Saved by the Bell Ruined My Life Part III

Welcome back, everybody, to Part III in my ongoing emotional exorcism of Saved by the Bell because it ruined my life. You should know how it goes by now. I watch an episode, I make fun of it, I digress a little bit, and everybody laughs along with me because Zack, Kelly, Slater, Screech, Lisa, Jessie, Mr. Belding, and Tori (fucking yuck) are piles of shit and make me regret breathing. If you lack the ability to find the other two articles on the show I've penned thus far, you're an idiot and don't deserve my sympathy, time, or derision. I would include hyperlinks, but this is basic web-knowledge here, people, and if you lack even the simplest ability to scroll down or up the page and click on things, I feel sorry for you and sincerely hope you don't vote in the November election. Hell, if you can't navigate around this site, there's a tremendous chance you can't even read, and the fact that you've made it to the end of this paragraph at all and have made sense of these symbols which I'm typing, then you need to contact NASA or some shit, because you're a miracle.

I'm slowly working my way towards the big memorable episodes of the show, but I'm trying to focus a bit on the less-discussed moments in Bayside history. The reason is two-fold: one - I don't know how much I'll be able to say about Jessie's caffeine addiction that hasn't already been said by millions of people over the years (though I am licking my chops at the idea of deconstructing the Hot Sundae video), and two - the lesser-talked about episodes hide a lot of what makes the characters such shitheads in the first place. And besides, it's more fun for everybody to slowly build to a cathartic climax, right? If I learned anything in high school, it's that people (girls) don't like you if you hit the climax right away without taking your time, hitting the right spots, and properly building up to it. I'm kidding. I didn't have sex in high school. Not for lack of trying, though, am I right? Up top! (Cyber-High-Five!)

Awesome mullet behind Zack here. Also note the
Andrew W.K. cameo (two points if you get the reference)

So, the next episode on the chopping block (metaphor) is "Blind Dates." The episode begins with the song and all that jazz that we know and love. The show starts proper with Zack finishing off his Big Gulp by loudly sucking the straw. The audience thinks this is hysterical because they're idiots. It's not funny. It's fucking rude. Zack breaks the metaphysical fourth wall and tells us that he's just gotten detention - AGAIN! - and he's the only kid on "America's Most Wanted." Congratulations, Zack. You're a fucking asshole and you can't stay out of trouble for seven minutes. You don't deserve to be dating the inexplicably-hot and unfortunately-poor head cheerleader. I can't wait for the episode she dumps your ass for the handsome manager of The Max (not Max, Jeff). He then informs us that detention can't ruin his day because he's Kelly's date for her birthday on Saturday night, which means he's going to feel her up. Fuck this guy. Jessie wants to know if Lisa has a date for the party Saturday night, and Slater wants to know why she has to have a date and Lisa tells him that she doesn't even go to the supermarket without a date. This is funny on several levels, none of them intended. Level A: Lisa never had a boyfriend. Sure, she made out with Eric, Jessie's asshole-just-kidding-he's-just-a-misunderstood-kid-who-moved-from-Brooklyn-and-doesn't-know-how-to-make-friends step-brother (and he disappeared after his two episode stint, never to be seen or heard from again), kinda-sorta hooked up with Zack which almost got Zack punched in his pretty face by Screech, and tried to hook up with some really smart and attractive nerd, but that was it. Lisa had the worst relationship track record of any of the gang, and that includes Screech, because at least he had a recurring girlfriend in Violet Bickerstaff.

