"what a major freakazoid that Ed Poe must've been!" aka On The Fence

We open with the boys talking at lunch again. Squints had been replaced with Ellis, who IMDB tells me is the kid from Candyman, so there's that. I don't remember him because I saw that movie years ago, but I can tell you this kid has a killer (eh? killer? See what I did there?) hi-top fade starting. They're discussing superheroes and Cory mentions he'd like to have Superman for a dad. They get sidetracked and start talking about water guns.

Shawn takes his out and shoots Minkus, who makes his first appearance of the series in this episode. Ellis shoots next, and Minkus threatens them with a huge gun he takes out of a tuba case. Cory doesn't have a water gun and doesn't understand the big deal until literally the whole cafeteria pulls guns on him. Where are these kids hiding them? Someone mentions they aren't legal at school, so they can't just be carting them around the hallways. Curious.

Back at home, Cory tries to get his parents to buy him the gun, but it's $50 and between household repairs, mortgage, and food, the Matthews' say they can't afford it. Cory whines himself upstairs where Eric is trying to put Heather's phone number into his new watch. Seeing Eric with his expensive new stuff makes Cory decide he needs a job to pay for the water gun and go to the water war that they must have planned during a commercial, because this is the first we hear of it.

Cory asks Mr. Feeny is he has any work to do. Feeny offers to let Cory paint his shutters at $5 a shutter, 2 shutters per window, 10 windows on the house. Cory does some quick math and is excited to be earning $58. He paints the shutters and gets paid, but ends up spraying green paint onto his white fence when he leans the shutters against it.

Ma and Pa Matthews tell Cory he has to repaint the fence, and when Shawn, Minkus, and Ellis come by for the water war, Cory Tom Sawyer's them into helping him. He also offers them $7 between them and lunch. The boys eventually bail and leave Cory alone. Alan tells Cory it's actually his responsibility to be a kid and sends him off to the water war while he takes over the fence.

Cory comes home dripping wet. Eric is wiped out from working just half a shift. He comments how he can't believe Alan works 12 hour days on his feet, then comes home and does work around the house, plays with the kids, etc. Cory realizes maybe his dad is like Superman.

At dinner that night, Cory pulls out a smaller gun and squirts the table. His parents yell at him, but he's traded in his big gun for two little guns for himself and Alan, and the family has their own water war.

Roundup:

Cory and Eric have a nice little bonding moment over how much working sucks. I know there's at least two episodes later in the series that deal directly with them not knowing each other/not getting along when they were kids. Those make me sad.

The Heather that Eric is putting in his watch is likely the same Heather he took to the Phillies game. Good for him, not so good for my girl tally.

When the family has their squirt gun fight at the end, Morgan calls 911 and says her parents are fighting and they just shot the neighbor. She's still fidgety when she's not speaking, but she got some pretty cute/funny lines.

Cory and Mr. Feeny have a little talk about Edgar Allan Poe. There's actually a good handful of Baltimore references in this show. As a Baltimorean since 2003, I'm pretty excited about picking those out.