Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, it’s time to learn how to drive!

Episode 2.4 “Driver’s Education”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 29th, 1990)

Good Lord, Zack Morris is so insecure!

Even though Zack and Kelly have been dating since the prom, Zack still fears that Kelly will dump him when Slater turns 16 and gets his driver’s license.  Slater’s already got a car.  Sure, the car looks bad at first but Slater says he’s going to fix it up and, one jump cut later, he’s got a pretty badass red convertible.

Zack’s solution?  If you thought Zack would respond by resolving to be such a great boyfriend that Kelly wouldn’t leave him, you don’t know Zack Morris!  Instead, Zack comes up with a ludicrously complicated scheme to cause Slater to flunk driver’s education.

A few words about driver’s ed at Bayside:

First off, driver’s ed is one of the many classes that is taught by Mr. Tuttle (Jack Angeles).  Last season, Mr. Tuttle inspired the creation of Buddy Bands.  This season, he’s teaching the students how to drive and complaining that he should have been named principal instead of “Mr. Balding.”  Mr. Tuttle was one of the few recurring teachers on Saved By The Bell and Jack Angeles, who was an attorney in real life, was a good comedic actor.  It’s almost always a good sign when Tuttle shows up.

Secondly, at Bayside, students aren’t required to actually drive a car.  Instead, they drive this thing:

Seriously, this thing has got three wheels and apparently, it’s not supposed to leave the classroom.  How are you going to learn how to drive in this thing!?  To his credit, Mr. Belding mentions that he’s often told Tuttle to get rid of this half-assed attempt at a car.

Zack’s plan is to take the driver’s ed car out of the classroom so that Slater can give him a private lesson.  Slater will get caught in the faux car and somehow, this will lead to him getting kicked out of class.  (Since it’s established that Slater already knows how to drive, couldn’t he just go down to the DMV and take the test regardless of the class?)  However, Kelly asks Slater for a ride, Zack attempts to get Kelly out of the fake car, and the pretend car ends up crashing into a locker.  Slater, Zack, and Kelly run for it.

In order to get Zack to confess, Kelly pretends to have amnesia.  When Zack announces that he will not only confess but that he’ll also get Kelly the best medical care available (good luck doing with with no car, Zack!), Kelly says that she knew “Zack” would do the right thing.  Hearing his name, Zack realizes that Kelly never had amnesia.  Zack says that he’s not going to confess and it won’t matter because what’s Belding going to do?  Flunk everyone?

The next day, at the start of class, Belding announces that he’s flunking everyone.

At first, Kelly stands up says that she’s to blame.  Slater jumps up and accepts responsibility because Slater’s a soldier at heart.  Realizing that Slater now looks a lot better than him, Zack finally admits that he’s the one who took the driver’s ed car out of the classroom.  The end result is that Zack flunks, Slater gets two weeks of detention, and Kelly gets …. no punishment at all.

This was actually a pretty enjoyable episode.  I mean, it was dumb but that’s par for the course when it comes to Saved By The Bell.  This episode features a lot of Tuttle comedy and Mario Lopez once again outacting everyone else in the cast.  That’s what Saved By The Bell is all about.