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YMMV / Saved by the Bell

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  • Accidental Aesop: In "Drinking and Driving," Zack, Slater, and Lisa get drunk at a party and then try to drive home. Zack crashes the car. They all scramble to fix everything and repeatedly lie to try to avoid trouble. Of course, they get found out, but only after their cover story gets so overly complicated and full of conflicting details. In other words, stick to the same lie or else you'll get caught for what you did wrong.
  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • Sometimes Mr. Belding seems uncomfortably close to Zack and company.
    • "Slater, I hear you quit wrestling to start baking".
    • In "The Election", when Screech tells Zack that's he losing the race for president and explaining the demographics of who's still with him and who isn't, he cries out, "And you're losing your jock support!"
  • Adaptation Displacement: Good Morning, Miss Bliss isn't nearly as well known as Saved by the Bell; it probably doesn't help that the former's episodes were folded into the latter's syndicated rerun package and presented as Saved by the Bell: The Junior High Years, so that its origins as a standalone series were obscured.
  • Adorkable: Screech is a naive and eccentric goofball who's annoyingly over-the-top and usually wears extremely loud and mismatched clothes, loves science and is a member of the chess team.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Zack:
      • A popular alternate take on Zack is basically that he's a sociopath who treats the rest of the characters as pawns for his schemes and will go to any lengths to manipulate them into doing his bidding. In fact, the point of the Funny or Die series Zack Morris is Trash is to demonstrate just how manipulative, skeevy, mean, and even misogynist and racist Zack is.
      • Another theory is that Zack is a living god who constructed the entire world of Bayside solely to stroke his own ego and twist mortals to his whims. After all, within the show Zack can stop time at will, and in several instances he actually messes with people while they're time-stopped. Adding on to this theory, DC Comics and Superman fans could suggest that Zack might be Mr. Mxyzptlk.
    • Jessie:
      • Jessie is meant to be viewed as the "smart" one, but if you actually examine her storylines, she's often just the loudest. Most notably, in a Malibu Sands episode she appoints herself as the union representative for a group of Hispanic-American chefs despite having no ability to speak basic Spanish and the cooks making it very clear that they'd rather be speaking for themselves.
      • Jessie can also be perceived as a tough girl Delinquent under the guise of a scholar student. Miss Bayside, Date Auction, and Love Machine all highlight an underlooked aspect of her character, in which she could get thuggish when she's pissed off, especially whenever it involved Slater.
      • There's the one about Jessie being biologically male at birth. Whether Slater is aware of this is kept vague, but the general consensus seems to be that he'd not mind one bit.
      • The Nostalgia Critic once advanced the theory that Nomi Malone is actually Jessie after she grew up and never fully got over her caffeine-fueled breakdown.
    • Cracked have jokingly theorized that Mr. Belding is obsessed with Zack. They also posted articles about Zack being a sociopath and the series wide interpretation it was only Zack's dream. Cracked suggests that the first season, when it was Good Morning, Miss Bliss, where Zack isn't popular and constantly gets in trouble, is what is really happening, with the rest of the seasons taking place in Zack's mind were he is cool and everyone wants to be his friend.
    • Zack and Kelly's relationship and the latter's true nature. Many fans have noticed that Zack seems more in love with Kelly than she was with him, given that she cheated on him with Jeff while they were together in high school and went after Professor Lasky in their college days while he was trying to legitimately rebuild a romantic relationship between them. Furthermore, even if at the time it was a throwaway line, in the "King of the Hill" episode, he mentions to Slater that he wasn't going to let him come between them since, as he puts it, "He waited through her last six boyfriends". It's not only her in the wrong, though. It's also noticeable that Zack seems a bit obsessed with Kelly and that it's (initially) seen that her beauty is the main/only thing that attracts him.
    • Was Screech's stupidity legit or was it all just a front? Especially as he managed to be smart enough to earn himself a valedictorian award. And there were moments he'd drop the act whenever he needs to be the one to call Zack out on his jerkass behavior.
