Somewhat implausibly, ‘Saved by the Bell’ one of year’s best shows
‘Saved by the Bell” comes back to life again — but in a postmodernist, self-aware form — as a series from Peacock, now streaming. Unlike Netflix’s “Full House” sequel, “Fuller House,” which continued in the spirit of the original, “Saved by the Bell” is both a revival and a reboot, aimed at the now-grown kids who watched it back when. (Though, generally speaking, it is still safe for children.) Although there are plenty of references laid on for the fans, you needn’t have watched the old shows to understand or enjoy the new one.
We are back at Bayside High, where original characters A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez), the affable athlete, and Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley), smart and political, are on staff, as the school coach and guidance counselor respectively. Old classmate Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) has accidentally become the governor of California “as part of a scheme to get out of a $75 parking ticket.” He’s still married to erstwhile head cheerleader, the former Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Thiessen). Their son, Mac (Mitchell Hoog), carrying on his father’s hair and pranks, now attends Bayside — as does Jessie’s son, Jamie (Belmont Cameli), a dim but sensitive jock who partially occupies the old Slater role.
As governor, Zack has cut $10 billion from the budget, closing schools as a consequence. Shamed at a news conference, he promises to send kids from the closed, poor schools to posher schools. And so students from inner city Douglas High are bused to Bayside. There’s Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez), who is serious, motivated and an echo of Jessie; Aisha (Alycia Pascual-Peña), competitive as well but at sports (she is also partially Slater); and Devante (Dexter Darden), who is taciturn and mysterious and has no counterpart in the earlier series.
At Bayside, they will be thrown together with Mac, Jamie and Lexi (Josie Totah), the campus queen and part-time mean girl. Totah is a transgender woman — as J.J. Totah, she played a lot of male parts — as is Lexi. The subject is otherwise left alone, except to make some points about fear and acceptance when the story needs them. Well before the season’s end, they will have become a gang.
Lark Voorhies, as Lisa Turtle, the original show’s one regular Black character as well as its designated rich girl, will make a cameo appearance. Screech, the old series’ not-hot nerd, played by Dustin Diamond, is mentioned but absent.
To some extent, the series is a clash of realities. The Douglas High kids, Black and brown, are traveling not only to somewhere white and wealthy but also from someplace more or less real to somewhere quite improbable. The plots recall the original but with absurdist (rather than merely absurd) twists. There are schemes and pranks, romantic alignments, misalignments and realignments. There are messages, of a sort, and they are essentially those of the original: Be true to yourself, be true to your friends, be true to your school, be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful and, the new series would add, if you can’t be careful, be rich.
The returning cast fits the new mood ably. The younger players are first-rate — even better than one might notice at first, given the general air of nuttiness. But they play different levels with great skill, resolving the character and the joke about the character in people you can authentically care about, at least a little, even as the metafictions remain legible.