Web Video / Zack Morris is Trash

♪ Zack Morris Is Tra-ash! ♪
*bell ring*

Web series produced by Funny or Die, in which an unseen narrator deconstructs actions made by Saved by the Bell's lead character Zack Morris in order to expose his character flaws and show fans that he is, indeed, trash. Like A Very Special Episode, it is written and narrated by Dashiell Driscoll.

The series has completed five seasons, premiering episodes weekly on YouTube which can be seen in this playlist. Season 1 ran from October 8 to December 8, 2017, with Season 2 premiering on April 6, 2018. Season 3 premiered in September 2018. Season 4 premiered in April 2019. Season 5 premiered in September 2019 and went on hiatus after four episodes when Driscoll was hired as a writer for the 2019 Saved by the Bell reboot. It returned March 13, 2020 and concluded April 17, 2020. According to Driscoll, there are currently no plans for a sixth season.

See its sister series, A Very Special Episode and Telenovelas Are Hell.

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This series provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: In contrast to Zack, the flaws and negative behaviors of the other main or guest characters tend to be downplayed or omitted entirely by the narrator. Even when he admits that other characters are behaving badly, the narrator still manages to blame it on Zack somehow.
  • Slater in particular benefits from this, often being portrayed as a selfless hero, with events where he canonically behaves every bit as badly as Zack being given a favorable slant. While Slater certainly has more of a moral compass than Zack, he's also no angel, either!
  • The narrator makes it very clear that he loves Kelly and thinks she can do no wrong, often referring to her as an angel, a goddess, and Sweet Kelly. However, there are times where she can be just as cunning and manipulative as Zack.
  • In the episode "The Time Zack Morris Worshipped Belding's Scumbag Brother", the narrator says that a teacher quit and had a mental breakdown because Zack was unteachable. In the actual episode however, the teacher is shown to be very rude and condescending to his students to the point that the gang hallucinates him calling them failures while they try to study. He's even elated at the prospect of his students failing.
  • In "The Time Zack Morris Narc'd on a Friendly Movie Star for Smoking Weed" the narrator presents Johnny Dakota as a friendly, chill actor who cheerfully puts up with Zack's nonsense and whose only 'crime' is smoking pot in his own home. In the actual SBTB episode ('No Hope With Dope') Johnny is shown to be a gigantic hypocrite who angrily denounces potheads when a joint is discovered at school, to say nothing of the sleaziness of being an older guy wooing the underage Kelly.
  • In "The Time Zack Morris Gave Screech An Unpaid Law Enforcement Job For the Birthday He Forgot", the narrator paints Neil, the first hall monitor, as an upstanding student upholding order in a school that buckles to the whims of a serial sociopath. In the original, "Screech's Birthday" he was a verbally abusive asshole who forced his authority on his peers. Everyone, not just Zack, was all too happy to be rid of him. Also, Mr. Dewey in the original is a very dull teacher, which goes almost unmentioned here.
  • In "Hold Me Tight" (the episode on which "The Time Zack Morris Dumped A Woman For Saving His Life" is based), Jessie behaves selfishly and hypocritically when after fighting for Kristy's right to join the wrestling team, she tries to get Kristy kicked off the team when she fears she is interested in Slater. The ZMIT version of the episode never mentions this subplot at all and focuses strictly on Zack's behavior. The school faculty (including Mr. Belding) also played a part in the institutionalized sexism. Like Jessie, the narrative is changed to place the blame on Zack.
  • "The Time Zack Morris Sucker Punched Slater Over A Girl He Just Met" (based on the episode "The Fight") completely ignores the B-plot of Lisa dumping her crush just for being a freshman.
• Adaptational Villainy: Going hand in hand with the above, every one of Zack's actions is read in the least sympathetic light the narrator can manage. Even when Zack ends up doing the right thing in the end, the narrator either sees selfish motives behind it or chastises him for not seeing the error of his ways a lot sooner.
  • In the actual series, "Cream of the Day" is one of Zack's most moral episodes. An accident in his chemistry class creates a fast acting pimple cream. He actually tested the product before selling it and even gave his test subject a reasonable cut of the profits ^note  If you look closely when Belding busts Zack, Coburn is holding a large wad of cash . While the pimple cream did have a bad side effect, he found this out long after he had sold everyone their cream so telling them wouldn't have helped anything. The episode was adapted into ZMIT as "The Time Zack Morris Sold Chemical Burns To His Classmates."
  • The events of "Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind" were either not his fault or just an accident. The events of the episode kick off when Zack accidentally broke the camera when he thought the cast deviated from the script of his movie. They manage to make the money back by selling an article to a tabloid requesting fake stories to publish. A boneheaded government employee buys it and lies about being a part of the newspaper to capture Screech believing he's an actual alien. Zack went along with the whole thing because he was under the impression it would just be an article about the alien and no one would get hurt. Once the official reveals his identity he helped hide Screech until he came up with a plan to reveal that the whole thing was never real. The episode was adapted into ZMIT as "The Time Zack Morris Got His Best Friend Scheduled For Dissection By the Government."
