Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00. The show is currently on Prime.
This week, season 2 comes to a close with a two-part epiosde!
Episode 2.25 and 2.26 “Goodbye Bayside”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on December 31st, 1994)
“Kids can make a difference!” is the message of the second season finale of Saved by the Bell: The New Class, and technically that is true. Right now, as I write this, a bunch of young people in Michigan are casting their first-ever vote for a 4’8″ anti-Semitic weasel. The kids can make a difference, but maybe they shouldn’t, because kids are stupid.
Luckily, the kids attending Bayside in 1994 weren’t spending all of their time listening to Nazi-adjacent Twitch streamers. When they said they wanted to make a difference, all they meant was that they wanted to save their school from J. Walter McMillan (Victor Brandt), the real estate tycoon who spent five million dollars to purchase the school from the school board. McMillan is planning on having the school torn down, and he’s even planning on doing it before prom! Mr. Belding is losing his job. Screech is going to have to do his work-study at another school. Megan will be going to private school, which would actually probably increase her chances of getting into a good college — so yay, Megan! Meanwhile, Bobby, Brian, and Lindsay will be transferring to Lincoln High. (Given that Brian is supposedly a foreign-exchange student, shouldn’t he be going back to Switzerland at some point?) Rachel and Tommy D are going to Valley. “I don’t talk to people from Valley!” Tommy says. “Now I can’t even talk to myself!”
(Oh, Jonathan Angel. So often your performance as Tommy D was the sole pleasure to be found on this show.)
The kids decide it’s time to protest! It’s also apparently time for Screech to pretend to be an attorney so he can sabotage the deal. (I guess James the Actor finally realized it was kind of dumb to spend all of his time hanging out with a bunch of stupid high school kids.) This is what drives me crazy about Saved by the Bell: The New Class. There is no reason to believe that Screech could successfully pretend to be a lawyer. But that’s what the Gang goes with! Screech introduces himself to the School Board as “I.M. Slick, attorney,” and no one notices that he looks and sounds exactly like Belding’s assistant. Then Screech introduces himself to McMillan as “I.M. Slicker, attorney,” and it doesn’t occur to the very wealthy and very connected McMillan that he’s never heard of this guy before. Mr. Belding eventually discovers what Screech is up to and he puts a stop to it.
However, Mr. Belding doesn’t say anything when Rachel pretends to be the school nurse and tells McMillan that the entire school is under quarantine due to a measles outbreak. McMillan says that he’ll hold off on demolishing the school until the measles outbreak has ended. To me, it seems like the perfect time to demolish the school would be during a measles outbreak, but what do I know. Belding and the kids discover that McMillan went to Bayside in the ’50s, so they decide to throw a 1950s prom to try to convince McMillan to spare the school. Belding and Screech both dress up as Elvis.
McMillan comes to the prom but he’s not impressed — and really, why should he be? Slater (Mario Lopez) and Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) both suddenly walk into the gym and demand that McMillan not tear down the school. The audience goes wild. Then Sandy Bennett (Aileen Fitzpatrick) shows up. Sandy was once the girl on whom teenage McMillan had a crush. Seeing Sandy is enough to get McMillan to change his mind about a five-million-dollar business deal. Sandy says that her nephew insisted that she had to save Bayside. Who is her nephew? A long-haired Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) steps into the gym and the audience goes wild again.
And it is nice to see Mario Lopez, Lark Voorhies, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar back at Bayside. It’s also interesting to note that none of them seem to be particularly enthused about seeing Dustin Diamond again. (Gosselaar has said that shooting this episode was the last time he ever saw Diamond.)
Bayside is saved! Season two comes to an end with a two-parter that was dumb but crowd-pleasing. (Slater will make at least one more New Class appearance. This episode was it for Zack and Lisa until the short-lived Peacock revival.) This episode was also the final episode for Christian Oliver, Spankee Rodgers, and Bianca Lawson. Next week, when we start season three, Brian, Bobby, and Megan will all be gone and they’ll never be mentioned again. We can assume Brian went back to Switzerland and Megan probably did go to that private school. As for Bobby, who knows? What I can tell you is that the season three cast will feature some of the actors and characters who are the most regularly associated with Saved by the Bell: The New Class.
For now, let’s just be happy that Bayside High School has been saved… again.
