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, we’re back at the country club.

Episode 2.3 “Let the Games Begin”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 17th, 1994)

At Pacific Palisades Country Club, it’s time for the annual competition between the members of the club and the staff.  If the staff wins, the members will wait on them for a week!

Really?  I mean, is this a real thing?  Why would any club member agree to that?  If I’m paying good money to belong to a country club, the last thing that I’m ever going to do is wait on the staff.  I don’t care who wins the stupid competition.

It turns out that Screech is a very good golf player, which becomes an important plot point when the games end in a tie.  The tie-breaker is a golf game between country club owner Big Ed and Screech.  Big Ed tells Screech to either take a dive or stop dating his daughter, Allison.  In the end, Screech can’t betray his fellow workers but Allison doesn’t care.  She decides who she dates, not Big Ed.

Also, Tommy D learns how to swim (yay, good for him!) and Rachel says she’s going to quit her job when she learns her boyfriend won’t be coming home for the summer.  (Her boyfriend was a member of the club and Rachel only took the job so she could spend time with him.)  Brian, not wanting Rachel to quit, starts to send her poems that she believes are being written by her boyfriend.  Rachel eventually learns the truth but she’s not offended at all.  Of course, she isn’t.  Just look at Brian’s apologetic smile!

This episode …. listen, let’s give credit where credit is due.  Christian Oliver and Sarah Lancaster?  They were cute together.  As far as fake Zacks go, Christian Oliver was one of the better ones.  And Jonathan Angel gave a likably earnest performance in the scenes where Tommy learned to swim.  Unfortunately, this episode featured way too much Screech.  Though Dustin Diamond is nowhere near as bad during season 2 as he would be in later seasons, he’s still way too cartoonish to be taken seriously as anyone’s boyfriend.

Seriously, can you imagine buying a country club membership and then having to wait on Screech?