• Aesop Amnesia: Whenever Zack seems to learn better, he'll either misinterpret the lesson or forget it entirely by episode's end, going back to the same scumbag behavior in the next episode.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The entire point of the series is to take the ostensibly loveable protagonist of Saved by the Bell and paint his actions in a manner that portrays him as a sociopath and terrible person.invoked
• Butt-Monkey: If the episode being discussed is one of the handful in the early seasons that features Max the waiter, the narrator will invariably single him out to discuss what a failure he must've been to get stuck entertaining teenagers with comedy magic at a thankless, low-paying job.
• Character Catchphrase: The narrator has a few.
  • "We never see [X] again, who knows what happened? They probably fucking killed themselves."
  • "Let's review:"
  • "Zack Morris is trash!"
  • "This gives Zack a great idea..."
  • "...and didn't learn anything from any of it."
• Dawson Casting: Invoked and played for laughs. The narrator never misses an opportunity to point out (and humorously exaggerate) when supposedly teenage students are clearly being portrayed by actors past their teens.
• Deadpan Snarker: The spirit and tone of the narrator.
• Driven to Suicide: Any character who doesn't reappear is said to have "Probably fucking killed themselves."
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earlier episodes, the narrator wasn't as bombastic as he would later become. Also, the first episode was incorrectly spelled "Zach Morris Is Trash".
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • Everything Zack does is interpreted as this. Pouring ants down someone's back? Genocide (of the ants) and attempted murder. Locking an exchange student in the closet? Violent anarchy that nearly reignited the Cold War. Hanging an Australian flag in his room? Clear sign that Zack reveres criminals.
  • The ultimate take away the Narrator gives at the end of "The Time Zack Morris Stole $5,000 From The Mafia To Scalp U2 Tickets"? Zack is trash purely because he bought U2 tickets. Note that this is one of the episodes where Zack actually committed felonies (grand theft, trespassing, and breaking and entering, among others).
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every video is entitled "The Time Zack Morris..." followed by a brief description of whatever horrible thing Zack did in that particular episode.
• Jerkass: Zack Morris exploits, scams, and demeans others in every way possible, partially out of laziness and partially just because he can.
• Lazy Bum: Zack Morris, who pawns off work onto Screech and refuses to do any sort of academics ever.
• Lemony Narrator: The narrator makes no attempt to hide how disgusted he is by Zack's shenanigans.
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: One of many faults attributed to Zack by the narrator. At one point in "The Time Zack Morris Dumped His Girlfriend For The School Nurse", the narrator states that even if Zack's convoluted scheme to date both the nurse and Kelly at the same time worked out, it still wouldn't change the fact he can't even satisfy one woman in bed, nevermind two.
• Negative Continuity: Inverted. ZMIT treats the episodes as if they are part of a tightly connected continuity (which the original series certainly did not), and that any lack of consistency is Zack's fault.
  • In "The Time Zack Morris Used A Dead Man's Charity To Start A Gender War", the narrator questions why Zack needs to sabotage the girls in the baking competition when Slater was shown to be a talented cook in an earlier episode. This is portrayed as Zack being too self-absorbed to know his friends' talents rather than the show's writers forgetting or ignoring that Slater had this ability.
  • The "probably fucking killed themselves" Running Gag is another example, as ZMIT uses it to explain why certain characters never appear again when the actual show felt no need to explain it.
• Once a Season: Each of the first four seasons features exactly one episode from the Good Morning, Miss Bliss days.
• One-Shot Character: The show burns through so many we never see again because they probably fucking killed themselves.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: While most of the time Zack is just selfish or the narrator is greatly exaggerating his crimes, sometimes he does something so bad that the narrator sounds genuinely appalled, like showing zero empathy for Screech being struck by lightning or mishandling a baby.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Thanks in no small part to Values Dissonance, Zack is racist and misogynist, and even when he learns better, he'll usually just forget it by the end of the episode.
• Ron the Death Eater: Invoked.
• Running Gag: "And then we never see X again, because they probably...fucking killed themselves."
• The Sociopath: What the series believes Zack is, in addition to other characteristics.
• Take That!:
  • In a change of pace from the usual end of episode reviews, where the Narrator goes point by point on everything wrong Zack did in the episode, "The Time Zack Morris Stole $5,000 From The Mafia To Scalp U2 Tickets" cuts to the chase:
    Narrator: Let's review: Zack Morris attempted to buy tickets to a U2 concert. Zack Morris is trash.
• Teens Are Monsters: In the eyes of the narrator, Zack is a selfish and irredeemable scumbag who looks out for number one and drives many people to suicide without a second thought.
• What Does She See in Him?: You really start to wonder why Kelly is interested in Zack.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The entire point of the show.
• With Friends Like These...: Zack is shown to be a terrible friend, particularly to Screech, Kelly, and Slater, to the point where you wonder why they hang out with him at all. In the last episode of Season 4, the narrator goes as far as accusing Zack of driving Screech to the point of insanity.

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