It’s now been more than five years since Disney pulled the plug on Girl Meets World, with the spinoff wrapping on a massive reunion from as many Boy Meets World vets as possible. But something that many fans may not be clued in on is that the TGIF staple’s creator had plans for a completely different kind of offshoot series that would have happened during the family-friendly flagship’s initial run on ABC. It would have centered on Will Friedle’s Eric Matthews, with a proto-Friends vibe in mind to separate it from its predecessor, and it was a big enough goal that a bit of episode dialogue was written as a softballed lead-in to his potential exit.
Will Friedle talked about the groundwork that was laid for the Boy Meets World spinoff idea in the latest episode of the looking-back podcast Pod Meets World, which he co-hosts alongside former co-stars Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong. It was the second part of a fun Q&A sesh, with the question of note being “Which character do you think would have had the best spinoff?” And rather than answering that directly, Friedle got into the nitty gritty for what could have happened with Eric. (We’ll just assume his own character would have been his answer.) Here's how he started:
I was going to leave the show at one point. I mean, to the point where Michael and I had had meetings —we had had meetings with ABC — and he’d already written to it. There’s a scene where Mr. Feeny says, ‘Do you know what you’re going to do in life?’ And I talk about, ‘No,’ and it’s because there was a good chance I wasn’t going to come back the following season. Because Michael and I — well, it was all Michael, but I was in on the pitches — had pitched an idea where Eric moves to Los Angeles.
Now that’s a completely different part of the world, even if it’s still in the same country. Eric would be high on the list of Boy Meets World characters who rocked the charisma and energy needed to possibly make it in L.A. The Philadelphia suburbs inherent to the sitcom were certainly far from the mean streets, as it were, despite the regular presence of bullies such as Harvey Keiner and Ethan Suplee’s Frankie. I have to think that someone like Cory would get eaten alive in his first week, while Shawn would probably fall way too hard into the grittier side of life. Eric, meanwhile, is the precise amount of dim, confident and oblivious to coast through any issues.
Friedle continued, saying that the pilot was all planned out, along with the intro, and that he and creator Michael Jacobs actively brought the idea to the appropriate higher-ups. In his words:
This was Season 4, Season 5? And we met with ABC, we met with Disney, he had the pilot all set up. I remember Eric was driving his car, and the start was going to be he jumps the ramp at the Santa Monica Pier and the car slams onto the beach. Eric stumbles out and just walks into the ocean. and that was going to be the start of the episode. It was going to be like a 'young Friends,' and he was going to meet these people in Los Angeles. We not only had meetings and talked about it, and he was writing the pilot, but he wrote to it on Boy, so you can actually see a time where it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re writing me off,’ and it was because Eric was going to have a spinoff.
It's amusing to think about Eric's BMW spinoff being referred to as a '"young Friends" since, as a spinoff about a goofball lead character relocating to Los Angeles, it's clearly more comparable to NBC's own Friends spinoff Joey, and would have made it to the air six or seven years before the short-lived Matt LeBlanc comedy. Maybe even then, they somehow knew it wouldn't be a great move to use Joey as a marketing ploy.
In any case, it's clear that both Jacobs and Friedle were firmly behind the idea that Eric and a bunch of new characters were worthy of leading their own new show. Unfortunately, they seemed to be the only ones fully sharing that belief. The project never came to light, in spite of the minor tease involving Mr. Feeny, and not even the actor himself is aware of when the idea fell apart, saying:
I’m not even sure why it never happened, to be honest with you. I just never left Boy. I never got a reason why we didn’t do it.
Clearly, it's hard to know what this other project would have been like, but considering Girl Meets World served as an even more youth-oriented family comedy, it's arguably a shame that fans didn't get to see at least one of these characters in a markedly different kind of set-up. It's also worth noting that Friedle mentioned there were conversations about an Eric and Jack spinoff during the back half of the show's run, but he said none of it went beyond talks like the prior spinoff plan did.
While we’ll have to rely solely on our brains’ make-em-up powers in order to envision whatever Eric Matthews’ spinoff was going to be, fans can rewatch every season of Boy Meets World and Girl Meets World with a Disney+ subscription. And don’t forget to listen to new rewatch episodes of Pod Meets World every Thursday, with an additional installment dropping a few days later.
