“Boy Meets World” alum Rider Strong hated filming the infamous alcohol-themed episode.
On their podcast “Pod Meets World,” Strong, 44, Danielle Fishel, 43, and Will Friedle, 48, looked back on the Season 5 episode “If You Can’t Be With the One You Love,” which explores Cory (Ben Savage) getting his best friend Shawn (Strong) to drink.
“I was probably 17 the first time I tried alcohol, so it was probably right before this,” Strong said on the podcast. “But I remember Ben and I talking about, like, how do you play drunk and having conversations about it. And he nails it. He’s so good at it.”
However, Strong revealed that he was “miserable” filming the episode, which was banned by Disney Channel because of its mature tone, and “half-assed” his performance.
“This was hard for me to watch. I didn’t love this episode,” Strong said.
The controversial episode sees Cory coping with alcohol after his breakup with Topanga (Fishel). Shawn, whose father was an alcoholic, keeps drinking even after he and Cory make a pact to stop. A drunken Shawn ends up shoving his girlfriend, Angela (Trina McGee), into a door but faces few consequences for his behavior.
Strong explained that he didn’t like how Shawn’s behavior when he was drinking shifted so quickly in the second half of the episode.
“I was just like, ‘What is happening? This is trying to be so hardcore and heavy and serious,’ and it was just too much. It was just too heavy-handed for me,” the actor admitted. “I was just so uncomfortable and, yeah, I just didn’t think it was good, sorry.”
“You don’t even lose your girlfriend after assaulting her,” Friedle pointed out.
“The real problem that I see is it’s actually a disservice to people,” Strong explained to his co-hosts. “The real issue with drinking is that often it’s sneakier, it’s weirder, it’s slower. It slowly takes over people’s lives. To try and cram an entire alcoholic journey and sobriety journey into 22 minutes, that’s not ever what it actually is like. That’s never how it happens in real life. So in a weird way, it’s hurting the issue that it’s trying to address.”
“Boy Meets World” aired for seven seasons from 1993 to 2000 on ABC.
Disney Channel did not air the episode about Shawn’s drinking because of the mature content. The same went for the Season 5 episode “Prom-ises, Prom-ises” and the Season 6 episode “The Truth About Honesty,” which both dealt with sex.
Strong, Fishel and Friedle started their “Boy Meets World” rewatch podcast in 2022.
