Saved by Saved by the Bell: How This Playful ‘90s Sitcom Could Become a Rallying Point for Social Justice

What if Saved by The Bell had flourished during the #CONTENT age? The PROBLEMATIC age where there must be thinkpieces and exposes and eviscerations of throwaway filler scenes? Taking the most trivial components of the pop culture zeitgeist, chewing it into a tepid mush, and regurgitating it to people craving that next sweet hit of righteously indignant outrage.

Outlets like Slate, Salon, and countless others are here to tell you what it all MEANS even though you never asked. This shilly-shallying around accomplishes nothing other than giving pretentious dickheads something to intellectualize on over beers in stemmed glasses.

Look at some of these real headlines:

• Dog or Jewish Boyfriend?: A Quiz
• White People Should Be Banned from Doing Yoga (Ed. note: we actually support this) BUT, look at this real opening sentence:

Seriously folks, how hard is this to understand, and how often do we have to keep repeating it: White people are continuing to recreate colonialist violence with their cultural consumption.

• Another Portuguese water dog? The Obamas should have made a different statement

WHAT DOES THE SUBTEXT SAY ABOUT US?

The following scenario is an imagined world where every minute of action at Bayside High was churned into an effort to better the world.

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Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

• Zack Morris should take a permanent 'time out' to check his privilege.
• Saved by the Bell's bigotry says a lot about privilege, but not in the way you think
• Is the character of Lisa Turtle woke?
• Kelly Kapowski is one initial away from being a white supremacist, but is that the only thing missing?
• Jesse Spano's faux feminism has this 'mama' pissed off and ready to wrestle her oppressive beau.
• AC Slater: a pioneer for gay athletes or a coward for hiding in the closet?
• Screech's last name isn't the only thing powerful about this brainiac: how SBTB foretold the rise of the intellectual and socially awkward
• Belding: the personification of the patriarchy at Bayside High
• Was Ms. Bliss mansplained out of Bayside?
• How Mr Belding's Bumbling Paternalism Fostered a Disdain for Authority in an Entire Generation of Bayside Students
• Bayside High versus Valley. Is rivalry within a privilege bubble distracting us from real issues?
• Kevin: Screech's Sassy Robot and the New Era of Post-Human Lovemaking
• How Zack Morris and NBC's Brandon Tartikoff stifled the decriminialization of marijuana and deepened America's collective depression
• Why Saved by the Bell axed Mikey and Nicki, two racially ambiguous characters who gave us hope for America
• Who raised the millennials? Why we should be blaming Rod Belding instead of our children
• Does The Max have Discriminatory Service Practices? A scene-by-scene investigation
• What the summer working at the Malibu Sands Beach Club taught us about millennials in the workplace
• Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child: how Mr. Belding's lax disciplinary tactics lead to modern thuggery.
• AC/DC: how one popular wrestler's first initials lead to the gay awakening in high school sports
• Buddy Bands: Friendship Tokens or Nazi Identifiers
• Turtle Power: the story of how one minority fashionista sparked the feminine mystique in urban millennial communities.
• We already know what school vouchers look like. Meet the crew from Bayside High
• Frack like a duck: how Becky warned us about risky oil exploration
• Too Hot for Teacher? How Saved by the Bell set unrealistic beauty standards for a generation
• Slater? Hardly knew her. How SBTB's macho men propagated date rape at frat parties in the early aughts.
• Zack's War: Slater wore the fatigues, but Zack fought the patriarchy
• Harvard of the West: Stansbury and the influence of brand on rising tuition
• But he loves me: The SBTB wedding is the ultimate manifestation of Zach Morris's gaslighting tactics.
• The Sprain: Just how far NBC was willing to go to further handicap one minority character.
• I'm so excited (to whitewash the American dance revolution)
• Goodnight, Ms. Bliss: how goofy antics lead to the suicide episode you never saw, birthing a generation of entitled brats.
• Slate/r: How reddit's SBTB subsite is defining how pop culture fanhood shapes digital history.
• Stacey Carosi as a man. The impact of gender roles on perceptions of bossiness
• Seeing red over Violet: was Screech and Violet's nerd to nerd relationship a subtle commentary on interracial relationships?
• Drinking and Deriving: how one special episode lead to my career in calculus.
• Johnny Dakota and the insensitive portrayal of Native Americans in the early 1990s
• Tori! Tori! Tori! How one rad chick taught me to be bad, bold, and bi.
• Love in an Elevator: How Zack's impromptu baby delivery inspired two decades of home birth
• Kellyvision: How a love triangle with Zack and Slater normalized polyamorism but actually hurt women
• Shaved by the Belding: he was a loving principal on TV, but backstage he had an affinity for the frictionless.
• Enslaved by the Bell: Mr. Tuttle's secret life in the sex-trade
• Breaking the Fourth Wall or building a new wall? Zack Morris was the original mansplainer
• Time Out: Zack is building a glass ceiling
• One Tough Cookie: how Screech's gluten-free dietary restrictions spurred the systemic bullying that shaped him into one of the early tech bubble's most ruthless entrepreneurs
• Gender Nerd-tral: how Screech's awkward portrayal of a trans-person set human rights back 10 years
• Friends Forever: How the Zack Attack turned one generation into sex-crazed lemmings for boy bands, and what does this mean for deforestation?