    • Were Jessie and Kelly friends? Several episodes (especially in the first season) have them either intentionally or otherwise portrayed as rivals and both had an infinity for mocking or undermining one other (such as in "Dancing to the Max" where Jessie is derisive over Kelly's indecisiveness for Zack or Slater and in "Snow White and the Seven Dorks" where Kelly called her a "neurotic egghead" in front of her boyfriend Slater and that she can't believe that he would fall for her). There are times when the girls do care for another, but other times they can be really catty, particularly in regards to Zack or their respective grades.
    • If a one off character isn't mentioned again after their only episode, Zack Morris is Trash will guess they were likely Driven to Suicide by Zack's shenanigans.
    • Leon Carosi. Was he really a greedy Mean Boss and jerk just to be a jerk or was he so strict in order to shape his mostly teenage employees into handling the demands of a strenuous, summer-long job? Also in his favor is his alternating temperament between episodes and showing genuine pride in their work and in particular admitting to being wrong about Zack to him and gaining his approval over Stacey.
  • Angst Dissonance: The two-parter episode, "The Break-Up"/"The Aftermath", comes to mind. As aforementioned in Alternate Character Interpretation, Kelly cheated on and left Zack for her boss, Jeff, and looks pretty bad for doing it. However, it's Zack who is ultimately portrayed as being in the wrong for (justifiably) being angry and bitter over losing his girlfriend to another guy and all of his friends turn on him and tell him to be mature. Cheating on your boyfriend is very mature, people, and so is encouraging your cheating friend to pursue the relationship further in spite of her betraying your other friend. Also, in a later episode, when the gang witnesses Jeff cheating on Kelly, they decide that Zack should be the one to tell her about it. When he does, she accuses him of being a jealous and vengeful liar.
  • Anvilicious: No aesop is subtle. Especially involving ducks, you bastards. This show was filmed during the 1980s and 1990s after all. It can get tiresome, especially when you have two Very Special Episodes about drugs in the same season.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The theme song. Just try to listen to it once without it getting stuck in your head.
    • "Friends Forever..."
    • "School is a bore, when you're stuck indoors..."
    • "Make my day! (Hey!)"
    • "I'm standing at the edge of tomorrow (tomorrow), and it's all up to me how far I'll go (far I'll go)..."
    • "Baby, take my hand, and I will take your heart..."
    • "Thought we'd always be together...I was sure our love could last...here we are, all alone, wondering what went wrong, did we ever have a chance?"
    • "Oh, Artie Boy, the bugs, the bugs are biting, gnats and ants, mosquitoes on the flyyyy... "
  • Base-Breaking Character: Zack. Either he's a likable Jerk with a Heart of Gold or a manipulative sociopath. It doesn't help when the show paints him as the former, while the Zack Morris is Trash series portrays him as the latter. As such, he has garnered both a lot of fans and haters over the years.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In "Operation: Zack", Zack is trying to leave the hospital so he won't have knee surgery, so he dressed as a doctor to avoid being caught. At one point, a middle-aged nurse comes out of one of the rooms, thinking he's a real doctor she may or may not be seeing, flirts with him, then pulls him into the room and kisses him. It's unknown where she came from and why this sequence occurred, as it is never brought up again during the remainder of the episode.
  • Broken Base: Is Good Morning, Miss Bliss Season 1 of Saved by the Bell or a different show altogether? Syndication suggests its the former, but some fans maintain that it was a different show, and that Saved by the Bell is, in fact, a spin-off of it.
  • Critic-Proof: Saved by the Bell was panned by TV critics for the most part. By the end of Season 1, however, Saved by the Bell had become the highest-rated show on Saturday mornings, a position it would hold for the rest of its run.
  • Creator's Pet: Tori. Being a Replacement Scrappy, the show had to do a lot of shilling to make her seem cool to viewers. It didn't really work.
  • Designated Hero: Some fans feel that Zack is this due all the things that he's done. The murder mystery episode lampshades this when his friends are interviewed about whether or not he could be a murder suspect - and they struggle to come up with justifications for his bad behavior in the past:
    Jessie: Except for that time he sold fake IDs at school...but his mom grounded him.
    Slater: There was that time he stole Valley's mascot. But they deserved it!
