The Island Shoe Girl's Blog

These Nine West heels are perfect for hanging at the Max, going to the big game, or just watching Saved by The Bell. Photo by Jean Thornton.

As another weekday morning dawns, alarm clocks buzz, showers spray, and across the country countless workers begin Saved By The Bell therapy.  No, this is not a new type of yoga or a different take on Pavlov’s classically conditioned dog; it is a throw back to the memories of our adolescent years and our old television friends from fictional Bayside High: trouble maker Zack Morris, head cheerleader Kelly Kapowski, athletic A.C. Slater, geeky Samuel “Screech” Powers, brainy Jessie Spano and stylish Lisa Turtle.   Let us not forget America’s favorite bumbling principal, Mr. Belding.  It doesn’t mater where you went to high school; everyone is a Bayside Tiger deep down inside. 

Monday thru Friday a daily class reunion is held and every adult under the age of 40 wants to attend.  TBS provides the wary professionals of the world with an alternative to the network morning news shows and the chatter on the basic cable’s 24 hour news stations.  It is not that these flashback viewers are uncaring about the world news; most of them are living that news.  They fear job loss, feel the pinch of the recession, and worry about foreclosure and/or the high costs of health care.   With all of these happy thoughts running through their heads, it is no wonder that they would rather escape to back to the days when our biggest worry was winning the volleyball tournament at the Malibu Sands Beach Club.

Remember the days when Zack and A.C. battled it out for the affections of Kelly and your biggest worry was rival Valley High School bringing in a Russian Chess champion to steal the title from Screech?  The days when The Max was the coolest restaurant in town and also where Casey Kasem held a dance contest.  You dreamed of having a cell phone like Zack’s, which was the size of a small briefcase.  Yes, there were difficult times, like when Jesse got hooked on caffeine pills or Kelly dumped Zack for the new college-guy manager at The Max.  Whether the problem was getting caught with fake I.D.s or discovering the new girl at the mall was actually homeless, the predicament could always be solved with one of Zack’s crazy schemes.

Depending on your age, you may have a preference for a certain period of Saved By The Bell—maybe the early years when Zack, Screech, and Lisa were lowly seventh graders in Miss Bliss’s history class.  By far the most popular span was during the high school years with all the joys of dating, running teen help lines and an endless stream of teen drama.   Later, it was onto Saved By The Bell: The College Years with new friends in co-ed dorm rooms, a couple of dates with a professor and even a rave.  Like all good sitcoms it ended with a TV movie special where the whole gang heads to Vegas for Zack and Kelly’s wedding.

Just like the rest of us, our friends at Bayside High school grew up and became adults too.  The push for an actual reunion show became a pop culture hot button issue last year; not so much to see the actors again, but to see the characters they portrayed.  I like to think that Zack and Kelly are still together; they probably have twin girls and a rascal of a little boy.  I imagine A.C. is divorced from his first wife, and Jessie would be Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court Justice spot.  Lisa is the chief editor at a fashion magazine and Screech is either a science teacher at Bayside or is a porn star.  Today, our friends from Bayside are probably a lot like we are.  They wake up and get ready for work, walk the dog, grab a quick breakfast and worry about their 401ks.

All of them, like us, long for a time when things were simpler, when our team always won the big game on Friday nights, there was a dance every weekend and all our problems could be solved by a long talk with the principal, usually within a half hour.  We now live in a world where the morning news shows are often riddled with declining home values and political scandals—which makes it nice to spend part of our morning with the gang from Bayside High and to be truly Saved By the Bell from the real world.