i have a general dislike of reboots. i think it’s safe to say i’m not alone in this.
i think it’s pretty rare that reboots amount to much more than pandering and an opportunity to cash in on audience’s “where are they now” curiosity. whether it be full house or gilmore girls, the siren song of less financial risk is the obviously reasoning behind the production of reboots. as a result these shows often end up amounting to little more than pandering, devoid of what made them memorable in the first place. most beloved television shows are successful specifically because of the time and place they were created in. once rebootin’ time rolls around, it’s usually too hard to strike the balance between modernizing something for its new context and holding onto what in particular made it worth watching.
this is the mindset with which i approached peacock’s saved by the bell. i watched the first episode with a friend on a whim, “just to see.” like the original, which premiered in 1989, saved by the bell (2020) follows a group of fictional teens who attend bayside high school in the pacific palisades, ca. also like the original, the new SBTB indulges in quick sight gags, breaking the fourth wall, and a myriad of other tropes that are generally understood to be corny. the difference is that this SBTB is aware of how ridiculous it’s being, beginning to end.
when the new STBT opens, we quickly learn that zack morris — the lead of the original series, now a 40 year old man whose son attends bayside high school — has accidentally become the governor of california. since he has no clue what he’s doing, he’s cut the state’s education budget by $10 billion and as a result, a number of public schools have shut down. at the suggestion of a journalist in a press conference, he agrees to rerouting students who were affected by the closures to schools in high property tax areas.
what makes the original series amusing is its total disconnection from the adult world. as it just so happens, that’s also what makes it so completely out of touch with the largely didactic culture of 2020. in order to work in today’s context, they’ve completely turned the show on its head, making bayside’s obliviousness the central source of humor. it cleverly allows audiences to indulge in the network sitcom tv tropes that do feel comforting (if you’re into that sort of thing) without relying on the now cringe-inducing narratives that were mainstays in the original (pointless cross-dressing plotlines, for instance).
the show’s reconfiguration allows its characters to avoid coming off as maddeningly clueless, or at least when they do, it’s always totally intentional. audiences are no longer expected to think that the characters’ hair-brained schemes are normal behaviour for high school students, but we still get to reap the rewards of said schemes. and thankfully, the laughs come without an accompanying laugh track.
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