  • Designated Villain: Bryan from The Hawaiian Style. He had a good point that the hotel wasn't going to last much longer and while he was a bit of a slime bag for playing both sides, the only thing he was guilty of was hiding a request for a loan extension which paled in comparison to what the rival did by burning a map which proved he had built on native land. He gets off worse than the rival does by getting fired and being told he'll never work on the island again, while the rival just loses a few thousand dollars and can continue to run his hotel on the native land.
  • Don't Shoot the Message:
    • Caffeine addictions can be very real problems for high school students, especially those who are under pressure to overachieve - so "Jessie's Song" does touch on an issue that's worth talking about. Of course, the fountain of Narm and the sloppy writing prevent it from actually landing.
    • Discovering that your favorite celebrity has a drug problem, while the obvious pressure some Teen Idols can be under to maintain a squeaky-clean image, are issues that continue to be relevant. But since the Broken Pedestal is caused by marijuana of all things, that tends to eclipse any point the episode was trying to make.
  • Fair for Its Day: The episode "Running Zack", in which he dresses in Native American regalia for a class presentation, is considered to be pretty offensive today, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar has explicitly apologized for it. However, at the time the episode first aired, it was seen as respecting Native American heritage, especially in light of how the episode started—Screech and Zack's original presentation had them acting in a very stereotypical and offensive manner before being reprimanded by their teacher and ordered to do it properly—and that lesson certainly hasn't changed.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
  • First Installment Wins: If you count Saved by the Bell as the same show as Good Morning, Miss Bliss, then this is considered the best show in the franchise, as well as the most memorable. The College Years, while it has its fans, lasted for only one season, and isn't nearly as well-remembered. The New Class, despite lasting even longer than the original show, is considered the worst show in the franchise. The 2020 series, while a Surprisingly Improved Sequel to The New Class, is still too different for some fans.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Saved by the Bell seems to be just as fondly remembered in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States.
  • Growing the Beard: While Season 1 isn't considered to be bad, Season 2 introduced serious issues, funnier jokes, and edgier plots.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • With the premature death of Dustin Diamond, regardless of how you felt about how things went for him post-Bell, six words from Samuel "Screech" Powers: "They'll miss me when I'm gone."
    • Screech's entire characterization of being The Friend Nobody Likes. Additionally, in "Rockumentary", it's revealed that Screech is the one who is going to the tabloids with scandalous gossip about everyone. In real life, Dustin Diamond was outright hostile to his former castmates, so much so that he wrote a scathing tell all book. However, Diamond claimed that the book was ghostwritten by an author who wildly exaggerated many of the things he said.
    • It's hard to look at the episode about the oil on the school property without thinking about what happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
    • Lisa's response when Kelly says that she always wanted to be a princess: "Well, if anything ever happens to Princess Di..."
    • In "Breaking Up is Hard to Undo", Screech, who's dressed as Kelly, cries when he's unsure of which door to go into when he has use the restroom. While it was funny back then, nowadays, there's a real issue regarding transgendered people and the debate concerning which is the "correct" bathroom.
    • "School Song" begins with Zack going about his upcoming graduation and sarcastically asking if another student will come along and be as "cool" as he was. Regardless of how one feels about Zack, seeing all the poorly-received Expies that came from The New Class, he was right.
    • Dehl Berti, whose Chief Henry character died at the end of "Running Zack", died for real on November 16, 1991. One year and two days after the episode's original airdate.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
    • In "Miss Bayside", Screech wins the Miss Bayside competition after Zack starts a rumor that Slater, who was also in the competition, gave him a black eye. Slater is the Big Man on Campus, while Screech is The Friend Nobody Likes. So this means while most of the school likes Slater and abhors Screech, they don't want to see him physically hurt and have a limit on what they'll take from Slater.
    • Screech wanting to be an astronaut in "Pinned at the Mat" becomes this when it is revealed he's in the International Space Station with his robot Kevin.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ho Yay:
    • Zack and Slater:
      • They got their own video, which naturally didn't neglect to include scenes related to the George Michael concert they were going to go to or the bits involving ballet. With the amount of drag and homoerotic and gay subtext, this show certainly has its queer edge.
      • An AlternativeCharacterInterpretation is that the two of them are actually a secret gay couple, and the womanising that both of them (but especially the former, of course) would engage in was a facade to dampen down any suspicions.
