

For the final bit of news this week, Disneyland Paris announced that Marvel's Spider-Man will start making meet-and-greet appearances starting April 19th in the Walt Disney Studios park! Disney also released this artwork to anticipate the upcoming appearances.

That's it for this week's short weekly news roundup! Be on the lookout for some special brand-new reviews this week, including our review for Disneynature's new film: Bears. 

The Mickey Mindset: mickeymindset@gmail.com