If you grew up in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, Boy Meets World was top of the charts as one of the greatest TGIF comedies out there. With over 150 episodes and seven seasons, Cory, Topanga, Shawn and Co. made some excellent youth programming. But during the show’s run, there were some bad episodes, including one that the former stars recently deemed to be a clunker. The best friend storyline, involving the aftermath of one of the most heartbreaking TV character deaths, Chet Hunter’s, absolutely fell flat.
The Season 6, Episode 15 plot (which you can stream with a Disney+ subscription) is the one Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel, and Will Friedle discussed not liking on Pod Meets World. It followed the infamous road trip Shawn was determined to take after his dad died. Cory tags along, and the two stop at a truck stop that Shawn's dad frequented while on the road in hopes of closure. While he does gain a bit while meeting a waitressing girl music group, it all felt out of place. Strong also noted that the subplot between Eric, Rachel, and Jack didn’t save anything, as he said:
This was a clunker for me, just flat, low energy. It was just inert, like just a weird episode. I just was like, there's no energy. There's no energy in the story. There's no energy. … [Even with a] musical performance and love triangle-ly stuff. B-story couldn’t save it. It was just flat. Everything felt flat, like nothing really made sense to me.
Each time I’ve watched that episode of Shawn trying to find peace, I’ve felt the same way. The random diner, the aspiring girls and their performance, and the forced secondary story love triangle all feel out of place.
Strong’s co-hosts jumped in to agree. First was Fishel, who’s been in the mix of the continuing Maitland Ward drama, saying that the whole thing needs some serious TLC and attention, saying:
I know, this episode needed a blood transfusion.
She’s not wrong. There were some episodes later in the show that really took wild angles, including the turbulent Fred Savage episode. And for Shawn to run away from his loved ones, like how his dad continually did, feels so fake. Then, for him to try and find solace with strangers is the nail in the coffin for me.
Friedle then summed both his co-stars' thoughts up aptly by sharing that he doesn’t even register it as a real BMW ep. Instead, he revealed that he believes it to be a special Disney put on for the real-life girl group Nobody’s Angel’s launch. He thought the whole thing was messy and could’ve been two separate things instead of one weird ad, as he said:
I don’t even consider this a Boy Meets World episode… You know what this was to me? This was a twenty minute Saturday Morning special that Disney did, which was just a one little thing where Cory and Shawn are — like the road trip should have been a whole other episode. And, as a little aside, they launched this new girl band on a Saturday morning to show, but to wedge it into an episode – I was literally watching. I was like, ‘This is not a show.’... It feels like a giant commercial.
Absolutely a spot-on opinion by the Eric Matthews actor. It seemed like the classic Philadelphia-based show was trying to aim for a collab of sorts to announce the musical trio’s name, but it certainly didn’t succeed. (I'm glad to have the Abbot and Always Sunny special to make up for this trainwreck).
While I will always be down for a rewatch of most Cory and Shawn adventures, this clunker doesn’t make the list. Presumably, like the Boy Meets World stars, I think we’re all glad the story didn’t expand past the 30-minute time slot.
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