Well, here it is. The answers you have been waiting for. First, let me start off my talking a little bit about Saved By The Bell (SbtB). SbtB originally started as a pilot for NBC titled Good Morning Miss Bliss (GMMB). This pilot had no of the original cast members, and actually including Jaleel White (Steve Urkeal from Family Matters). NBC passed on the idea to run it and Disney picked it up running 13 episodes. GMMB on Disney had Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zack Morris, Dustin Diamond as Screech Powers, Lark Voorhies as Lisa Turtle and Dennis Haskins as Mr. Belding... all the familar characters. However, confusing to a lot of fans, these 'middle-school' years were set at JFK Junior High in Indianapolis. After they graduated Junior High, NBC took it back, changed the name, moved it to California and introduced Mario Lopez as Slater, Tiffani Amber-Thiessen as Kelly and Elizabeth Berkley as Jessie. Now we have the whole crew. The HS years of SbtB raised a lot of questions. Zack talks about a 2-year relationship with Kelly in the first episode of SbtB, but she was never mentioned in GMMB. Zack and Jessie, according to SbtB, were friends since 1st grade. Where was she in GMMB? No one knows. My theory is this. Producers of GMMB did not anticipate the show to do as well as it did, so they had to introduce characters and give them history.
Now, I am not going to go into the Malibu Sands episodes nor am I going to talk about any of the TV movies. If you have any questions about those, feel free to ask though. SbtB ran for the four years of Highschool. However, halfway through 12th Grade, Kelly and Jessie decided to leave the show to pursue other opportunities. They had already filmed the HS graduation episode so they decided to jet. The producers struggled to fill the gap, thus developing a new transfer student named Tori (Leanna Creel). Instead of writing into the script that Kelly and Jessie left, they wrote around it. The viewer was supposed to think that during the episode you were watching, Kelly and Jessie were just in another class or gone. Yeah, we didn't think that at all.
Well after that they went on to Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Slater, Zack and Screech all were part of the original cast. Well, into the first season, Kelly decided she wanted in again and conveniently 'transferred' to California University to be close to Zack. After 19 episode of SbtB:tCY NBC cancelled the show but decided to let producer Peter Engel tie up some loose ends, thus the TV Movie Saved by the Bell: The Wedding (Zack and Kelly's, you moron).
Here's a couple of dates that will make you feel really old:
Good Morning Miss Bliss pilot on NBC: 1987
GMMB on Disney: winter '98 - spring '99
Saved by the Bell, the original series: debuted NBC on August 20, 1989
Tori years: '92 - '93
College Years Pilot: September 7, 1993
The Wedding: October 7th, 1994
10 comments:
I LOVE SAVED BY THE BELL!!! and actually, i remember watching it not on saturday mornings, but on, i believe tuesday nights. you may need to do some more research into this... but it was originally aired during primetime tv and after the college years blew up in their faces, they began running reruns on saturday morning with those great shows such as california dreaming, etc... just so you know ;)
honestly, i can't believe i was that little when it started. wow.
I was always afraid to admit that I didn't watch saved by the bell or know as much about the show as the rest of our crew, I knew it would shame me forever and probably have me cast out. It's great to know you're still alive down there. I miss you buddy!
A-Fo
don't forget about Violet, the female screech...she was a winner.
haha. daddy gets tori on everything she does. she is absolutely the most haneous thing i have ever seen and should never show her face again on television. thats how i really feel.
Sorry for the long post, but . . .
SBTB is one of those shows that (to me) never seemed all that good; but it was, for some reason, abosrbing . . . I think I watched it every Saturday when I was in middle school. Still, I don't remember ever really liking it. About a year ago I read an essay about SBTB that discussed this sort of response to the show. The essay is in Chuck Klosterman's (a writer for Spin magazine) book entitled "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." It's probably the most analytical thing you'll ever read about the show. (Or maybe any show, for that matter. Also, in general, the book is amazingly good.) According to the essay, the show was apparently a cult phenomenon among college students at the time. This is odd because most of those older viewers could recognize that the show wasn't very "good;" but, they watched it anyway. The essay tries to explain why the show had such a strange appeal (even for people who knew it was bad, predictable television).
The ultimate thesis of the essay is this: "Saved by the Bell wasn't real, but neither is most of reality." If you want to know how he gets to that conclusion . . . go read the book.
I have read excerpts from that article by Klosterman. It is definitly bizarre how well the show did when you take into account the demographic of it.
Ok Ben, I DO have a question. Could you please explain to me why the RA in college was like 35 years old? This never made any sense to me and I always thought it would be more appropriate for Screech to be the RA. Thanks in advance...
well, here's my guess on Mike- he was a graduate student- can't graduate students be RAs? But seriously, is there a school with a huge common room and decent-sized dorm rooms that is co-ed? doubtful.Since when did SBTB ever make sense?
Hey Ben, can we poll whether AC or Zack was sexier?
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