A story: When Cyd and Shelby revisit their favorite memory from middle school (the pizza-slam-rito), they are shocked to find that moment wasn’t the same as they remembered.

B story: Barry and Renaldo try to decide if success comes from brains or from the heart.

With many time travel shows, I often worry how many episodes will be based on “events from the past that will be revisited” or how many episodes will be based on “we need to go forward or back in time” to fix something.  I’m ok with all of the time jumping here as long as it gives us insight into the main players.  This episode successfully does that.

Our main story involves Shelby attempting to “jam Cyd’s jump” back to middle school for some pizza-slam-ritos (which have subsequently been banned).  Cyd’s perplexed about the jump jam – I love her attempts to break the jump jams.  Really creative!

Shelby and Cyd finally make it back to 7th grade (love the “time selfie.”)  Cyd’s curious: why is this past different.  And yes, they used the word “period” in that sense!  Turns out when Shelby received invitations from perceived bad girl Jenn, she lied to Cyd about them.  Shelby thought Jenn would be a bad influence on Cyd … here comes the morality line: I judged Jenn without getting to know her.  Turns our Jenn volunters at the local children’s hospital and has “whatever” tattooed on her knuckles because she will do “whatever” for those kids.

In the end, Cyd ruins Jenn’s life when she encourages her to help steal the case of pizza-slam-ritos.  Nice touch that the police officer was the former history teacher from a previous episode.

There were some little gems buried in here as well.  We got a sense of Barry in 7th grade – “Little Barry” – and his relationship with Renaldo.  I couldn’t help but laugh at lines like “Even when I laugh at her misplaced modifiers,” “the analogy coconut,” and “Bros before grows.”  Barry and Renaldo have a similar Felix-Oscar relationship as Shelby and Cyd.  Its a nice parallel.

The B story involves a debate over which scientific approach is the best – brains or heart?  Barry and Renaldo each seek to build a rocket.  Barry argues that brains will build the best rocket, while Renaldo believes … just believes.  Renaldo reminds me of Kramer from Seinfeld (I loved his riff on sauces and dressings).  Barry and Chet (or Brett) spends way too much time trying to figure out how close Renaldo and Brett (or Chet) are to launch.  When Barry finally launches, he argues its his rocket – but Renaldo states he believes its his rocket.  Its a nice parallel to Shelby and Cyd’s dilemma – what do you know if your heart versus what you know in your mind …

BFW is a creatively written, slice of high school life.  In some ways the time travel is immaterial as the ongoing theme of heart v mind plays out in many of the episodes.  I could do without the twin brothers and I appreciate the strength of the actors in the show to carry the story without the presence of adults.  In the end, I’ll watch these best friends … whenever.