Matt Hamilton | Through the Shattered Lens

Do you all remember that time that Rod Belding came to Bayside High School as a substitute?

At first, the students were surprised. Rod was the younger brother of their stuffy principal, Richard Belding. Richard was going bald. Rod had long blonde hair. Richard was boring. Rod was exciting. Richard was by-the-book. Rod took chances. Richard wanted to go on a boring class trip. Rod wanted to take the students white water rafting! When Richard called Rod out for the way he was running his class, student Zack Morris accused Richard of just being jealous of his brother. You would think this would get Zack suspended but instead, the studio audience just said, “Awwww!”

But then, the night before the students were due to leave for their rafting trip, Rod told Richard that he had met a flight attendant and he was abandoning the students.

“Cover for me,” Rod said.

“I’m tired of covering for you, Rod. Get out of my school!” Richard snapped.

That said, Richard did cover for his brother. He said Rod had the flu and then he volunteered to take the students on their rafting trip. Kelly Kapowski was so thrilled that she kissed Richard on the cheek, which one would expect to lead to Mr. Belding losing his job once word got out that he had physical contact with a student. Instead, the audience applauded.

Zack asked Richard why didn’t tell the truth about Rod. It turned out Zack had overheard the whole conversation. Richard admitted that the students at Bayside got the less exciting Belding.

“We got the better Belding,” Zack replied as the audience awwed and applauded once again.

The audience was there because this was all an episode of Saved By The Bell. In fact, “The Fabolous Belding Boys” was perhaps the best episode of Saved by the Bell, featuring excellent performances from both Dennis Haskins and Edward Blatchford.

The 2010 short film, Saved By The Belding, tells the story of a group of men who don’t understand that Saved By The Bell was just a television show and that Dennis Haskins and Edward Blatchford were just actors. Hoping to help them regain some sense of reality, their psychiatrist takes them to the Hollywood home of Ed Blatchford. Ed is excited to talk to his fans, asking them if they know him from his work in Last of the Mohicans. The men, however, want to know is he really had the flu or if Richard was just covering for him. Ed, realizing that the men don’t understand that he’s not actually Rod Belding, invites them to join him for dinner at a nice restaurant. However, as Ed is heading to the restaurant, he runs into an old acquaintance — a flight attendant — who invites him to come have dinner with her.

Will Ed abandon his new friends? And will Dennis Haskins once again have to come to the rescue?

Saved By The Belding is a sweet little film, one that views the cultural obsession with Saved By The Bell with both affection and wit. (That said, the cultural obsessions does seem to be waning a bit. For the first time in a long time, it’s next to impossible to find the show streaming online.) Both Dennis Haskin and especially Ed Blatchford deserve a lot of credit for being good sports and appearing as versions of themselves. Ed’s shock when Dennis appeared out of nowhere made me laugh out loud.

Check it out below and ask yourself who got the better Belding.

What would you do if, one day, you were suddenly told that everything that you believed was a delusion?

That’s question that rests at the heart of A Mother On The Edge, a film that aired on Lifetime earlier this month.

The mother of the title is Blair Ayken (Kelly Thiebaud). When we first meet Blair, her life is definitely in flux. She’s wrapped up in a lawsuit with a former business partner. Her sleazy ex-husband, Simon (Matt Hamilton), is …. well, he’s acting like a sleazy ex-husband. She still occasionally has nightmares about a serious auto accident that occurred a year earlier. Perhaps the only bright spot in her life is her daughter, Lori (Lina Renna).

Or is she?

One day, Blair goes to her daughter’s school and can’t find Lori. When she goes to the office, she’s informed that the school has never had a student named Lori Ayken. When she talks to the students who she believed to be Lori’s classmates, they all tell her that they’ve never seen or heard of Lori. When Blair goes to her friend and lawyer, Cynthia (Alison Wandzura), Cynthia reveals that, though she’s heard a lot about Lori from Blair, she’s never actually met her. Finally, when Blair confronts Simon and demands to know where Lori is, Simon tells her that she’s gone crazy. Lori, he explains, has been dead for a year. She died in the very same car accident about which Blair has been having nightmares.

Blair swears that her daughter is alive and has been kidnapped. Everyone around her swears that Lori has been dead for a year and that Blair has lost her mind. Even Cynthia gets a little bit upset when Blair speaks up at a court hearing and starts to explain her theory that everyone but her is either incorrect or lying. So, who is correct? The best thing about A Mother On The Edge is that it keeps you guessing. Since Blair is the main character and Simon is such a sleaze, our natural instinct is to believe her. But, it’s hard not to have doubts. As sure as Blair is that Lori is alive, everyone else seems to be equally sure that Blair is delusional. As I watched the film, I found myself going back and forth. At first, I was like, “Well, this is obviously a setup” but then I was like, “Maybe Blair really is crazy.”

A lot of that was due to the performance of Kelly Thiebaud. She did a great job capturing both Blair’s initial panic and also her determination to not only prove that Lori was alive but to also rescue her. Thiebaud brought just enough of a nervous edginess to her performance that you easily could understand why people might view her as being unbalanced and, as a result, you were never quite sure just how much you should trust her beliefs. She kept you wondering. It was a performance that left me wondering how I was would react and what I would do if I ever found myself in Blair’s situation.

I also liked the performance of Phillip Mitchell, who played a character known as The Fixer and who brought just the right combination of menace and annoyance to his role. I can’t reveal too much about his role without spoiling the film but Mitchell definitely made an impression.

A Mother On The Edge originally aired on Lifetime on May 3rd. Fortunately, Lifetime tends to rebroadcast their films several times during the year so keep an eye out for A Mother On The Edge.