Jessie points out that it's the nineties, which I believe every show in the early-nineties was contractually obligated to state, and that women don't have to go to parties with dates anymore. See, once 1990 hit, there was a paradigm shift. If you went to a party as a girl alone up until December 31, 1989, people had the legal right to kill you. But once 1990 hit, hoo-boy, it was a different time, I'm telling you. Jessie's an idiot. Not to be outdone, Slater comments that when a guy goes to a party alone, it's because he wants to but when a girl does, it's because she's a horribly unattractive bitch-face skank (slight paraphrasing). Slater's an asshole. But he's an asshole with a heart, I guess, because it's revealed that Slater's jealous that Zack gets to take Kelly, and Zack is a dickhead about it by pointing right at Slater when he says he has his date as Kelly is on his arm. If I were Slater, I'd belly-to-back suplex the shit out of Zack right into my classic-car-decorated locker and then make time with Kelly in front of the principal's office. Of course, I'm not a jheri curl/mulleted Hispanic all-galaxy athlete like Slater was, so maybe I just lack perspective.

Kids of 2012: That's a mullet (a pristine one)
and a payphone. They were used by people in 1990.

Belding arrives on the scene and approaches everything with a Y-chromosome about his niece, Penny, who is in town visiting. See, Belding wants someone to show her the sights, give her a good time (I'm assuming Belding wants to get her laid), all that stuff. Every guy gets terrified and bolts because I guess the Belding clan is notorious for tricking people into hanging out with their nieces who have HPV or something. Screech shows up because he heard Belding's trying to get his niece inseminated. He tells Belding that he'll date anything, which is a nice moment of absolute honesty in the subterfugian world of Bayside. Screech, by this point (I'm assuming they're sophomores or juniors), knows his role as a dorky sidekick and is willing to stick his pubescent pecker into a cow if that means companionship. One sympathizes.

Mr. Eyebrows

Lisa wants to hook up Jessie with her neighbor for the party, and Jessie is dismayed that her neighbor isn't Kevin Costner. Remember when Kevin Costner was a sex symbol? That's hysterical. Have you seen him lately? He looks like a liver-spotted, pot-bellied ex-union worker who hangs out at the American Legion. And to think, Showgirls Spano wanted to plow him. The times, they have-a changed, eh? Either way, Jessie's desperate - in spite of her claims just minutes ago about the socially-acceptable single woman - and is willing to entertain the notion. But then the bell rings, and it is a school, so class starts. And the teacher is, I don't fucking know, a real gem. I don't even have words to describe this pile of shit. He's a real dick, but then this is a world in which teachers don't educate their students, they just do broad-strokes proclamations about inane shit and detent Zack in an effort to move the plot forward to its illogical conclusion. If I were a teacher in this universe at Bayside, I don't know what the hell I would do with myself. I wouldn't be able to discipline Zack at all because I'm employed by the worst, most ineffectual principal in history and I would be overruled at every turn, so my only real hope would be threatening his sexual livelihood. No wonder teachers don't last at Bayside. Mr. Hudson, the overworked/underpaid/overweight/undertweezed fellow that he is, quickly gives Zack detention for passing notes, and it's one of the few moments in which I feel sorry for Zack at all. He was only passing notes because Jessie was trying to get info about Lisa's neighbor and she couldn't wait forty-five fucking minutes. And when Zack gets punished, Lisa and Jessie don't bat an eye. He's facing suspension because Jessie wants to get her rocks off. Fuck Jessie.

Shitty Production Values: You can see Zack waiting to the
right to enter the "office"

Back in Belding's office, Dick is attempting to convince two real dweebs to take out Penny. They can't, of course, because one is prepping for a chess tournament and the other one is sorting his M&M's by color. They don't deserve to get laid. They both zip out of the office and Zack enters to give Belding the news about his suspension-earning tenth detention. Belding gets erect just seeing the detention slip, and it's creepy how much this asshole principal who lets his students walk all over him gets sexually aroused over the fact that one of those students earns a suspension. Belding, though, in a moment of epiphany, lets Zack off the hook from being suspended if he takes out Penny. Fuck Belding. He's a horrible uncle and an even worse principal. All of this spells doom for Zack as he has to take out Penny on the night of Kelly's party.

I had a sex dream just like this. Don't ask about what
happened with the axe. And, lemme tell ya, that glove smells.

