PRODUCTION/CULTURAL REFERENCES (written 10/1/24-10/2/24)

10/1/24

-I originally came up with this episode in November 2021. I was at the laundromat listening to "Met Him Last Night" by Demi Lovato featuring Ariana Grande and the song inspired me in that moment. I thought about Sparky falling for another girl, which would make him question his feelings for Halley. It was interesting because it would put Sparky in an unusual position. He's never expressed attraction for anyone besides Halley, unless it was a celebrity crush ("The Homework Machine"). I also started thinking about the Boy Meets World episode "Heartbreak Cory," since Cory ends up developing feelings for another girl in that episode and it leads to Topanga breaking up with him. I knew I wanted to do the episode, but I didn't think it was right for season nine so I held on to it for a while.

-When it was time to put together season ten, "Met Her Last Night" was one of the first episodes I thought about. I was thinking about scenes I could write for it and I was expecting to start production in the summer of 2023. However, that didn't work out, and it took time for season ten to get off the ground. By October, I had changed my mind on the episode. I still wanted to do it, but I didn't want it to be Sparky's story. I had lost interest in the original plot and I didn't think I had enough material to give to Sparky. That's when I started thinking about Wade, and what the episode could be if he was the main character. I became excited about the episode again, and I wrote it this past February.

-A lot of Wade's stories tend to go in different directions than the other main characters. They're usually scientific, or academic, or political. Episodes like "Jaylynn's Lost Dog" or "Grandpa's Hands" don't normally go to Wade. Even if he's not the main character, he ends up being involved if there's some sci-fi element or something needs to be built. It's not as if I choose to write certain episodes for Wade, but the stories I come up with for him almost always fall into those three categories. It's rare that he gets an episode like "Positive Rein-dunce-ment," and RK was involved with that. This was a nice change of pace for Wade because it has to do with his love life. It starts off like you would expect, with him being obsessed with beating Kaitlyn. But then it takes a turn and the core of the story is Wade not wanting to hurt Adriana by acting on his feelings. Having him as the star was more interesting to me and gave me more to play with than if Sparky was the star.

-My original idea was that Halley would become busier and have less time for Sparky because she's trying to get her grades up. Sparky ends up spending more time with a female classmate and he has an intense crush on her. However, what snaps him out of it is that he realizes the girl is just like Buster. It makes him see that the only person he could care about more than Halley is someone he already cares about, which kills his crush. An easy way for me to make this story work for Wade is that Kaitlyn starts out as the competition. She has better grades than him and might be smarter than him, which begins his obsession with her. His crush even ties into that, but he does have a genuine attraction to Kaitlyn as a person. Only when he confronts his feelings does he realize what's going on. Had Kaitlyn not topped him on the honor roll, he probably wouldn't have noticed her.

-I based Kaitlyn off a girl I went to junior high with. She also had the highest grades in school on a consistent basis and was seen as the smartest. I also had a crush on her that confused me, but I was initially interested in her because when she transferred in the seventh grade, she was immediately the best student. One time, I asked her how she did it and she simply replied with "Studying." I stopped seeing her as competition after a while and we were never on bad terms, but we were never that close, either. Kaitlyn was meant to be a realistic character, somebody like Trina or Esther. They're a contrast to the main characters because they're more human, but they also can't appear as much for that reason.

-In the original episode, I thought about a scene where Sparky confides in Buster about the new girl, and Buster reveals that he used to have a similar crush on Halley. I thought that would give Sparky perspective on what to do, and it would be a nice connection to "Buster the Hedonist" since Sparky never found out what was going on. When I replaced Sparky with Wade, I decided that should be the entire subplot. Not only as a way to keep Sparky involved, but it's also thematically similar to the main plot. Both Wade and Buster are dealing with romance problems, but Wade is trying to avoid temptation while Buster believes he was unable to fight against it.

-I knew I couldn't call this episode anything other than "Met Her Last Night" because it was an easy layup. When Sparky was the main character, I was strongly considering changing it to "Sparky the Hedonist," but I wanted the episode to stand on its own. Once Wade became the star, it was even more obvious that the title shouldn't be changed.

