Hah! Saved By The Bell is the worst show that every one of us watched. By watched I mean damn near every episode.
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It's our cultural binder.
Maybe it's because I'm a little older (than TNC, anyway), but I never watched Saved by the Bell. The cultural binder I have with TNC is ,oddly enough, The Wonder Years. I suppose there is also James Baldwin and Bob Dylan, but that's different.
With all due respect, age doesn't have a lot to do with it. I remember my mom (mid-40s at the time) was watching an episode of SBTB: The New Class once, and she was distraught when the episode came back from commercial at the wrong point. I had to talk her out of calling our local NBC affiliate.
Yes, I guess I should have realized that devotion to Saved By the Bell doesn't know age. My failure to watch it is inexplicable.
I watched The Wonder Years but I don't remember as well as SBTB.
Aren't any of you wondering how I know that TNC watched The Wonder Years? Do some of you know?
@peep, you might want to turn down the sarcasm a smidge. Also, I dont know who you thought was going to give you brownie points for "The Wonder Years" connection.
Sarcasm? Brownie points?
Sorry if I offended you. Really just being silly.
'The Wonder Years' is very, very awesome. All the comedy and drama one could need in 30 minute show. They never released it on DVD because I heard the music rights would make it cost prohibitive. However, if you look hard enough, there are bootleg copies floating out there. Not like I would do anything like that, of course...
Ah, no offense to "Kelly Kapowski" but busy doing what???
A better question would be WTH happened to Lark Voorhies? Where is she hiding?
If I remember my "Saved by the Bell" E! True Hollywood Story, she did some soap operas but, being a Jehova's Witness she didnt want to do the bedroom scenes so I think she left serial television.
The DVD commentaries for "Fast Lane"
I'm embarrassed to say I kinda liked Fast Lane.
It wasn't THAT bad. Yes it was ridiculous, but it was Michael Bay ridiculous. I heard actually a big reason it was cancelled was due to its monstrous production costs.
I thought you were joking, but this is ACTUALLY on DVD. If I weren't having a Homicide: Life on the Streets marathon (and it wasn't $50), I would consider buying this and enjoying for the sheer camp value.
Hey, it beats picking up the new Fast and Furious movie :)
I have to get into Homicide at some point. How is that not in syndication anywhere?
Ah, Homicide. Probably one of the best 2 or 3 network dramas of all time. Really sorry to see that Andre Braugher's career didn't have more luck. Dude is brilliant in that show.
It's so good.
Andre Braugher has a new show coming out. It looks like it might be terrible but I will check it out anyway.
You should watch the video. It's funny.
Saved By The Bell is the worst show that every one of us watched.
Speak for yourself. I have kicked people out of my home for attempting to watch that show in my presence. Some things are unforgivable.
The Saved by the Bell gang, minus Screech and Mr. Belding, are on the cover of People this week. Apparently, the others wouldn't agree to reunite unless Screech and Mr. Belding were not involved.
I loved me some Lisa Turtle--one of the only black girls on TV who was actually "part of the group" instead of "the black one." The show was lame, but Lisa--and Slater's chest--made it worth watching.
What's so bad about Mr. Belding? I thought he was a decent guy who tried to be a rock star a few years back. Screech, however, is a boil on the ass of humanity. I have no idea how he's gone through life without being punched by random people on the street everywhere he goes.
Lisa Turtle was originally supposed to be Jewish but since Lark was such a killer actress they rewrote the part to be black. Also, her parents were both surgeons, she had a map to the mall, and her crush was this really smart guy who looked about 25, and she pretended to be a nerd! It didnt work out, a similar situation happens to Hillary in an episode of "Fresh Prince."
Lisa Turtle was HOT. I went back and forth between the three characters as a child, but I remember deciding that Lisa Turtle had the best long term potential.
I remember watching episodes thinking that there was nothing else on and maybe Slater would take his shirt off.
Slater realized he was Mexican only when he was, what, 17? How did his obviously Chicano father not impart at least a chunk of their family history to him up to that point. Even at the age of 12 I knew something about that was weird. He got the gas face that episode.
Aren't you so glad they made him a wrestler instead of a sport with less form fitting uniforms?
