Saved by the Bell/Headscratchers

• My god, did anybody in this school ever set foot in a high school!? Were they raised by wolves?! Were they smoking marijuana mixed with crack cocaine and crystal meth when writing and filming this show!? ....right....so it just bugs me that this show is so freaking not like high school.
  • Apparently you never went to a high school in Los Angeles in the 1970s... Truth in Television more than a non-Los Angeleno would suspect, I guess.
    • To bad this was the late 80's-early 90's
• It's been noted by more than one person that, were this not a comedy, Zach would be on trial for multiple counts of fraud, trespassing, breaking and entering, destruction of public property, and quite possibly felony burglary. There'd also be mention made of kidnapping, forgery and extortion. And let's be honest, for as charismatic as he is, Zack has had his fair share of detentions (the ones he shows up for, anyway), and cut more than a few classes. It wouldn't look good for him.
  • Zack could do all that and get put away for jaywalking.
  • Hell, Zack is a textbook example of a sociopath.
  • How do you plan on incarcerating a man who can CONTROL TIME?
• This no doubt reveals me to be a horrible, racist person, but I find that the idea of a black, female, sixteen(ish) year-old high school student obsessing over acquiring Bruce Springsteen tickets to be funny in an almost Dadist way.
  • I think it is more of an environmental thing rather than a racial one. Keep in mind that the majority of her friends are white and that her closest friends since elementary school were Zack and Jessie. Regardless of racial stereotypes, it makes sense that they would have many interests in common. (On a more technical note, it may also have been an artifact from when Lisa's character was envisioned as being white and Jewish, but I doubt that this is the case).
• As a geeky kid that always got picked on, this show always cheesed me off for how abrasive it was towards kids that weren't the cute, perfect popular kids. Especially the way it treated the "nerds" as some kind of sub-human race that was perfectly okay to abuse and manipulate. Seriously, I saw an episode where Zack was basically (while naturally being grossed out) sexing up as many nerdy girls as possible to get his song voted up the charts, and the other kids response wasn't anger at him being manipulative, but anger that he was fraternizing with the nerds. Hell, Screech is like the kids Morality Pet to somehow make it okay.
  • I was always a geeky kid who got picked on as well, but I somehow knew not to think too hard about anything on this show when I watched it as a kid. However, now that I'm a geeky adult, I just want to hit the people responsible for this, because really, just because a person is socially-awkward and smart doesn't mean they're not a person.
  • Well there was one episode where Zach was "bought" by an overweight girl in one of those dating auction things. He spent a lot of time making excuses for why their date had to be pushed back, until she caught him in one of his lies and he gets chewed out for being such a dick. IIRC the episode ends with them dancing together.
• I've only seen scenes from the show, but what is with Screech's and Zack's report on Zack's "American Indian" heritage? It is so racist I can't believe that it was allowed to air.
  • The teacher in that class basically said the same thing right after the report was over, and assigned Zack to redo the project. The episode ends with Zack doing a much more somber report and becoming genuinely proud of his Native American (specifically Nez Perce tribe) heritage.
• Why is it that Screech was considered to be a kid genius during the first few seasons (enough to have the other kids actually respect him for his intelligence), yet in later seasons he becomes a moronic punching bag for the rest of the gang? In fact, why did Screech even hang out with people who looked/acted nothing like him, verbally abused him, and could barely tolerate his existence? And what happened to Kevin the Robot?
  • He became sapient and attempted to murder Screech. The rest of the gang don't like to talk about it very much.
    • When it comes to Kevin the Robot, the first season of the show seemed to involve occasional sci-fi episodes (like the one where Screech gets hit by lightning and can see the future, the one where his dental filling can pick up radio waves, etc.). After the first season, the showrunners apparently decided to discard these elements. By the time the show evolved into The College Years, it was hard to imagine that this franchise had started out with elements like talking robots.
  • Just a big case of Flanderization. All the characters experienced it to some extent, but Screech got hit by the Flanders ray the worst. He went from a nerdy but still somewhat-normal teenager in the early years of the show (especially the "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" incarnation) but as the show became more popular and tried to appeal more and more to the trendy, pop-culture obsessed teenage crowd, Screech became a bigger nerd cliche.
• When I had to get glasses as a kid, I refused to wear them in school for so long because this show treated wearing glasses as something that will immediately stop all schoolkids from interacting with you except to beat you up. When I finally did wear them in school, I got about one 'hey, you've got glasses' comment and then it was mostly fine. I'd have started wearing much earlier if it weren't for this show traumatizing me.
  • Except Jessie had Purely Aesthetic Glasses. And she probably wore them for about a third of her overall screentime.
• Why the hell does anyone in the cast like Kelly, I mean it's obvious she just likes Zack because of his looks and that as soon as something better comes along she'll dump him quicker than rancid bread, in fact she has already done this at least twice. First she is in a good relationship with Zack and leaves him over her boss, then in college years Zack already was starting a relationship with a nice girl and she came in wanting him back, after she gets back with her and start yet another good relationship she dumps she cheats on him (not sexually though) with her teacher, both times the reasons were pretty much they're older and prettier and every time Zack has to "try" to make her get back with him after the incident. If the show would had kept going after they got married in Vegas I would bet money that she would divorce him over the mailman or something.
  • Because they're teenagers and teenagers are stupid. Also viewers.