On the other side of the school, Lisa is still trying to convince Jessie to give Brett(her neighbor) a chance. Jessie has a Bayside-daydream in which she imagines she's on a dating show and the contestants are Teddy Krueger, Mason Voorhies, and Donald Chump. You read that right. You know, for being a feminist, an "I don't need a man to define me" type of gal, Jessie's a real fucking stick in the mud. All she wants is a man so she can define herself. I'm disgusted by her inability to be what she claims she is. Jessie is afraid of her best friend setting her up with a serial murderer so she insists on meeting him before she agrees to a date, like it's a big deal. Lisa, for her part, doesn't think it's an earth-shattering suggestion and sets everything up because, in this episode, Lisa is the most normal, unassuming, least-assholish person of them all. She just wants to get her friend laid. Good on you, Lisa Turtle. It doesn't excuse your inability to get or maintain a boyfriend of your own, but it's a start.

Brent the Serial Murderer. Look at his eyes. Those are the
eyes of a stone-cold killer.

The next day at The Max (because the kids don't fucking go anywhere else), Jessie meets Brett. And he looks like a serial killer. I'm not fucking kidding, look at this guy. He doesn't look like a movie serial killer, he looks like a real life serial killer, you know, the unassuming kind who is a sociopath and understands that people will suspect him of murdering people if he walks around with a fucking blood-stained hatchet all the time or something so he overcompensates by getting a dickweed haircut and wears all-the-way-buttoned-up dress shirts underneath busy sweaters because that's what he thinks normal people wear. He looks like a guy who dresses like an approximation of a normal person, and I just fucking know from looking at Brett that he's murdered his mother because she wouldn't let him go to the school dance with his best gal Stephanie in eighth grade and now her body is decomposing in the bathtub upstairs in their house. You're not fooling me, Brett. He tells Jessie that he's not rich or stuck up and that his parents work just to pay his tuition for private school (yeah, right, Brett). Then, in the most obvious giveaway that he's not a regular person, he asks Jessie if her folks work. What a weird fucking question for a normal person to ask someone else, Brent. What if Jessie said no, her parents just live off the welfare? Then what, Brent? Wouldn't a better question be, 'what do your parents do for a living?' At least then you give Jessie the option of softening the blow by saying her parents are in between jobs or whatever right now. But Brett just gives her a yes-or-no answer, and that's  something only a serial killer would do. Jesus, Brett, if you're going to pretend to be normal, you're going to need to do better than that. And then Jessie tells him that her parents are divorced, and Brett, the charmer that he is, reveals that his best friend's parents just got divorced and he's trying to be a good friend by making more time for him. What a serial killer thing to say! Quit bullshitting everyone, Brett, and just kill her. Jessie asks him to Kelly's party and he instantly agrees because he knows he can kill her in the alley afterwards. Jessie finally gets weirded out, not because of the murdering thing, but because Brett is short and Jessie is a materialistic bitch.

Meanwhile, Zack has conspired to set up Penny with Screech (pretending to be Zack) and Slater overhears the whole thing because he's standing on the toilet in the bathroom (I'm assuming because he wanted to overhear someone conspiring about something treacherous and not because he's just a fucking weirdo but I can't be sure). Slater, the heartbroken toilet seat-stander, now has some leverage over Zack the prick. The next day at school, Lisa and Kelly make Jessie feel like a bitch for being a bitch and Jessie has an instant change of heart. It doesn't matter that Brett is short anymore. Jessie will nail him anyway because why not. Slater conspires to get Screech-as-Zack and Penny Belding at Kelly's party at The Max (because where else?) in an effort to paint Zack into a corner. If I know anything about Zack Morris, Slater's going to be real disappointed because nobody stays mad at Zack for longer than nine seconds even if he teams up with Brett to serial kill your sister.

