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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: September 14, 1991
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Saved By the Bell, “The Last Dance” / “Zack’s Birthday Party” (Season 4, Episodes 1-2). [Watch on Hulu.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Being a syndicated teen sitcom that aired Saturday morning (or sometimes after school), the production schedule for Saved By the Bell was a strange beast. There was the show’s origin as the Haley Mills-starring Good Morning, Miss Bliss, whose episodes later got grandfathered into the newly rebooted Saved By the Bell. There was the final season where Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley didn’t re-sign for extra episodes so they were replaced for a stretch by Leanna Creel’s Tori. And then there was season 4, which aired two episodes weekly, on parallel timelines, as if determined to confuse their teenage fanbase.
It probably wouldn’t have been so noticeable that season 4 was running on parallel lines — after all, Saved By the Bell produced mostly standalone episodes — if they didn’t stand out from the rest of the series so much. One string of episodes took place at Bayside High and kicked off with “The Last Dance,” where featured couple Zack and Kelly broke up because she kissed her manager at The Max. (Grr, Patrick Muldoon. No matter how many women he tried to kill on Melrose Place, breaking up Zack and Kelly will always be his cardinal sin.) The second track of episodes saw the gang taking summer jobs at a Malibu beach club. Perhaps because the audience craved a respite from the heavy emotions of the Zack and Kelly breakup (shut up, it was traumatic), the beach club episodes — where Zack and Kelly were neither dating nor harboring bad feelings towards each other — were one of the show’s better stretches. Featuring recurring guest star Ernie Sabella (the voice of Pumba in The Lion King) as the club’s overbearing manager and Leah Remini as his daughter Stacy, the beach club episodes played like Baywatch lite. Very lite.
You can watch the season 4 beach club episodes of Saved By the Bell on Hulu.
