Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.2 “All Work No Play”

Posted on May 12, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, the Gang gets a summer job! Why would anyone want to work during the summer? What a bunch of losers.

Episode 2.2 “All Work And No Play”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 10th, 1994)

It’s summer time! (During its second season, Saved By The Bell: The New Class aired two episodes each Saturday morning. One episode would be a high school episode while the other would feature the Gang off-campus.) Mr. Belding has been hired to manage the Palisade Hills Country Club. The first mistake that Belding makes is that he hires Screech to be his assistant. Then he allows Screech to hire Brian, Bobby, Tommy, Rachel, Megan, and Lindsay as his staff.

Thinks quickly go downhill.

While trying to show-off for Rachel, Brian attempts to drive a golf cart with his feet. (“This is how I steered snowmobile in Switzerland,” Brian says.)
Assigned to wash and wax the car belonging to club owner Ed Harrington (Frank Bonner), Tommy D and Lindsay instead take the car for a joyride, which leads to Brian denting it with the golf cart.
The car has a dent and the paint job is scuffed. Tommy works out the dent and then repaints the car with Rachel’s nail polish. To help the polish dry, Tommy and Brian remove the car’s front panel, take it to the country’s club’s kitchen. and unplug the freezer so that they can instead plug in a huge fan.
Whoops! They forget to plug the freezer back in and $4,000 worth of food goes bad.
Bobby can’t drive but still tries to cover valet parking.
Screech is too busy falling in love with Ed’s daughter, Allison (Clare Slastrom), to be of any help.

Mr. Belding does the right thing and fires all of them. But then the Gang decides to throw a Luau for the club’s members (instead of the county and western barbecue that was originally planned) and it’s such a hit that Belding hires them back.

Seriously, what the Hell? Yes, the Gang saved the day but they only had to save it because they were so grotesquely immature and irresponsible in the first place. This was one of the worst recurring plotlines to appear on Saved By The Bell: The New Class. Someone would get a new job, they would totally screw it up, they would get fired, and then they would get rehired just because they felt bad after the fact. Personally, I think that if you steal a car, destroy a golf cart, and cause $4,000 worth of meat to go bad, you should be fired. I don’t care if you then put on a hula skirt and play a ukulele and and put on a little Hawaiian performance on a sweltering day in the middle of the desert. You’re fired.

GO HOME!

This episode annoyed the Hell out of me. I can accept a lot from this show but what I can’t accept is a plot where every complication could have been avoided by everyone not being a massive dumbass.

Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.1 “The Return of Screech”

Posted on May 5, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start the 2nd season of Saved By The Bell: The New Class!

Episode 2.1 “The Return of Screech”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 10th, 1994)

After the disappointing reviews and ratings of the first season, Saved By The Bell: The New Class rebooted itself for the second season. Robert Sutherland Telfer, Isaac Lidsky, and Bonnie Russavage were all fired and the characters of Scott, Weasel, and Vicky were dropped from the show. (No mention was ever made of where they had gone. They just vanished.)

Suddenly, Megan and Lindsay’s best friend was Rachel Meyers (played by Sarah Lancaster, who appeared once during the first season). Meanwhile, Swiss exchange student Brian Keller (played by a German actor named Christian Oliver) became the new head schemer while Bobby Wilson (Spankee Rodgers) became the new annoying sidekick with a crush on Megan. From the start of the second season, everyone acted as if Brian and Bobby had always been there. As for Lindsay and Tommy D, they continued to date. And because Brian had a crush on Rachel, there was no longer anyone around trying to break the two of them up.

Mr. Belding was still the principal but now, he had a much bigger office with a window. He also got a new administrative assistant, an education major who was on a work/study program with Cal U. As you probably already guessed from this episode’s title, that administrative assistant turned out to be Screech Powers (Dustin Diamond).

Now, to give credit where credit is due, neither Screech nor Diamond are quite as annoying in this episode as they would eventually become. By the end of the series, Diamond was giving such a broad performance as Screech that it almost came across as being deliberately self-destructive. In this episode, though, Diamond just plays Screech as being overly earnest and too eager to please. He may get on everyone’s nerves but at least he’s not doing the weird voices or the twisted facial expressions that would later come to typify his performance.

As for the plot of this episode, it’s dumb. Rachel needs $700 so she can replace the jacket that she borrowed (without permission) from her mother. Brian throws a party and sells tickets to help her raise the cash but when it turns out that Bobby’s house is not available for the party, Brian tricks Screech into unlocking the gym and allowing the party to be held in there. When Belding shows up and demands to know what’s happening, Screech takes the blame and decides that he should return to Cal U. And, really, he probably should have. I mean, after all the years he spent with Zack, Screech should have been able to see that he was being manipulated. What a moron.

But Brian does the right thing and tells the truth to Belding. Brian and the Gang all get two-weeks detention. Belding tells Screech that the students respect him and that he taught them an important lesson about the telling the truth. I’m not sure how accurate any of that is but the important thing is that Screech stays at Bayside.

This episode was actually not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Brian is a bit more likable than the first season’s Scott and this episode didn’t feature any of the mean-spiritedness that seemed to typify so much of the first season. Even Screech was tolerable!

Don’t get used to it, though. The season’s just getting started.

What Lisa And Megan Watched Last Night #61: Saved By The Bell: The New Class S2E9 “Belding’s Prank” (dir by Don Barnhart)

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as Christmas came to a close, my sister Megan and I continued to celebrate the holiday week by bonding over yet another episode of a bad (yet oddly addictive) 90s sitcom. Last night, we watched “Belding’s Prank,” an episode from the 2nd season of Saved By The Bell: The New Class.

