Mark Blankfield | Through the Shattered Lens

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, an old friend makes an appearance.

Episode 1.4 “Home Shopping”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 2nd, 1993)

With the entire school freaking out about midterms and Scott and Lindsay working in the school store (which apparently is just a cardboard sign set up next to a trashcan in the hall), Scott comes up with a brilliant idea. Why not start a home shopping network on Baywatch’s TV station? And why not sell a special memory tonic that is basically just chocolate syrup and fish oil?

Soon, the entire school is drinking Chocolate Memory. Evil old Dr. Hammersmith (David Byrd) announces that he’s going to make his midterm even more difficult as a way to combat the use of Chocolate Memory. Scott recruits James the Actor (Mark Blankfield) to pretend to be a Harvard professor who is willing to offer Dr. Hammersmith a job but only if Dr. Hammersmith gives an easy midterm.

James the Actor, I should mention, appeared in a handful of episodes of the original Saved By The Bell. He was a waiter at the Maxx and an actor who would happily put on a fake beard whenever Zack needed to fool someone. It’s not a surprise that he would come back for Saved By The Bell: The New Class. What is a surprise is that Scott — a transfer student from another school — somehow knows who James is. In fact, how do any of the members of the new cast know James as well as they do? James was Zack’s friend and now, suddenly, he’s Scott’s friend. It seems like James, a grown man approaching 50, just liked hanging out with high school students and helping them with their zany schemes. Red flag! Red flag!

Oh, this episode was dumb. Presumably, everyone flunked their midterms, except for Megan who was so worried about fooling Mr. Hammersmith that she actually studied for them. What’s funny is that the “difficult” questions that Mr. Hammersmith asked weren’t that difficult. I mean, if you can’t remember the year that the Boston Tea Party occurred, maybe you should be held back a grade or two. (1773, by the way.)

One of the more familiar complaints about the first season of Saved By The Bell: The New Class is that it didn’t do much to differentiate itself from the original series. It just brought in a bunch of new people and had them act like Zack, Slater, Kelly, and Weasel. That’s certainly true in this case. As I watched Scott go through the motions with his wacky scheme, I found myself suspecting that the episode’s script probably just had a line marked through “Zack” and “Scott” added in pencil.

At the end of the episode, Megan and Scott share a smile and agree that they make a great team. “Whooooo!” the audience shouts. I guess they make an okay team. I mean, they managed to get everyone in the school to drink a potentially lethal combination of fish oil and chocolate syrup. If Megan wants to become a professional con artist, I guess she’s found her man.

Meek-looking accountant Sanford Lagelfost (Bronson Pinchot) is on trial for embezzlement. It’s supposed to be a simple, up-and-shut case but when the beautiful star witness (Tracy Scoggins) testifies that Sanford is an amazing lover, it becomes a tabloid sensation and the jurors are sequestered in a hotel, where they have to deal with their own restlessness and several distractions, the majority of whom are also played by Bronson Pinchot. Pinchot plays a total of four characters but it’s not like he’s Peter Sellers or even Eddie Murphy. He looks and sounds like Bronson Pinchot in every role.

The jurors are played by a bunch of a familiar television actors. Alan Thicke plays a yuppie named Phil and Lynn Redgrave plays a hippie named Abby and they end up getting married. Stephen Baldwin is the waiter who falls for Heather Locklear, an actress who is a former call girl who is being threatened by her pimp. Madchen Amick is the spoiled rich girl. Television mainstays Mark Blankfield, Ilene Graf, William G. Schilling, Danny Pintauro, and Bill Kirchenbauer are all present and accounted for. Adding to the overall sitcom feel of the movie is the presence of Reginald VelJohnson as the judge. No one in the cast tries very hard, though I do think a case can be made that Madchen Amick was the most beautiful woman on television in 1990.

With the film failing to achieve either a consistent tone or a single laugh, the best thing that I can say about Jury Duty is that it didn’t feature Pauly Shore. Instead it featured Alan Thicke driving a BMW with a license plate that read, “BMW4Phil.” It’s hard to believe that this film was directed by Michael Schultz, who was responsible for movies like Car Wash, Cooley High, and Greased Lightning in the 70s and Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon in the 80s.

I wish I had watched The Last Dragon instead.