A woke reimagining of the much-loved high school comedy series has some interesting ideas but falls into a predictable rhythm
If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, Saved by the Bell and other programming of its early-90s afterschool ilk aspired to be the show about everything. From 1989 to 1993, the gang of telegenic Californian teens at Bayside High tackled such real-world issues as drunk driving, oil spills, feminism, the first adolescent taste of mortality, and, most infamously, caffeine pill abuse. In their clumsy efforts to speak to the youth, however, broadly pitched sitcoms such as this lost touch with anything close to reality in favor of a tidy half-hour simplicity. Jessie Spano could be high out of her mind in one scene, but we could all rest assured that by the end of the episode, her tweaking days would be over. Not doing drugs was as easy as just not doing them.
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