Topic: Saved by the Bell REBORN

"You the man, coach! When I grow up, I want to be just like you! A single, childless adult who parties with kids." - A teenager to the now grown up jock Slater at a high school party.

I just watched the entire SAVED BY THE BELL revival. I've only seen maybe 9 - 10 episodes of the original show, probably when I had chicken pox and had to stay home for a month as a child and was watching a lot of TV. I was impressed by how the 2020 incarnation of SAVED BY THE BELL updated the series to a modern format, recreated some of the original energy of the series but updated it to 2020 with an ironic, self-aware angle, how it embraced social justice issues of education and racism and inequality with charm and wit -- and how it picked up on all the characters over two decades after they were last seen on TV, showing their families, jobs, ambitions, and overall situations.

Mischiefmaker Zack Morris has become the inept governor of California; Kelly peddles self-help books; Jessie has become a psychiatrist and published author and high school counsellor and former big man on campus Slater remains stuck in high school as the gym teacher and become an arrested adolescent.

The best part of the show's scenes with the original cast (who are all parents and teachers to the new students) is the deadpan references to all the absurd episodes of the original show.

It really goes to show how, for a show to have a proper revival with the original cast, it is important that the original cast when we last saw them were not shot and blown up after getting their brains sucked out. Or sent to a rape camp off camera before being turned into a computer that exploded. Or merged with another character and then lost forever. Or sent into an unstable vortex, fate unknown.

Slater to Jessie, high school social justice warrior turned adult school guidance counsellor
I think I owe you an apology. I feel bad about how I treated you back in high school. You were always standing up for things for things that you believed in and I kept telling you to calm down.

But you were right to be angry.

We all made fun of you, but you were the only one who really knew what was going on. Styrofoam is bad. Drilling for oil on a football field is bad. A school sponsored bikini contest is bad. I shouldn't have been telling you to calm down. I should have been yelling right there with you.

Re: Saved by the Bell REBORN

Excerpts from Slater's therapy sessions:
And at a certain age, it becomes too late to reinvent yourself so yeah, I'll admit it, I'm really concerned about the Undertaker now that he's retired from wrestling.

My life's been pretty normal.

My dad threatened to blow up my friend with a live grenade, but it was the 90s. Although he threatened to do it last year to a PostMates guy he thought had eaten one of his fries.

My mom wasn't around much in high school. Like, I know I had a mom, she was mentioned once. I think I had a mom?

My best friend was a chameleon named Artie.

I don't have any stressors. I go to school, hit the gym, go to the Bayside School Career Fair where all my really successful friends will make me feel like a failure, watch TV, do a Sukodu -- YEAH, I know, I heard it.

All my friends have these big jobs.

Back in high school, everything was a competition. Zack was all: bet I can date that girl. Bet I can win Miss Bayside. Bet I can date your sister Jaybee -- who I also never saw and no one ever talked about it!

I bet Quinn's psychotherapy sessions would have him describe how weird it was that he was nearsighted in the pilot  but had no vision problems for the rest of the series.

Re: Saved by the Bell REBORN

The season 2 finale of the SAVED BY THE BELL has flashbacks to the 90s show (of which I saw very, very, very little), and the footage has been filtered to look like low-grade VHS that looks... strangely like a Universal DVD of a Season 1 episode of SLIDERS.