There are weird things about Saved By The Bell that are excusable. It's a kids' show, after all, so issues like the show's near complete and utter lack of continuity are par for the course. The weird old-timey nature of some of the plots come from the writers being middle-aged guys coming up with scenarios for Generation X high school students within the restrictions of a Saturday morning children's show. That's all fine. There's a lot that is far from fine. Kidnapping plots. Selling black friends into slavery. Sentient robots. Faculty and students switching places for a week as part of a wacky essay contest. Famous actors with crippling marijuana addictions. Children thinking that they'll profit directly from their public high school sitting on an oil field. Subliminal messaging being used to brainwash your crush into an obedient sex slave. Kids and their principal moving from Indiana to California (OK, that technically wasn't a plot). Saved By The Bell was insane, and it was awesome. How else could this kind of show be so beloved a quarter century after it first premiered, to the point we're getting an unauthorized tell-all TV movie? NBC and the show's producers tried launching a number of similar shows, and none of them have the legacy of Saved By The Bell because none of them were nearly as crazy. And with that, it's time to take a look at the show at its craziest...
Formerly the site manager of Cageside Seats and the WWE Team Leader at Bleacher Report, David Bixenspan has been writing professionally about WWE, UFC, and other pop culture since 2009. He's currently WhatCulture's U.S. Editor and also serves as the lead writer of Figure Four Weekly and a monthly contributor to Fighting Spirit Magazine.
