Brave New World

Expecting, perhaps, Pacino or De Niro? Meets tough guy Ben Savage, the 18-year-old star of Boy Meets World (yes, the one doing pirouettes between takes). The ABC comedy (Fridays, 8:30 P.M./ET) is in its sixth season, and as this October showdown demonstrates, a lot has changed since the 12-year-old Savage bowed as Cory Matthews alongside Will Friedle as his older brother, Eric; Rider Strong as his best friend, Shawn Hunter; and Danielle Fishel as Topanga, the girl who would win cory's heart. The young actors have gone from being driven to the set by parents to driving themselves. The guys are shaving. Fishel, now 17, is sporting a belly chain and a smile she can't supress as she talks about a new, not-to-be named love interest ("I'm in that giddy stage. I know it doesn't last, so I'm trying to enjoy it").

Amid an explosion of hip and hyped teen programing, Boy Meets World is TV's best kept secret. Seventeen festures Fishel on this month's cover, the outcome of focus groups held last year. "We asked readers who they wanted to see," says Sarah Goldsmith, the magazine's entertainment editor, "and they all screamed 'Topanga, Topanga!'" Goldsmith says she immediatley looked into who this Topanga was. What she discovered suprised her: While shows like Dawson's Creek and Felicity were getting the buzz, BMW was drawing the numbers. It's the second most-watched show among teens 12 1o 17, after Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, which it preceeds on ABC's TGIF lineup, and it also wins its time period among adults 18 to 49. "We've held on to the audience that grew up with us," says executive producer and cocreater Michael Jacobs, "but word of mouth has also brought us an older, more broad-based audience."

BMW began as a sunny preteen romp but lately has taken on weighter issues. Shawn overcame a drinking problem, Topanga and Cory dealt with the will-they-or-won't-they question at their prom (they didn't). It's the sitcoms mix of realism and humor that appeals to teens, notes Melissa Novak, a 17-year-old from Ontario who runs a Boy Meets World web site. "BMW sets forth good morals without being preachy and it always makes me laugh," she says. "I love Felicity, Dawson's Creek, and Party of Five, but they can sometimes get a little depressing." But with the BMW kids in college this season, they, too, will be colliding with some very painful issues of loss and disillusionment. The show has added a new twist with Friedle and Matthew Lawrence (who plays Jack, Shawn's half-brother) sharing an apartment with Maitland Ward (as Rachel McGuire), a willowly redhead who looks like she wandered over from Melrose Place (see Boy Meets Girls on opposite page). But as good-looking as the cast is, says Novak, they remain recognizable: "Everyone knows someone like Shawn, Eric, Cory and Topanga."

"When I was going through certain changes," Svage recalls, "it was a little awkward. Your hair grows and your nose gets bigger. Cory was never this macho stud; I wanted to be true to my real life."

Fishel couldn't help being true to the changes she went through the second and third seasons. "I came back from summer break, and I had a chest," she recalls between bites of rice and beans. During the cast's peak years of puberty, recalls William Daniels, who plays the youngsters' longtime mentor, Mr. Feeny, the kids were bouncing off the walls: "There was a lot of jumping around, laughing, yelling." There was lots of yelling during mall apperances, too, as the young actors found themselves mobbed by lovestruck fans. "I did all these interviews for teen magazines thinking it would be a lot of fun," Strong says, "and then suddenly I became a teen idol. It was overwhelming. I'm pretty shy, and it just made me even more shy."

The October taping signaled a turning point for the whole cast- call it Boy Takes on World. Trina McGee-Davis (Angela) says, "When I first came here [last season], there really wasn't any give or take. The kids were annoyed about a lot of things but just expressing it to each other." Savage changed the rules of his refusal to throw the punch. His intended target: big brother Fred (Working; The Wonder Years), making a special apperance as a professor who hits on Topanga in her dorm room. When Ben showed up on the set the day after the big debate to find the script unchanged, he went straight to Jacobs's office. "Ben has never once in six years come to my office and said 'I don't want to do this,'" the executive producer says. "I think in the six years this actor, this friend, has earned the right to say that." Cory never threw the punch; instead, on the episode, which aired last month, he shoved the professor to the ground. "That's what great about this show," Savage says. "If you express your arguement in a convincing way, you win."

