Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle recently opened up about an episode of the series they now consider too “painful” to watch.
Why did the Boy Meets World stars find the episode painful?
During the most recent episode of their Pod Meets World podcast, in which the trio rewatch the series, the group covered Season 6, Episode 7 of Boy Meets World, titled “Everybody Loves Stuart.” The episode follows Topanga (Fishel) and Cory (Ben Savage) becoming friends with their college professor, Stuart played by Savage’s real-life brother, Fred Savage. Stuart subsequently begins making inappropriate advances on Topanga.
After Topanga tells Cory about the incidents, he gets into a physical altercation with Stuart, leading to him nearly getting expelled. While rewatching the episode, the trio criticized it for not focusing much at all on Topanga’s experience in the episode.
“I felt like this thing that happened to Topanga became about: ‘How is the man in her life going to feel about it, and what’s he going to do about it?’ ” Fishel said (via People), noting that Topanga’s “agency was completely just taken away” in the episode.
Strong (who plays Shawn Hunter in the show) described the episode as “painful” to watch years later. Friedle (who played Eric Matthews) also said that he believes they should have stuck closer to Topanga’s storyline throughout the episode.
“Corey’s taken over the story, and it’s about how he’s gonna deal with what happened to Topanga,” Friedle said. “And I thought that they should have stayed with the Topanga storyline, which to me is much more interesting.”
While Fishel noted that, ultimately, the show was about Cory’s POV, she felt that there could have been a moment in the episode where Cory asks Topanga how she wants to proceed and how best to support her.
