The Writers And Program Schedulers Were On Crack
We're probably all aware that "Saved by the Bell" had continuity issues, but it wasn't until watching it all through recently that I realized just how bad they are. The show actually has pretty decent continuity for the first two seasons, aside from characters coming into play and then suddenly disappearing (as previously discussed). Zack and Slater vie for Kelly, Kelly chooses Zack and they become a couple, Slater and Jessie become a couple, Screech sexually harasses Lisa, and she in turn continues to be horrible to him. It all plods along coherently.
However, starting with season three, continuity seriously derails like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (literally, as in the bad guys being derailed in the mine carts; not the quality of the franchise, because "Temple of Doom" is awesome). Kelly dumps Zack for that jerk Jeff and then bam: next episode they're all starting summer jobs at Malibu Sands. Zack and Kelly are totally cool being friends now, Zack is suddenly falling for Stacey Carosi, and Slater and Jessie are now just friends too. Also, it's suddenly summer. The episode after that: bam, they're back at school and Zack is falling apart after the breakup with Kelly. Then back to Malibu Sands for a delightful volleyball competition, then back to school and Zack is having surgery and being a chickenshit, back to Malibu, back to school... so and and so forth for the remainder of the Malibu Sands episodes. Was this just an idiotic scheduling decision by the network? The way things are written, Malibu Sands clearly takes place the summer after the school year in which Zack/Kelly and Slater/Jessie breakup. It seems that the writers intended for this to all make sense if aired in chronological order, so I can only assume the program schedulers were on crack in this case.
Later that season, there is more craziness. Jessie is nowhere to be seen in the "All in the Mall" episode of candid camera hijinks and trying to buy U2 tickets. I guess Jessie Spano was way ahead of her time with hating U2. It's understandable that an actor might have to be absent occasionally, but the characters act like she doesn't even exist. There's no mention of her and why she's not with them. All they had to do was slip in one line about Jessie and job done.
The Palm Springs Weekend two-parter screws with the relationship continuity again. Slater and Jessie are still "going steady" at school, but are suddenly broken up for Jessie's dad's wedding where Slater ends up dating a princess. In the very next episode, Jessie gets royally jealous when she thinks the new female wrestler is after her man. Say what? Slater and Jessie don't break up until cut day late in the season, so what the heck is the Palm Springs two-parter (which seems to take place in summer) doing in the middle of the season? And what impression did this make on young kids, seeing characters switch back and forth unexplained between dating each other and dating other people?
Lastly, of course, there's the Tori craziness. After filming the initial order of episodes, the network decided to extend the final season, but Tiffany and Elizabeth declined to continue, leaving Kelly and Jessie out of the picture for those episodes. Naturally, the writers brought in a new character: tough girl Tori. What they could have done was air all the Tori episodes as a block somewhere in the season (except the very end), and had the characters mention that Kelly and Jessie were both studying abroad or doing a foreign exchange program. That would have made perfect sense, right?
So what did they do? They alternated between Tori and Kelly/Jessie episodes, creating a very weird senior year. The gang are hanging out with Kelly and Jessie one episode, and then the next they're suddenly mysteriously absent and the gang is hanging out with Tori. One episode Zack and Tori are furiously making out, the next Zack is single and playing the field. Are we supposed to assume that sometimes the gang has Tori shenanigans, and sometimes Kelly/Jessie, but never all together? That wouldn't even make sense, given the relationship continuity issues. This gets especially crazy at the end of the season when Zack and Kelly rekindle their relationship. It seems to come out of nowhere, especially since Kelly was nowhere to be seen in the episode prior where a big hullabaloo is made about Zack dating Slater's sister. Heck, Tori and Zack never even officially break up. At the end of the year, Tori is around to help write the new school song as their senior gift right before graduating, but then magically she's gone and Kelly and Jessie are back for graduation. What...the...fuck?
This situation seems to be a combination of lazy writing and insane program scheduling. Based on all the evidence, I can only come to the conclusion that both the writers and network schedulers were on crack. I hope they enjoyed whatever wild rides their drugged-up minds took them on.
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