Summary

• Danielle Fishel remembers the story of a
  Life and I
  Episode about her weight gain without her consent or any alternatives.
• In the episode “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs,” the topic of weight gain is treated insensitively for comedic reasons.
• The
  Life and I
  The episode undermines body positivity with jokes about fat people and is insensitive to the actors’ discomfort.

Life and I Star Danielle Fishel describes an unpleasant experience she had regarding her appearance during the show. Fishel played Topanga Lawrence in the entire Life and I7 seasons that aired from 1993 to 2000. In a podcast called Pod meets worldFishel rewatches every episode of the popular sitcom and thinks about it alongside co-stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle, who played the roles of Shawn Hunter and Eric Matthews.

During a recent episode of Pod meets world, Fishel recounted how she was informed by producers about an episode that dealt with her weight gain. In season 7, episode 17, “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs,” Topanga and Eric secretly agree to go on a diet because they are unhappy with their respective weights, leading to the false assumption that Topanga is pregnant. Friedle was also involved in the meeting, with Fishel saying he reacted calmly at the time, but later learned that he found “really painful and hurtful.” Check out the rest of Fishel’s comments below:

They called me into the office to tell me they were going to do it. It wasn’t really like they asked for it. Will had gained some weight, I had gained some weight. (They said), ‘Obviously you guys have gained a little weight, so we’re going to write an episode about it, and we just wanted you to know. That’s how it’s going to be, it’s going to be really funny.'”

The hardest thing for me was that meeting because Will immediately said, “Oh yeah, I’m totally in,” but I know now that he was very unsure and it was really painful and hurtful for him.

But I didn’t know that. And he was so funny and such a great actor and he was like, “Yeah, sure, that’s no problem, I’m OK with that,” and for me it was more like, “Oh, wow…” Nobody had told me about it.

I remember thinking, “Wow, these people think I’ve gained so much weight that we have to do a whole episode about my weight gain, and now I have to say I’m OK with that because they didn’t even present me with another alternative. And even if they had, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying, yeah, I don’t want that.”

And then it stayed in my head forever.

“She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs” has aged poorly

The story behind the scenes and the episode itself are problematic

The production meeting before “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs” already made this Life and I episode problematic. The producers should never have created an episode based on the assumption that their actors would gain weight, let alone without the actors’ consent. The episode itself also has aged poorly as the story deals with the sensitive subject matter and uses it mainly to belittle Topanga and Eric for purely comedic reasonsand create the false belief that Topanga is pregnant.

All of these moments are oversimplified and are made worse by the fact that in Life and Me, Fishel and Friedle had no choice but to treat their bodies as a joke.

At the end of the episode, there is a brief attempt to address body positivity and diversity when Topanga reveals that she was never pregnant and that it all started with her feeling self-conscious about the weight she gained. This leads to other characters also admitting their insecurities about their bodies and Mr. Feeny talking about unrealistic societal expectations. Unfortunately, this is quickly undermined by the doubling of fat jokes about Ericwho says Topanga isn’t fat and he only told her that so he could steal her pizza while he shoveled the food into his mouth.

When Jack reveals that he is so obsessed with being fit because he “Jumbo Jack” In high school, Eric bursts into laughter and teases him about the nickname, which doesn’t sound right, while Topanga and other characters admit their insecurities. At the beginning of the episode, Alan Matthews calls Eric “Pork” and Eric runs out of the house when he hears the Mr. Softee truck driving by. All of these moments are greatly simplified, and even worse, since Fishel and Friedle had no other choice but to treat her body as a joke in Life and I.

Source: Pod Meets World