Saved By The Summer continues! Adam and I continue our Saved By The Bell “Summer Event”, as we turn our attention to the short-lived, prime time entry Saved By The Bell: The College Years.
Launching directly out of the original cast’s graduation from Bayside High, The College Years followed select members of the gang to their next phase of life and education. According to some reports I’ve read, the producers were only interested in the OG female cast members if all three agreed to sign on. Otherwise, the show would just focus on the guys. And that’s sort of what happened. You see, the original pilot aired in prime time, directly following the series finale of Saved By The Bell. In that pilot, there was a character played by Essence Atkins who would be written out by the time the series officially debuted in the fall. Instead, original cast member Tiffani Amber Thiessen returned in the role of Kelly Kapowski, leaving Lark Voorhees and Elizabeth Berkley as the cast members to pass on the sequel series.
I was not a fan of this show, neither then nor now. Up to this point, Saved By The Bell had revolved around Zack Morris as the charismatic golden boy who always had a plan, and could talk his way out of anything. Once we got to college, however, he was “catching Ls” left and right. I get that the show was trying to convey that it was “Zack vs The Real World”, but that’s not what I wanted to see. Sure, it focused a lot on the self discovery that tends to happen in college (a more grounded Screech, and an A.C. Slater who finally realizes he’s Latino), but we’d spent 5 seasons (Miss Bliss, as well as 4 seasons of Saved By The Bell) with a character we’d come to love, and this show came along, seemingly, just to deconstruct him.
Plus, what made the original series special was that it was a standard sitcom, on Saturday morning. Once the show moved to prime time, it was just another mediocre 90s NBC sitcom. There was no difference between it and, say, Boston Common or The Torkelsons. Once the writing was on the wall, the show tried to course correct by rushing an inorganic reunion between high school couple Zack and Kelly, culminating in the Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas TV movie, meant to serve as the series finale for The College Years. We wouldn’t see this couple again until the 2020 Peacock “reimagining”, despite the fact that every interview between 1994 and 2019 strongly suggested the Zack and Kelly marriage was doomed to fail.
Anyway, Adam and I discuss what did and didn’t work about the show, as well as what we would have done to save it. Ya know – the standard Remember That Show? treatment! You can find the episode here, or on all major podcatchers!
