William Daniels fulfills destiny, follows his TV students to Girl Meets World

George Feeny looked around the empty classroom. A storied figure in the Philadelphia-area academy, George Feeny was the only educator in the City of Brotherly Love to go from middle-school teacher to college professor in less than a decade—and yet, here he was, trapped among the same anonymous desks and motivational posters for 13 years, doomed by two words: “Class dismissed.” With that, George Feeny excused himself from the lives he was sworn to guide, a godlike figure pulling the strings of four students whom he’d come to look upon as his own children: the Matthews brothers, Cory and Eric; Topanga Matthews (née Lawrence), who, like Feeny, seemed inextricably fated to a life unfolding side-by-side with Cory’s; and reformed wild child Shawn Hunter. In later years, it’d become increasingly important for George Feeny to keep an eye on Eric, whose devolution into a tittering man-child appeared to be the work of beings whose power over this world were greater than those of George Feeny.

Everything outside the classroom changed, but George Feeny did not.

Had he overstepped his bounds? Had he devoted too much attention to the Matthews boys and let other students fall by the wayside? Was this his punishment for swapping roles with Cory for one week of sixth grade, ignoring the edification of the rest of his class to teach a lesson to a single student? Had there been too many Harvey “Harley” Keiners and Griffin “Griff” Hawkinses, seemingly interchangable ne’er do wells whose misdeeds never demanded Feeny’s attention the way young Mr. Hunter’s did?

Outside his window, boys meeting world became men knowing that world, and those men in turn sired daughters who must meet the world in the same way their fathers did. But George Feeny would not be there introduce world to girl, and for that George Feeny cursed the forces that kept him standing in place. He shouted at the vengeful gods who kept him from those he loved—especially that one female professor he fell in love with and probably married at some point? It’d been so long, he could no longer remember.

Being unable to take any more of this eternal torture, George Feeny grabbed a nearby globe—that un-spinning sphere whose stasis so cruelly mirrored his own—determined to use his unearthly, destiny-shaping powers to hurl the taunting object through the window and escape back into the life he’d been denied. “My name is George Feeny!” he cried. “Not ‘Weeny’! Feeny!” George Feeny drew his arms back, hoping to smash the glass in the same way he’d smashed the naysayers who claimed he couldn’t follow a single student through the boy’s entire academic career. He sounded a barbaric yawp: “Fee-naaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

But just then he heard a voice—the first voice besides his own that he’d heard in 13 years. “Bill, they’re ready for you.” Bill—something about that name stirred within George Feeny, even more so than this strangely familiar voice. This was it—this was escape. George Feeny gathered himself, cleared his throat, and walked toward the back of the room. The light emanating from the doorway was warm and welcome. Beyond it, he could hear the sounds of laughter. George Feeny was fulfilled. George Feeny was free. George Feeny was appearing in the pilot of Girl Meets World, just as it was written—just as it must be.