Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime and Tubi!

It’s time to start the school year!  Zack gets ready for his first day …. wait a minute, hasn’t school already started?

Episode 1.16 “King of the Hill”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on December 9th, 1989)

I’ll never forget the day Slater showed up….

For the longest time, I believed that this was the first episode of Saved By The Bell.  I mean, the episode features Zack meeting Slater for the first time, Slater meeting Kelly for the first time, and it introduces all of the regulars.  We discover that Zack, somehow, has a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Kelly in his bedroom.  That’s weird and kind of disturbing.

However, I have since learned that, while this was indeed the pilot for Saved By The Bell, it wasn’t actually aired until halfway through the first season.  That’s why we hear an older sounding Zack say, “I’ll never forget the day Slater showed up….”  We’re watching a flashback.  But if it’s a flashback, why is Zack talking directly to the audience?  I mean, if the audience was there when it happened the first time, why would Zack be telling them about it a second time?  For that matter, why — if this is Zack’s first day as a high school freshman — is he already a legendary troublemaker at the school?  Mr. Belding remembers him from Good Morning Ms. Bliss but that show was set in Junior High and in Indiana! And before anyone says that they’re two different shows, allow me to point out that the Ms. Bliss episode were later reshown in syndication as Saved By The Bell episodes, complete with Zack introducing them by saying, “Here’s a story that happened in junior high….”

My personal theory about all this?  Saved By The Bell was a Peter Engel show and, like most Peter Engel shows, no one cared much about continuity.  Ironically, that sloppiness is a huge part of the show’s continuing popularity.  People like me are still trying to make some sort of logical sense out of how Ms. Bliss and Saved By The Bell could both exist in the same universe.

As for this pilot …. well, for the most part, it’s not very good.  Of the young actors, only Mario Lopez really seems to have any idea as to who his character should be.  Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who would develop into a very good actor, overacts a bit in the pilot.   He, Dustin Diamond, and Lark Voorhees were all still giving the same performances that they gave in Ms. Bliss and they didn’t quite feel right for what would become Saved By The Bell.  Really, the only scene that truly works is when Mr. Belding puts on a sweater and attempts to “understand” why Zack is acting out before finally snapping as Zack makes a mess of his office.  From the start, Dennis Haskins and Mark-Paul Gosselaar made for a good comedy team.

One final note: This episode aired nearly 37 years ago.  Mario Lopez has aged, at most, ten years since then.  He has got to have a haunted painting in his attic.