The older cats menbers take a different view. "There was a real generation gap," says Betsy Randle, who plays Cory's mother, Amy. "Us grown-ups were saying that because we've lived longer, we know that good people sometimes do stupid things, like hitting someone. It was uncomfortable, but it was really exciting to see the kids take a stand. Bonnie Bartlett, who starred on St. Elsewhere and now has a recurring role on BMW (see Class Act, next page), is more blunt: "I was appalled. I respected Ben's position, but believe me, on St Elsewhere, he would have never have been allowed to go on for an hour."

By midweek the customary good spirts have, for the most part, returned to the set. The adults are having a tougher time; the blowup has forced them to confront bittersweet reality. William Russ, who plays Cory's Dad, Alan, and is directing this week, says, "This episode gives me chills. It's about the loss of innocence."

This could well be BMW's fianl year; the actors contracts are up at the end of the season. "We all have moments," says Fishel, "where we're like 'Are we still doing this show?'" Her plans include movies, a PhD in psychology and having "two boys and a girl" by the time she's 30, she says. Rider is studying philosophy at a Los Angeles college, and Friedle plans to pursue a doctorate in archaeology.

And the boy in Boy Meets World is restless. Savage has already deferred for a year at Stanford University, where 22-year-old brother Fred is a student. "I want to join a fraternity," he says, "and dance maked around the campus. Actually, I don't think you dance naked at Stanford, but I want to have the whole college experience." Until then, he'd like it known that he doesn't live at home anymore. "I love in a guest house. On my own." He pauses. "Ten feet away from my parents." And from that territory between boyhood and manhood, Savage offers and assessment on how both he and Cory have grown. He goes back six years, when Topanga gave Cory his first-ever kiss.

"I was nervous. I was 12, and it was my first kiss, too. But," he says a bit mournfully, "I've just ended a realtionship. And kissing my girlfriend was the most beautiful thing.... I couldn't stop kissing her. I've come a long way from the boy who hated to kiss."

*The following two articles were spread out amongst the six-page BMW spread*

boy meets GIRLS

Cory has Topange to quicken his pulse, but what aboutr the rest of the guys on Boy Meets World? Enter Maitland Ward and Trine McGee-Davis.

McGee-Davis was brought on last season to play Angela, Shawn's (Rider Strong) love interest. Although she's 29 (and the married mom of three), she says the age difference between her and Strong (who's 19) isn't an issue: "I look 19 on the show, right? Get over it." The Bronx-born actress doesn't doubt there will a reunion now that the pain are broken up. "I'm sure well get back together and break up a million more times." This season, she says, the show will explore the issure of interracial dating. "The jewel is that nobody's looking at us like the balck and white couple. To ignore it is not right. But lets just take our time and not a big deal about it."

A Ward explains it, her character, Rachel McGuire, living with Jack (Matthew Lawrence) and Eric (Will Friedle) is "a reverse Three's Company kind of thing." The 21-year-old, who joined the cast this season, says, "Both of them have this extreme attraction toward Rachel, but she just wants a platonic relationship." The Long Beach, California, native, who dates stockbroker Terry Baxter, won't reveal whether Rachel is going to hook up with one of her roomies. But if and when it happens, the 5-foot-11 actress, who towers over her costars, thnks any kissing should take place sitting down. "Either that or it'll be like a junior-high dance." -Annabel Vered

CLASS act

Having Bonnie Bartlett team up with William Daniels was, as Boy Meets World's executive producer Michael Jacobs puts it, "a no-brainer." After all, the last time the real0life husband and wife worked together, they both won Emmys.

George Feeny (Daniels) and Dean Bolander (Bartlett) met on campus this fall, paralling that actor's first encounter at a play reading at Northwestren University 51 years ago. "She was 18," Daniels, 71, recalls. "I said to myself, 'Now there's an actress!' So I asked her out." Her response? "I thought he was too short and told him so. Bill said 'Oh, for Got's sake!'" The wed in 1951 and today have two sons and one granddaughter.

In 1982, after Daniels was tapped to play surgeon Mark Craig on St. Elsewhere, Bartlett was offered the part of his wife, Ellen. In 1986, they made TV history by becoming the only married couple to win acting Emmys (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series) on the same night. "Bill and Bonnie inspired us to write [for them] because their scenes were so fully charged," says Homicide: Life on the Street executive producer Tom Fontana, who worked on St. Elsewhere.

Now that BMW has romance in the air for them, Barylett, 69, is thrilled: "After all these years, isn't it time to fall in love again?" -Jim Longworth