An episode of Diff’rent Strokes titled The Bicycle Man aired in 1983. It was a very special episode that dealt with a bike shop owner who was attempting to drug and molest two child characters on the show. I’m 35, so I did not see the episode when it aired. I did see it almost twenty years later on reruns, though. I don’t remember what channel it aired on, but I had become obsessed with Diff’rent Strokes reruns. I was ten years old and absorbing it as much as I could. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, this silly show I loved took a “special” turn.
It wasn’t a bad thing. My parents certainly had conversations with me about bad people who would want to do bad things. Still, everything feels so abstract when you’re a kid. If you don’t have direct experience with something it can feel possible and impossible. Seeing what was happening on Diff’rent Strokes made it feel more real and I’ve only seen the episode once! I assumed I may have misremembered things, but reading the Wikipedia description made it clear that the episode lived rent-free in my head for over twenty years.
At the time, I thought about how horrific that must have been for the characters. Now, I think about how terrible it was for the actors! Stars Gary Coleman and Shavar Ross were about 14 and 12 respectively. While they weren’t made to do anything inappropriate (that we’re aware of), the subject matter was heavy and they had to talk about some hard truths. That kind of stuff can stick in your head for a long time, as was the case for Boy Meets World actor Rider Strong.
Strong hosts a Boy Meets World rewatch podcast with fellow stars Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle. In a recent episode, they talked about an episode titled If You Can’t Be With The One You Love in which the lead, played by Ben Savage, gets drunk as a way to deal with his breakup with Fishel’s character. Strong joins him, they have a bad time, and promise to never drink again. Regardless, Strong’s character continues drinking, pushes his girlfriend, and is sober and forgiven by the end of the 22-minute episode.
The actor is not a fan of his work in the episode, saying, “I’m just half-assing it this entire episode. I’m so miserable.” Rider Strong admits to having had alcohol already but not knowing how to channel that energy. “I was probably 17 the first time I tried alcohol, so it was probably right before this. But I remember Ben [Savage] and I talking about, like, ‘How do you play drunk?’ and having conversations about it,” he remembered. “And he nails it. He’s so good at it.”
Luckily, it seems the episode hasn’t lingered with Strong. He’s more annoyed at its lack of quality. He’s critical of the unbelievable qualities like his character “having a good time with Cory and doing handstands and peeing on cop cars and just, like, ‘Woohoo, fun-loving,’ and then in that second half, it’s as if he’s a 45-year-old alcoholic who’s like, ‘I can’t stop, but I gotta keep doing this.’ I don’t think that’s realistic.” He ain’t wrong.
Alcoholism runs in my family, and I had seen its effects by the time I saw this episode. Unlike Diff’rent Strokes, I saw this episode a lot. Still, I remembered very little. Reading the description left me with my mouth agape. I knew how serious this was, but none of that stuck with me. Instead, the episode kind of stayed buried in the back of my mind, and to Strong’s point, that could have to do with how bad it is.
“The real problem that I see is it’s actually a disservice to people,” the actor said on his podcast. “The real issue with drinking is that often it’s sneakier, it’s weirder, it’s slower. It slowly takes over people’s lives … to try and cram an entire alcoholic journey and sobriety journey into 22 minutes — that’s not ever what it actually is like. That’s never how it happens in real life. So in a weird way, it’s hurting the issue that it’s trying to address.”
I agree! Special episodes are tough. Threading a serious needle on a comedy show requires a delicate touch. Otherwise, you end up with something silly instead of something meaningful. It’s probably best that Disney doesn’t air this episode anymore, even though that’s certainly where I saw it for the first time. It’s not even because times are different, the episode just isn’t very good and doesn’t accomplish what it sets out to do.