Reflecting On: Saved By the Bell
I get nostalgic for shows from my childhood with some frequency. Thank goodness for Netflix.
This past week, I've been reacquainting myself with Saved By the Bell. Not the college years. Not the ones with Miss Bliss. The real episodes. The good stuff: Rapping Snow White, catching Kelly's new boyfriend at a nightclub with another girl, Jessie's jerk of a stepbrother. The list goes on.
Watching this show has provided a few insights that--I think--escaped me when I was younger. The first, and most immediate realization is that this show makes me miss California. It's lucky I have a trip to San Diego coming up or the cold weather blues would have really sunk in. I have avoided watching the episodes where they work at the beach club since I got snowed in last week. It would have been too much to handle.
The second realization is that Zack was a really crappy friend! How did I not get what a jerk this guy actually was? If you take his behavior out of the sitcom setting, you get a sociopath. I could really get into some detail here, but this is a blog. Not a dissertation.
Let me stop briefly and reassure you: I still love this show. I remember the first episode I ever watched. I would have been not quite ten years old. We lived in Glen Carbon then. My younger sister, Alison, and I had an after-school habit of fixing ridiculous snacks (like an entire plate each full of cheese, crackers, and pepperoni) and settling in front of the television. We didn't know what to watch that day and we found this show with kids on it. Seemed like a good option. It was Saved By the Bell. In the episode, Zack and the others dress Screech up like an alien and try to convince a reporter to pay them for discovering him so they can buy a new camera. Madness ensues when the government finds out and wants to take the "alien" in for testing and research. We were hooked from that point on.
Looking back, it's clear how influential the characters became for me. I believed high school girls were supposed to look and dress like Kelly. I thought you would move through school with exactly the same group of friends. And, a few years ago, I realized that my physical "type" when it comes to dating has most often reflected Zack Morris. Well, Zack and MacGyver.
It's interesting to notice as an adult what went unnoticed as a kid. This happens with most of my old favorite shows and movies. A few years back, I helped write a play with some friends in LA. The basic idea was that a bunch of television characters from different shows fall out of the television and into the main character's living room. They don't understand how life works outside of their individual fictional worlds. In those worlds, everything is easier. Problems are solved in under an hour for the most part. Those worlds revolve around them because they are the main characters. Working on that script helped me gain a different perspective on what we find funny in sitcom situations. It's not that I don't laugh when the gang makes fun of something dumb that Screech says. I still chuckle on shows like Roseanne or The Golden Girls when the sensible characters "playfully" hit the dopey ones. But I also remember that we've shifted from these shows to "reality" series where bar fights and screaming matches are considered necessary for good ratings.
I don't have any super deep revelations about this. It's just an observation. Here's another one: I wish Netflix had Saved By the Bell: Hawaiian Style available to stream. But they don't. Tragedy.
This past week, I've been reacquainting myself with Saved By the Bell. Not the college years. Not the ones with Miss Bliss. The real episodes. The good stuff: Rapping Snow White, catching Kelly's new boyfriend at a nightclub with another girl, Jessie's jerk of a stepbrother. The list goes on.
Watching this show has provided a few insights that--I think--escaped me when I was younger. The first, and most immediate realization is that this show makes me miss California. It's lucky I have a trip to San Diego coming up or the cold weather blues would have really sunk in. I have avoided watching the episodes where they work at the beach club since I got snowed in last week. It would have been too much to handle.
The second realization is that Zack was a really crappy friend! How did I not get what a jerk this guy actually was? If you take his behavior out of the sitcom setting, you get a sociopath. I could really get into some detail here, but this is a blog. Not a dissertation.
Let me stop briefly and reassure you: I still love this show. I remember the first episode I ever watched. I would have been not quite ten years old. We lived in Glen Carbon then. My younger sister, Alison, and I had an after-school habit of fixing ridiculous snacks (like an entire plate each full of cheese, crackers, and pepperoni) and settling in front of the television. We didn't know what to watch that day and we found this show with kids on it. Seemed like a good option. It was Saved By the Bell. In the episode, Zack and the others dress Screech up like an alien and try to convince a reporter to pay them for discovering him so they can buy a new camera. Madness ensues when the government finds out and wants to take the "alien" in for testing and research. We were hooked from that point on.
Looking back, it's clear how influential the characters became for me. I believed high school girls were supposed to look and dress like Kelly. I thought you would move through school with exactly the same group of friends. And, a few years ago, I realized that my physical "type" when it comes to dating has most often reflected Zack Morris. Well, Zack and MacGyver.
It's interesting to notice as an adult what went unnoticed as a kid. This happens with most of my old favorite shows and movies. A few years back, I helped write a play with some friends in LA. The basic idea was that a bunch of television characters from different shows fall out of the television and into the main character's living room. They don't understand how life works outside of their individual fictional worlds. In those worlds, everything is easier. Problems are solved in under an hour for the most part. Those worlds revolve around them because they are the main characters. Working on that script helped me gain a different perspective on what we find funny in sitcom situations. It's not that I don't laugh when the gang makes fun of something dumb that Screech says. I still chuckle on shows like Roseanne or The Golden Girls when the sensible characters "playfully" hit the dopey ones. But I also remember that we've shifted from these shows to "reality" series where bar fights and screaming matches are considered necessary for good ratings.
I don't have any super deep revelations about this. It's just an observation. Here's another one: I wish Netflix had Saved By the Bell: Hawaiian Style available to stream. But they don't. Tragedy.
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