Anyone seen the episode of 'Always Sunny' where Mr. Belding was the old gym teacher? One of their funniest episodes to date.
"busy." This calls to mind the end to almost every "Behind the Music" episode, where the narrator says "X is still busy in the studio, making music and producing for new artists," and you see the ex-star behind a mixing board adjusting dials like their life depended on it. Yeah, busy.
Saved by the Bell was the sitcom equivalent of the Starbury meltdown. You watched, but you felt dirty afterwards.
man oh man, i had the huuuuughest crush on miss kelly kapowski back in the day, she still looks good though!
I still watch it sometimes in the morning on TBS (I think). Assuming 90210 isn't on at the same time, what better mindless thing could there be?
A local radio show interviewed Mr. Belding last week. He gets paid to go to night clubs, sort of like the old style casino greeter. He must have been a partier back in the day because he said he isn't drinking any more.
Belding and the radio hosts were ragging on Theissen for acting like Ginger from Gilligan's Island and trying to pretend like her past didn't happen.
I have to admit, the worst show I regularly watched was Charles In Charge.
Guess I'm the only one who seriously lusted after Jesse "I'm So Excited" Spano. She always looked a good 3 years older than the rest of them.
Also, I jacked Screech's open-button-up-over-the-colorful-T-shirt look all through 6th grade.
"I'm so...scared."
Glad I'm not the only one who laughed at that episode.
Oh, Kelly Kapowski. I never forgave the ho for calling Zach by some other guy's name at the junior (?) prom. Some people say it was a leap, but she segued smoothly into Val on 90210 for me after that.
lolz...ok, someone took it a wee bit to serious...but i have to say, she did fit the role as a cuniving vixen in 90210...god bless her for that...
Wasn't there an episode of 90210 where she got busy with somenone in a Burger King bathroom? Or was it some girl with her same shoes on that episode? I can't remember.
Got busy in a Burger King bathroom?
Kelly Kapowski & Humpty Hump???
I remember the episode when she smoked pot as the single most significant proof of her "devious" and "coniving" ways...the faux-moral outrage was off the charts...
I assume some of you have read Chuck Klosterman's long essay on Saved by the Bell? His stuff is pretty hit or miss with me, but finding someone willing to write that many words about SBTB really made me happy.
I also feel like Chuck K hits or misses with me. I like him when he's not trying too hard to be profound, which I think he spent too much time doing in that SBTB essay (Tori is totally like all those people in your life that are around for a while, and then aren't! It's a metaphor for our lives!)
Yeah, I agree. He's coming out with a new book of essays pretty soon. I think that format can be problematic, because I don't think he writes them in an organic way. I feel like he comes up with a topic, and then fills the words around it. I still think he's absolutely brilliant in his own way, and I liked 'Killing Yourself to Live" a whole lot. I even read his fiction book, 'Downtown Owl,' and found it to be really enjoyable.
Screech lives in Wisconsin. My brother, a proud member of Best Buy's geek squad, actually worked on his computer a few times. Screech actually tried to get out of paying for the service by arguing that he "was Screech and shouldn't have to pay".
He ended up paying.
At least he didn't try to buy them off with his sex tape.
I have an embarrassing residual fondness for that show. But then, Zack Morris was my first TV crush. I was young!
maybe it's just my mood, but this is the funniest post you've ever done..
I would guess that "Saved by the Bell" is your generation's "Love Boat" or maybe "Three's Company". Come to think of it, there have to be a half dozen other shows in the 70s and early 80s that were equivalently horrible. While it's possible that none of them plumbed the depths of mass market pablum culture mediocrity quite so thoroughly as SbtB, I think you could make a solid case for most of them.
I will admit to watching a few episodes of SbtB here and there, but damn Screech and most of the girls were hard on the ears and I just wasn't as much a tv watcher as when I was a teenager.
Like barbecue on Memorial Day and fireworks on the Fourth of July, there are few traditions as patriotic, as thoroughly in the spirit of America as sitting on the couch and watching a SBTB marathon while smoking a lot of pot.
Dope and Bayside High, where the only drugs are Jessi's pep pills. It's what makes our country great.