Topanga Lawrence
From Freepedia
Topanga Lawrence is a fictional character created by writer Patricia Forrester. She is the main love interest of Cory Matthews on the television show Boy Meets World. She is played by Danielle Fishel. Topanga Lawrence's character was one of several to undergo dramatic changes through the course of the series, and she is particularly cited as an example of sitcom writers "drifting" in their conception of a character throughout a series, resulting in continuity errors and retcons.
When she was originally introduced in the first season, she was, like most of the characters, a simple stereotype -- in her case, that of the ultra-left-wing hippie. Primarily a source of comic relief as the "weird kid" who expressed bizarre political opinions in class to be mocked by Cory and Shawn, she was notable for being Stuart Minkus's only academic rival and for being the most mature in her class, maintaining her signature icy-calm "robot-like" demeanor while her classmates were frequently struggling with histrionic bouts of angst.
As the characters entered high school the presentation of Topanga's character changed radically -- her unusual hairstyle and measured, artificial way of speaking vanished overnight, and she became one of the most emotionally demonstrative characters on the show. Though Cory dated various other girls and seemed to regard Topanga more or less as a platonic female friend for some time, events on the show repeatedly conspired to force them back into a relationship with each other, and their on-again off-again love affair became one of the show's constants.
As time went on, particularly as Danielle Fishel passed through puberty and became increasingly admired for her physical beauty, much was made of the fact that Topanga was attractive, popular, academically accomplished and in general far more successful than Cory, and Cory's role came to be more and more that of an Everyman beset by feelings of inferiority. Along these lines, Topanga moderated most of her political opinions: though she was still a mouthpiece for a generally feminist point of view, her radical socialism, more strident New Wave feminist opinions and her veganism quickly faded. Her character's rapid "normalization" is seen by many fans as a continuity break and often cited as a possible point at which the series jumped the shark, although the show did attempt to explain this character shift as being the result of Topanga being increasingly influenced by her peers rather than her former-hippie parents, and by the end of the series her hippie persona seemed to have been retconned out of existence. Though Topanga maintained a clean-faced, makeup-free look throughout the series, for instance, it was eventually explicitly stated that she did so because she felt she looked better that way than for any political reason. By the end of the show Topanga has acquired many of the traits of the actress who portrays her, including an obsession with fashion and personal appearance.
The many changes to her character concept ended up creating changes to her backstory. Even though Cory's romance with Topanga had been slow in developing originally, in the middle of the series the writers decided to imply that Topanga and Cory had been destined to marry since childhood, and created a flashback showing Cory and Topanga meeting as toddlers and becoming best friends, and only becoming separated because of Cory's growing friendship with Shawn, who peer pressured him into thinking of girls as "icky" and "having cooties". The perception of Topanga and Shawn competing for Cory's affections -- along with the underlying Shawn/Cory slash subtext -- became one of the show's recurring themes. However, the idea that Cory and Topanga were once best friends before the show's first season clashes severely with first-season Cory's knowing almost nothing about Topanga and being completely mystified by her and her background.
The most obvious continuity changes through the series involved Topanga's parents -- she is famous for appearing to have had two completely different sets of parents. Originally she referred to her parents by their first names, Jedediah and Chloe, and both of them seemed to be political radicals who passed their beliefs onto her. Going along with this image, Jedediah made a few cameo appearances on the show as a laid-back, financially successful guitar-maker and amateur musician played by Monkee Peter Tork, primarily as a comic foil for Cory's somewhat neurotic father Alan. Later, her mother had taken a job in Pittsburg, forcing Topanga to stay with her Aunt Prudence in order to be near Cory.
Later, in order to create dramatic tension regarding Topanga and Cory's upcoming marriage, Topanga's parents are reintroduced to the series, this time as wildly different characters played by real-life couple Michael McKean and Annette O'Toole. Jedediah, rather than a former hippie and a musician, is now a somewhat conservative man working a generic white-collar job while her mother, now renamed Rhiannon, is a typical housewife; the two are unhappy together and planning a divorce. In the next (and final) season, her parents were played by different actors yet again, Marcia Cross and Mark Harelik. Topanga's sister Nebula ("Nebby"), meanwhile, who was briefly introduced in a first-season episode, is nowhere to be seen.
During her high school career, Topanga accomplished a great deal, including being elected as president of her class and tying for valedictorian with Minkus; Minkus, a character who had been unseen since the first season, unexpectedly returned for the high school graduation episode in order to resurrect the theme of Topanga and Minkus' academic rivalry as an in-joke for longtime viewers. Topanga was accepted to Yale University in her senior year as a legacy student, her parents apparently both being Yale alumni, but eventually chose to attend Pennbrook College with Cory and his friends instead, arriving at her decision by dramatically proposing marriage to Cory at their high school graduation. The final season featured Cory and Topanga's marriage during their freshman year of college in a much-publicized wedding and honeymoon episode, and the series ended with the two of them, along with their friends, leaving Philadelphia for New York.
