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.

Oh no!  The Glee Club is in trouble!

Episode 2.11 “Tommy the Tenor”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 15th, 1994)

During the second season, Saved By The Bell: The New Class aired twice on Saturday morning.  The first episode would feature the Gang at Bayside, dealing with high school stuff.  The second episode would feature the Gang outside of school, working a summer job or visiting relatives in another state.  This often wrecked havoc with the show’s already fragile continuity.  Episodes in which Rachel and Brian were dating while working at the Palisades Country Club would air beside episodes set at Bayside, in which Brian was still pining for Rachel and Rachel, for her part, barely seemed to notice that Brian was even around.

In this Bayside-set episode, Brian joins the Glee Club because he wants to be near Rachel. (Rachel, meanwhile, joins the Glee Club because the teacher is hot.  That’s also why Lindsay and Megan join as well.)  The only problem is that Brian can’t carry a tune.  So, he arranges for Tommy stand outside the classroom and sing through an open window while Brian lip-synchs.  Tommy has a wonderful voice but he’s afraid that his cool, leather jacket-wearing image will be ruined if he joins the Glee Club.  And the teacher apparently is too stupid to notice that Brian can only sing when he’s standing near an open window.

(Speaking of continuity, Lindsay doesn’t realize that Tommy is the one singing for Brian, even though she’s been dating Tommy forever and should presumably know what his voice sounds like.  In this episode, Lindsay and Tommy barely speak.  It’s as if everyone involved forgot that Tommy and Lindsay were supposed to be the school’s power couple.  How lazy were the writers this season?)

Uh-oh, the school board is thinking cutting funding for the Glee Club!  Mr. Belding invites the school board’s Mr. McKenzie (Eddie Allen) to hear the Glee Club perform but, unfortunately, Rachel, Megan, and Lindsay are too busy fighting over the teacher to sing (and that all get hiccups due to — God help me — hiccup spray that Rachel buys to sabotage the other girls) and Tommy isn’t available to provide a voice for Brian.  The Glee Club is doomed!

Oh well.  Who needs a Glee Club?

Apparently, Bayside does.  Belding arrange for yet another performance and, this time, Tommy walks out on stage and does his best Tony Bennett impersonation.  Tommy D is willing to risk his cool to save the Glee Club.  What a loser.

The best thing about this episode is that Screech was not present.  Bobby mentions that Screech is in Alaska, visiting his grandmother.  For some reason, this is presented as a laugh line.  I mean, surely, there are grandmothers who live in Alaska, right?  And people do visit them.  It’s not like Screech went to Manitoba to visit her.  Now, that would have been funny!

Otherwise, this was a dumb episode.  The lip-synching was dumb.  The assembly was dumb.  Why was the school board funding the Glee Club?  Why couldn’t the Glee Club just do a fundraiser on their own?  When I was in high school, I stood outside of Richardson Square Mall in short shorts and a crop top and yelled, “Car Wash!” and raised enough money to fund the Drama Club through 2035.  It’s not that difficult!

Seriously, this episode barely even tried.  No wonder Screech went to Alaska.