Why Were We Watching It?

You can read the full details here but, long story short, I’m spending my holiday week in Ft. Worth with my sister Megan and Megan (because she’s the best) has every episode of Saved By The Bell: The New Class on DVD. When I learned this, I naturally became super excited because, when I was too young to know any better, I used to watch SBTB: TNC every Saturday morning. Anyway, for the past few days, Megan and I have been bonding over bad sitcoms from the 90s.

(For the record, Megan claims that, if she ever saw a single first-run episode of SBTB, it was just because she was waiting for California Dreams to come on.)

Last night, we watched several episodes of SBTB: The New Class but the one that made the biggest impression on me was the 9th episode of the 2nd season, Belding’s Prank.

(Before anyone asks, yes — we both would have rather been watching Django Unchained or Les Miserables but yesterday, it snowed! Needless to say, we were all excited to look out the window and see snow falling on Christmas. We had fun playing in the snow but there was no way that any of us we were planning on trying to drive in it. Seriously, we live in Texas, where 80 degrees is considered to be a cold front. We don’t know the first thing about driving in the snow.)

What Was It About?

SBTB: TNC was infamous for changing its cast of characters almost every season. When I first saw the show, the main character was Ryan (played by the adorable Richard Lee Jackson) but what I didn’t realize was that Ryan was actually the third main character. He was preceded by a guy named Scott and another guy named Brian Keller. Belding’s Prank is a Brian episode. When we first started watching this episode, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to follow the episode because I didn’t know much about Brian (played by Christian Oliver) as a character. However, I quickly discovered that Brian had absolutely the exact same personality as Ryan (and, I assume, Scott) and therefore, it really didn’t matter.

Anyway, in Belding’s Plot, it’s prank week at Bayside! Brian is encouraging everyone to engage in increasingly elaborate pranks. Bayside’s principal, Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins), thinks that it’s all a lot of fun. However, Belding’s assistant, Screech (Dustin Diamond) is concerned because there’s a new district superintendent and he could drop by the school at any minute. It appears that Mr. Belding has yet to meet (or even see) the new superintendent (which is kinda odd when you think about it) and when the superintendent does show up, Belding assumes that it’s a prank. The superintendent, meanwhile, sees that Bayside is in chaos and he promptly fires Mr. Belding.

This is where things get weird. The superintendent holds a school assembly to introduce the new principal. Since this is Saved By The Bell, there’s only about 20 students at the assembly. Anyway, before the superintendent can announce the new principal, Brian stands up and shouts, “We don’t want a new principal! We want Mr. Belding back!” Now, instead of suspending Brian for disrupting a school assembly, the superintendent replies that the students should have respected their principal if they liked him so much.

“Here’s your new principal,” the superintendent announces, “Mr. Richard Belding!”

Mr. Belding steps out on stage. The 20 students at the assembly go wild. So, was Mr. Belding really fired or was he just playing a prank on the students? Or did Brian’s words sway the superintendent?

Seriously, what the Hell’s going on?

What Worked?

Say what you will about this episode overall, it’s here that Dennis Haskins gave perhaps his best performance in the role of Mr. Belding. When Belding came out of his office and told the assembled student, “I’ve been fired,” you truly felt both the man’s pain and the disappointment he felt towards the entitled students who had just ruined his life. I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure that Haskins even had tears in his eyes as he delivered the line.

What Did Not Work?

Okay, let’s ignore the obvious flaws. I won’t go into the odd logic of the film’s plot. I won’t mention the fact that the student body at Bayside High appears to be abnormally powerful and influential for a bunch of public school students. I won’t even talk about the fact that Dustin Diamond is in this episode.

However, I am going to point out one of the most glaring continuity flaws in the history of this show.

As you may remember, in the original Saved By The Bell, Belding’s office was this tiny and depressing room with ugly wood paneling and a window that was never opened. Starting with the second season of The New Class, Belding got a new cheerful office. This office was much larger, much more colorful, and it had large windows that showed off the green campus of Bayside High. A good deal of this episode took place in Belding’s “new” office and, watching it, I couldn’t help but think about how much more cheerful Belding seemed to be now that his office was less oppressive.

However, if you’ll remember, there was a flash forward episode of the original Saved By The Bell that took place in 2003. This was the episode where a bunch of students gathered in the principal’s office so that they could watch a video time capsule left behind for them by Zach, Slater, and Screech. In this episode, it’s established that Mr. Belding is still principal of Bayside in 2003…

AND HE’S BACK IN HIS OLD OFFICE!

But that’s not all! When SBTB: TNC ended in 2000 (3 years before the time capsule episode), it was established that Belding was leaving Bayside so that he could take a job as dean of a college in Tennessee. It was also suggested that Screech (despite never having graduated from college) would be his replacement as principal…

So, what happened during those 3 years that led to Belding returning to Bayside and moving back into his old office? And why did Belding pretend like he barely remembered Screech while watching that time capsule video?

Seriously, this was really bugging me last night. Fortunately, it turned out that it was really bugging Megan as well. We spent about half an hour trying to figure out what had happened and we came up several possible scenarios, all of which concluded with Belding returning to California and murdering Screech in one grisly way or another.

Seriously, we had a lot of fun with it.

“OH MY GOD! Just like me!” Moments

None. Everyone in this episode was just too stupid.

Lessons Learned

It’s fun to come up with grisly ways to kill off an annoying character.