-At one point, I was thinking about this being the third episode of the season, but the one coming up this Sunday didn't really work as the follow-up to "16 Candles," especially the night after. I did have more ideas for that episode so I wrote it before this one.

10/2/24

-I already knew I didn't want Kaitlyn to be a female Wade. She's smart and works hard for her grades, but she doesn't take herself seriously and doesn't feed into the competition that Wade sees. She instead likes toying with Wade and messing with his ego without being malicious. She's like Paige from Young Sheldon.

-This episode also serves as a follow-up to "Wade the Wunderkind," since Wade was struggling to adjust to junior high and found a class he didn't understand, which was music class. This time, he's fully integrated into the FDA system and believes he deserves to be at the top of the academic food chain. It's in contrast to "Wunderkind" where he rejected the challenge of not acing every class and tried staying home to avoid Ms. Garibaldi.

-I love writing Buster because a lot of what he says comes off as being an asshole, but he's never trying to be. And when he's aware that he did or said something wrong, it scares him because he doesn't want to make enemies. I always said that out of all the main characters, Buster was the most like an actual child.

-Buster references last season's episode "Lost One" where Jaylynn and Gilcania's friendship ends. This effectively kills the possibility of a Masters of the Universe reunion (unless certain people aren't around for it like in "Who Says You Can't Go Home").

-Buster references the average length of a sitcom episode, which is 22 minutes excluding commercials.

-Buster references the season eight episode "The Graduation from Hell." Halley's sister Annabelle came to visit for graduation and put doubt in Sparky's head that his relationship with Halley would survive middle school. This leads Sparky to act irrationally at the senior prom and embarrass Halley.

-Sparky references the subplot of "Buster the Hedonist," where Jaylynn tried to help RK and Wade resolve their differences after days of fighting. The resolution is for RK and Wade to use the Body Swap so they can see the world through each other's eyes.

-Jaylynn references the fact that in season four's "11 Ways to Ruin a Birthday," she admitted to Halley that she had a crush on Sparky when they first met. In season seven's "A Trip to the Guidance Counselor," Jaylynn finds out that Halley told Sparky about it, and she confronts her on it a few episodes later in "Master of Her Universe."

-Jaylynn also references RK's obsession/rivalry with Anja in season three, believing that it was due to a crush that RK didn't want to admit to. Wade references this later, which annoys RK when it's brought up. I never officially established that RK liked Anja, but one of the segments in "The Heavenly Tapes II" deals with it directly ("Everybody Hates Anja," the second segment).

-For years, people have told me that I hold pencils/pens in an interesting way. I've held them the exact same way since I was a little kid and I always felt weird about it whenever people brought it up, so I referenced it here.

-Wade references RK's crush on Ashley back in season two.

-RK and Jaylynn pretending to have crushes on Halley to make Buster feel better is a reference to the Friends episode "The One with the Engagement Picture." Rachel tells Joey that she had a crush on him when they first met (which Joey already knew because Monica told him). When Chandler asks Rachel if she had a crush on him when they first met, she says yes, then looks at Joey and the two shake their heads simultaneously.

-Buster references John Cena's "Fine speech" catchphrase. Whenever a wrestler cut a promo on Cena, he would usually say "Fine speech" as a reply to dismiss what they said. However, Buster was using it sincerely.

-I had to cover my bases with the scene where Wade reveals Liquid Hypnosis. When I was doing the rewrite, I realized there was no guarantee that Wade would fall out of love with Kaitlyn specifically, because it was a reverse love potion. I added the detail of him needing to say Kaitlyn's name in order for Liquid Hypnosis to work like it was meant to.

-I didn't do the rewrite for months after the first draft, but if I know me, I know 100% that Wade was supposed to say "break her heart," not "break my heart." Like I've done multiple times, I messed up the line when I was writing it and just went with it because it was funnier.

-I didn't have the ending figured out before I wrote it, but I knew what I wanted out of it. Wade needed to get his feelings out to Kaitlyn, and in the long run, it doesn't matter. Wade didn't want to act on his feelings, Kaitlyn was completely unaware until then, and even after finding out, it didn't change how Kaitlyn felt about Wade. It was something that needed to be dealt with so Wade could move on. It also kept him from doing something drastic like he did with Jaylynn in season two.