Skinny Pete Alert! Skinny Pete Alert!
He's not a geek here; instead he's decked out in
Bugle Boy's Fall 1990 clothes. Beautiful

At the party, everything is awesome. I mean that. I can't even be cynically upset at this thing. Everyone is fucking dancing like people danced in the early nineties (think a lot of white people snapping their fingers and rigidly swaying their hips from side to side and nodding their heads) and there's red punch to help the dancing fiends hydrate. It's the type of party I would love to attend if people invited me to parties. Screech and Penny show up and Zack is pissed because he's afraid of something that doesn't make sense. Maybe he's afraid that Penny will tell Belding about the switcheroo, even though that doesn't seem to be an immediate threat. Slater thinks that Kelly will find out and leave Zack for him, but that doesn't make sense, either. Slater is a great athlete but he can't think for shit. Brett wants to dance but Jessie is still hung up on the height. Brett dances with Lisa instead and he dances like you would assume a sociopathic serial killer would dance. It's brilliant. Jessie matures in two seconds and Brett forgives her because he's a good serial killer.


Slater's plan goes into action and Penny tells Kelly all about how much she loves Zack (Screech). Penny mentions that Zack (Screech) is so hot he makes her teeth sweat. I tried using that line once and I got hit in the gonads. Penny then reveals that she's taking Zack (Screech) back to Belding's house to FUCK because Belding is gone. Kelly gets so pissed that she calls Penny an un-nice girl. It's adorable. I wish Kelly wasn't dating Zack, because then she'd be awesome. Instead, she's an idiot who is continually made to look like shit by proxy. Kelly finds out Zack's big plan and instantly forgives him, which I actually get here, because Zack risks getting suspended just to keep his date with Kelly. Slater, the dumb shit, didn't really think this one through at all. He inadvertently endeared the asshat to the cute cheerleader. If Slater had just let things take their natural course, Zack would have certainly screwed things up, but instead he made Zack look like a caring, wonderful guy. What a shithead Slater is.

GIVE HIM A FAT LIP, A.C.!

And that's the end of the episode. There's no real resolution and so many lingering questions persist. What happened to Brett? Did he continue his murder spree unabated? Was he finally caught in Oklahoma in 2003 after he adopted a different identity, got married, and killed strippers on the weekends? Did he have a growth spurt? Did Jessie and Brett make time? Did Penny screw Screech-as-Zack? Was it good for her? For him? What about Lisa's date? We never even saw him. I don't even know if he exists. What kind of presents did Kelly get? Why are there no adults at The Max? Is there an age limit? Did Slater lose his temper and just go ballistic on Zack after Kelly kissed him on the cheek? Why is Slater so stupid?

I'll admit, I almost completely forgot about this episode before I chose it on Netflix. I remember Brett because he was a goon, and I remembered Penny, but it was a completely ineffectual episode that didn't resonate with the six year-old version of me. It's one of those weird episodes that doesn't serve any purpose at all for anyone, and while most episodes of the show don't have any continuity ties to other subsequent episodes, this just seems like a waste of time. Zack starts off the episode as an incredibly hateable jerk, but by the end, he's just a sweet boyfriend. Nothing worthwhile there. Slater is proven to be a mentally deficient meathead who stands on fucking toilet seats (that's something I wish subsequent episodes would have picked up on). Kelly does Kelly things. Jessie is a bitch who somehow avoids getting murdered by Brett (it would have made for a better episode if we got to watch Jessie fight for her life as Brett had her tied up in some nondescript room somewhere and he called her 'mother' and talked about 'freeing her from the fleshy shackles of existence'). Screech just wants to get laid. Lisa has a date that doesn't exist. It's a weird episode, and it makes me hate most of the characters a little less. Except for Jessie and Slater. After this episode, I can't fucking stand either of them.

Got an episode you want to discuss? Suggest one!

Theories on Brett? Tell me what happened to him!

Did Penny get pregnant and have to move to Michigan for a year to live with her grandparents and quietly put up the child for adoption to avoid a stir back home? Tell me!

Have something important to add? For God's sake, man, add it!

"Hey, girl, I'ma lick yo feet. Wit ma tongue."