“Boy Meets World ”Cast Breaks Down What They Call the 'Best' Episode, but Admit It 'Scared the Bejesus Out of a Lot of Kids'

1998’s “And Then There Was Shawn” is “maybe the best episode in ‘Boy Meets World’ history,” according to the 'Pod Meets World' hosts

Boy Meets World's Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle have been looking back at what may be the show’s most beloved and well-regarded episode: the freakily funny “And Then There was Shawn.”

The 1998 episode, which aired during Boy Meets World’s fifth season, has in recent years been included on multiple lists of both the best sitcom episodes of the ’90s and the best Halloween episodes ever. A send-up and homage to teen slasher films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, which were huge at the box office at the time, the episode finds the show’s teen cast being terrorized by an unseen killer while trapped in detention, and features a guest appearance by scream queen Jennifer Love Hewitt.

“This is constantly regarded as maybe the best episode in Boy Meets World history and it’s a romp,” Fishel, 43, said on the most recent episode of the trio’s rewatch podcast Pod Meets World.

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“And Then There Was Shawn” is so popular among the show’s fans, Fishel, Strong and Friedle have devoted three separate episodes of their podcast to it, culminating in their conveniently timed Halloween recap, which dropped Thursday, Oct. 31.

But as the hosts noted, “And Then There Was Shawn” wasn’t actually a Halloween episode, having originally aired in February.

“Can you imagine tuning into TGIF — in February — when you're, like, 9, 10?” Strong, 44, said of the episode, which featured several of the show’s main characters being murdered in — spoiler alert — what turns out to be an extended dream sequence. “This must have been so jarring.”

“You read comments from people that are like, ‘This scarred me,’ ” Friedle, 48, noted.

“This scared the bejesus out of a lot of kids,” Fishel agreed.

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“I mean, there's some episodes that, like, stick with you after all these years,” Friedle said. “And I think for a generation of kids, this was it for them. I mean, this was one that really messed them up. I love that.”

Despite the unexpected fear factor, the trio also praised the episode for featuring some of the show’s all-time best jokes and gags. One particularly darkly funny moment found guest actor Richard Lee Jackson’s Kenny — at timely reference to the oft-killed South Park character — slumping to the ground with a pencil stabbed through his forehead, leaving a line on the wall behind him. Ben Savage’s Corey points to the top of the mark saying, “We’ll always remember he was that tall.”

“Is it possible that this is the most perfectly crafted joke in all of Boy Meets World?” Fishel asked on the podcast, while Friedle argued that it was “up there with anything on Seinfeld or Friends or All in the Family.”

Another standout bit, according to the hosts: Strong’s character admits that he’ll “get as sick as you can without actually dying,” after another character notes that in horror movies, only virgins survive the carnage.

“This episode was on a just a different level,” Friedle enthused, noting later that the reason everyone’s performances in the episode are so funny was because “the stuff we used to do during only rehearsal for each other we decided to do for the show.”

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Apparently, the cast was having a little too much fun on set, however. According to Friedle, Strong and Fishel, the episode marked the first and only time longtime Boy Meets World director Jeff McCracken yelled at them when they couldn’t stop laughing during a particular shot.

“We fully deserved it,” Fishel recalled. “We couldn't keep it together. We were being so unprofessional.”

McCracken, she said, stormed off set, “the minute he was around the corner, we all just bust out laughing again because it was so it was so shocking and so out of character, and we couldn't physically couldn't stop laughing.”

“Sorry, Jeff,” Fishel added. “You know how much we love you. If we could go back and do it again ... we'd probably do it exactly the same way.”