Saved by the Bell originated as a show called Good Morning Miss Bliss, based around a popular junior high school teacher named Miss Bliss played by Haley Mills. Mark Paul Gosselear was there as Zack, Lark Voorhies as Lisa, Dennis Haskins as Principal Richard Belding and Dustin Diamond as Screech. Miss Bliss taught history at JFK Junior High in Indianapolis, Indiana, with the show following her students' interactions along with some glimpses of Miss Bliss' home life. The show was made for the 1988-89 TV season and appeared on the Disney Channel but didn't last long. Since it was originally produced by NBC, the show was retooled as a teen sitcom focusing on Zack Morris, a fourth wall breaking popular guy who attended Bayside High School. The show was moved from Indiana to Malibu, California. Mr. Belding, Screech, and Lisa were all there but Mario Lopez as Slater, Elizabeth Berkley as Jessie and Tiffany Thiessen as Kelly were all added. Zack's character was based on Ferris Bueller from the 1986 film with him being the most popular kid in school, though he doesn't have the adversarial relationship with Mr. Belding that Ferris did with Dean of Students Ed Rooney. Zack wasn't a slacker academically, seeming to at least do well enough to pass his classes and played basketball and ran track as well. Jessie, was an obsessive high achieving academic, class president and feminist. She seemed like she believed the school's self-appointed social conscience at times. Screech was a prototypical supernerd, he invented weird and useless things, excelled academically, was a chess champion, and always seemed hang out with the popular kids despite those things. The wardrobe always seemed to emphasize the nerdiness of Screech by dressing him in the worst clothes-rainbow suspenders, tie-dyed shirts, and ugly Chuck Taylor Converse were his typical costume. Lisa, she was the pretty girl who was into fashion, make up and seemed to be the most interested in dating despite rarely being shown with a boyfriend. Slater, he excelled as a star football player and wrestler, his dad was supposed to be an Army officer, and he had an on and off again relationship with Jessie. He was also shown as a dancer and enjoyed cooking. Kelly, she was the pretty girl next door, cheerleader, athletic, and the most popular girl at school. She and Zack were the main couple on the show and had on and off relationship too. All the other kids on SBTB seemed to come from wealthy or well-to-do families but we do see Kelly's family struggle financially at times. Kelly was also the oldest in a large family with her babysitting her younger siblings as part of her responsibilities. Sometimes the show got a little ridiculous in trying to teach a moral lesson, with the infamous caffeine pill episode where Jessie was using them to stay awake so she could study and get into Stanford.
Review of Saved by the Bell
