Saved by the Bell told the story of group of smarmy little bastards attending high school in the fictional Bayside, California. One of the hallmarks of the show was that aside from the school principal, Mr. Belding, everyone on the show was a conceited son-of-a-bitch who would turn on his or her so called "friends" on a moments notice.

The main characters were as follows:

ZAC MORRIS
The star of the show was Zac Morris, who was patterned as a cross between Ferris Bueller and Tom Cruise, a shallow blonde pretty boy who was constantly cooking up crazy pranks and money-making schemes. Zac's character would often "Break the Third Wall" and speak directly to the camera. Zac's pranks and schemes were generally cruel and heartless, designed to bring profit and pleasure to himself at his friends' expense. These included using hidden microphones to spy on his friends' conversations, stealing the principal's car (and subsequently wrecking it), and selling secretly photographed scantily-clad pictures of the girls to the horny boys at school. Once he even inserted specially recorded subliminal messages into a girlfriend's cassette player in an attempt to date-rape her. According to standard sitcom formula, Zac's schemes would always backfire in the end, and he would act as though he was truly sorry and had learned his lesson, but come the next week, he would be right back to his cruel and heartless ways again.

KELLY KAPOWSKI
Kelly Kapowski was supposed to be the cute "girl next door" type. She was a pretty cheerleader who was popular with all the boys and never had an original thought in her head.

LISA TURTLE
Lisa was supposed to be the Valley Girl/Mall Rat of the group. She was obsessed with fashion, yet managed to dress pretty god-damned tacky most of the time, wearing weird little business suits and shit to high school(?!?).

A.C. SLATER
The fellow walking around in the tight fitting little tank top/short-shorts outfit would be A.C. Slater, the "jock" character of the show. Slater was some kind of frizzy headed muscle-boy who was supposed to be macho or something and called his girlfriend "mamma." He was supposed to be a chauvinist bigot, but with a 'heart-of-gold,' ala Archie Bunker and what not.

JESSIE SPANO
Jessie was the politically active feminist intellectual. She was always trying to get the gang to recycle, or to let girls join the football team and what not. She was supposed to be some kind of over-achiever who always got straight-A's, but she was never able to come across as anything less than a complete and total fucking moron. Oh, and to top everything else off, she had a nasty-assed kinky perm.

MR. BELDING
Mr. Belding was the principal of Bayside High, where the kids attended school. He was supposed to be a wise and fatherly figure, yet still be clueless enough to let Zac conduct all these ridiculous stunts right under his nose, but this dichotomy was never truly believable. He would usually go for the first 20 minutes of the episode or so as a complete and bumbling fool, and then somehow pull it together enough to uncover Zac's latest scheme and deliver some words of wisdom by the end of the episode. In retrospect he was obviously suffering from some form of Multiple Personality Disorder.

SAMUEL POWERS aka "SCREECH"
Screech. Of all the characters on Saved by the Bell, Screech was probably the most decent guy of the bunch. Which is not to say he didn't have his problems, but compared to the other criminals-in-training on the show he was a Mother (Fuckin') Teresa. Like Mr. Belding, Screech had something of a dual nature, being both a genius and an idiot at the same time. Why is it that on so many shows the geniuses and smart kids are presented as nerds and morons (Screech, Urkel, etc...)? In real life, if a person really was that smart, he would certainly know better than to dress and act the way they do on TV. If you're smart enough to build a life-size talking robot slave, then you would certainly be smart enough to know that walking around in a polka-dotted shirt with bright red walking shorts, black socks, and rainbow suspenders is going to make you look like a jerk. I think the state of TV "nerds" is evidence of the bigotry TV writers have against intelligence. Since sitcom writers are generally on the lower end of the IQ scale (they are sitcom writers after all), they must harbor a lot of envy and resentment against they're intellectual superiors, and by striking out against them they feed their egos and help to alleviate their own feelings of inferiority.

Screech's love interests are another area we should discuss. For the most part, Screech would contend that he was in love with Lisa, and he would constantly follow her around, trying to convince her to go on dates and stuff. However, on the very rare occasions when the opportunity to date Lisa actually occurred, he would seem to strangely lose interest in her, and at the end of the original series, when the kids were graduating from high school and preparing to go their separate ways, the prospect of never seeing Lisa again didn't bother him in the slightest. The reason for this is simple, if you stop and think about it. Screech was never really in love with Lisa, he just pretended to be so that no one would suspect his true feelings: Screech's forbidden love for Zac Morris. Zac was hopelessly heterosexual and Screech knew this, so he never made his feelings openly known, but they are obvious to any who look for it. Screech was completely and utterly devoted to Zac, following him around like a lovesick puppy dog. Screech would do just about anything Zac asked of him, regardless of the consequences for himself or others. How else do you explain his willingness to attend sleep-overs or slumber parties at Zac's house, despite the fact that as a young high school man in his late teens, he was far to old for that (as an aside, one can question even more why Zac of all people would have slumber parties in his bedroom at all? Could it be that Zac was aware of Screech's feelings, and, while unable to return them, felt sorry enough for Screech to play along a little bit every know and then? It's possible. However, knowing Zac's black-hearted nature, it's more likely that Zac knew about Screech's feelings for him and simply strung him along in order to keep Screech under his thumb.)? Questions about Screech's sexuality were finally answered years later on the sequel series Saved by the Bell: The New Class, when Screech, finally over Zac, returned to the show to become Mr. Belding's husband.

The history of the series is a somewhat interesting one. The show originally began as "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" on the Disney Channel. The show was basically a vehicle for Haley Mills, who starred as a Junior High School teacher. Her students included Zac, Lisa and Screech, and some weird other kids that we never saw again. The show had a brief and not particularly successful run on the Disney Channel, before moving to NBC, to become the first live-action first-run sitcom to air on Saturday mornings in recent history. On NBC, "Good Morning, Miss Bliss," became "Saved by the Bell," and the focus of the show moved from the teachers to the kids, who were now in high school. Zac, Screech, and Lisa were now joined by Jessie and Slater. No attempt at continuity was attempted between the two shows, and inconsistencies (such as the fact that the original show took place in Ohio or some shit like that, while the new series took place in California) abounded. The show was aimed at the pre-teen audience, but was also popular with high school and college age audiences as well, particularly with guys, who used it as stroke material. Unfortunately, the series did not end with the final episode, but went on with several TV movies, and spinoff series Saved by the Bell: The College Years and Saved by the Bell: The New Class. In addition, it spawned a slew of god-forsaken copy-cat series, including California Dreams, City Guys, and USA High, and can currently be seen in re-runs all across the globe.

A final note: Saved by the Bell has spawned a number of rumors over the internet, the primary ones being that Mark-Paul Gosselar (Zac) is gay, and that Mark-Paul Gosselar is dead. Let me clear this up once and for all - the rumors are TRUE. There are those that will tell you that Gosselar is still alive and acting in movies such as Dead Man on Campus, or the WB television series Hyperion Bay. It's all a pack of vicious lies, designed to prolong the pain of Mark-Paul's fans, and prevent them from moving on with their lives. Don't be fooled.

SAVED BY THE BELL
VITAL STATISITICS

CAST:
Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zac Morris
Lark Vorhies as Lisa Turtle
Tiffani-Amber Thiessen as Kelly Kapowski
Dennis Haskins as Principal Belding
Mario Lopez as A.C. Slater
Elizabeth Berkeley (That 'Ho' from Showgirls) as Jessie Spano
Dustin Diamond as Screech