Rider Strong gets emotional rewatching this ‘Boy Meets World’ episode

Pod Meets World, the popular Boy Meets World rewatch podcast led by Rider Strong, Will Friedle, and Danielle Fishel, took a turn for the serious this week. The time had come to reflect on the surprising episode from season 6 called “We’ll Have a Good Time Then,” the one where [spoiler, maybe] Shawn [Strong] and Jack [Matthew Lawrence]’s absent father Chet, played by Blake Clark returns, only to then drop dead.

While “very special episodes” are a rite of passage for all situation comedies, this one really stands out by how different it is from the rest of the series.

As Strong recalled, “The second half is really silent, you know? There’s just no laugh. There’s something jarring about that.” 

Strong then really got into it, saying, “A lot of this episode, it put a lot of pressure on all the actors. Blake has to have a heart attack on camera, die on camera. It felt awkward to me in that regard. I think it was like our show’s attempt at being like a play, like, a real drama play.”

He continued, “I don’t know how much of it was the memory of the emotion, or seeing myself being emotional, but I freaking cried. When I started crying in the show, I was, like, crying in real life sitting here last night. I was, like, by myself watching. It’s really emotional. I don’t know how much of that was being in the memory of the experience or seeing my… I don’t know. It just felt very personal. So that was, I guess, effective, or felt maybe that was a thing worth noting.”

Some big emotions on Pod Meets World, but hats off to Strong for having the confidence to share all that.

Friedle had some notes, though, remarking, “This needed to be a two-part episode with a funnier B-story, because there’s no B-story. It’s just that’s what this is. it is a very heavy 22 minutes. I think 44 minutes broken up with some kind of B-story probably would have made this story more impactful than just kind of throwing it the way it is.”

Not that Friedle wasn’t complimentary.

“The performances were good,” he said. “You’re emotionally invested in the characters. Also, it’s Blake. Blake is great. And watching him come back, there’s this energy to him on the screen that you can’t take your eyes off of him. I mean, as enjoyable as a melodramatic special episode of a sitcom can be, this was a good version of that.”

Fishel was even more effusive.

“I really loved it,” she said. “I really was in it. I was happy that for once [Blake’s character] Chet was being held to the fire about what his lifestyle has done to his sons and he couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t just tap dance his way out of it because he was in the hospital. I loved that. I think the reason it didn’t bother me that it wasn’t super funny, or funny at all after the first half, is that unlike other episodes where we are very clearly trying to strike a balance, this one didn’t feel like it was trying to strike a balance. We’re doing an emotional, true family story. And I’m not going to try to sprinkle in jokes here. No story. Just this is what we’re dealing with. And it’s real life.” 

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Later in the podcast, Strong recalled a moment from one of the rehearsals where he and Clark, who you likely know from such movies as The Waterboy and 50 First Dates, really started sobbing.

“We just bonded so much,” he said. “He’d always thought of himself as a comedian who acted. And that moment, he took me aside to say, ‘I feel like we were acting.’ And it changed me. Like, it was sort of a revelation for him.”

Summing up, Strong shared, “And I’ve had so many people at conventions and just in life say, like, having lost a parent, that this episode really, really, really affected them. I think that as much as we were talking about the tone and all that stuff, it’s a huge swing. I’m sure it turned off some people, maybe a lot of people. But for the people who it did get through to, this is a hard-hitting episode.”

For more of the very special episode of this very special episode, you can check out the link below.