      • This line from "Screech's Woman" shortly after Slater recognizes Screech's date as Zack in drag:
    Slater: Morris??? (looks down) Nice legs.
    • Jessie stares crying at a recently married Kelly for just a little bit longer than strictly necessary.
    • Screech and Mr. Belding in The New Class.
  • Hollywood Homely: All of the nerd girls, most notably Violet and Louise. For the latter, her actress was basically just given huge goggle-like glasses and had her hair mussed to make her look nerdier.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Zack. It helps that the show at one point or another ship teased him with all the major female characters. And we're not even mentioning all the Ho Yay with Slater and Screech.
  • Memetic Mutation: "I'M SO EXCITED! I'M SO EXCITED! I'M, SO... SCARED!" In addition to constant references to it in popular media such as the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode, "Inspiration Manifestation", its status as a meme was deliberately invoked by Elizabeth Berkley, who played Jessie, when she appeared on Dancing with the Stars. Before she and her partner Val performed their jive to (naturally) "I'm So Excited", they recreated the whole scene, including Val coming into the window dressed in a letterman jacket, Berkley insisting she needed her "jive pills," and, of course, the singing.
  • Narm:
  • Never Live It Down: Zack charging boys to kiss Lisa without her consent is treated by many (including Mark-Paul Gosselaar himself) as one of the worst things he's ever done. While he should've at least asked her first, he has pulled far slimier scams in "Model Students" and "Video Yearbook," which aren't held as harshly against him. Unlike his other schemes, there was no selfish motivation in this one, as he gave Lisa 100% of the profits and planned it with the intention of helping Lisa pay off her debt.
  • Older Than the Demographic: Despite its teenage protagonists, the show was actually aimed at tweens. Remember that this first aired on the same Saturday morning block that hosted several cartoons such as The Smurfs (1981), The Chipmunks, and Captain N: The Game Master. This resulted in some censorship, most infamously Jessie being addicted to caffeine pills in a Very Special Episode.
  • Once Original, Now Common: A lot of the jokes, while dated by now due to being reused in several sitcoms since then, were much fresher when the show first premiered. Saved by the Bell was also the first sitcom to feature "tweens" as the core demographic, before the word "tween" even existed, and was also the first of these sitcoms to gain a significant Periphery Demographic, a phenomenon which happens regularly nowadays. Lizzie McGuire, Drake & Josh, Hannah Montana, iCarly, and other similar shows all owe a debt of gratitude to Saved by the Bell for starting it all. To make things even more amusing, several of the above-mentioned shows that owe their existence to Saved by the Bell also feature the same school hallway set from Bayside High. If you look closely at the hallway scenes of iCarly or That's So Raven, you can actually notice it's the same layout, because the exact same set that was used for Bayside has been reused for several of these later sitcoms, making the set itself a legacy that Saved by the Bell bequeathed to later tween sitcoms.
  • One True Threesome: Zack initially is a Shipper on Deck for Slater, Jessie, and Jennifer (Slater's old girlfriend who moves to Bayside) to become this, until Slater states that he intends to pick one, and Zack decides he wants to date Jennifer himself.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Tori. She wasn't very well received, as fans who saw those episodes kept wondering "where are Kelly and Jessie?" On top of her being a hastily devised replacement character, the blatant attempts to shill her and have the preexisting, established characters with well-known characters traits and behaviors all of a sudden acting out of character and looking foolish in order to make her look better (one-upping Zack and Slater, Screech falling for her in spite of his long-running obsession over Lisa, being the sole voice of reason when the others act up, etc.) made her come across as a Mary Sue. Plus, compared to the rest of the gang, she had very little backstory. It should be noted that the only reason for the introduction of Tori is that at the last minute, NBC ordered more episodes to be filmed for the final season, just as the series was wrapping up and all the cast's contracts had expired. Elizabeth Berkley and Tiffani Thiessen (who played Jessie Spano and Kelly Kapowski, respectively) simply wanted to move on and refused to re-sign. As a result, Tori was brought in to fill in the roles left by the absence of the two aforementioned characters, and especially in the case of Kelly's absence, serve as a love interest for Zack.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Seasonal Rot: Season 4 thanks to the Tori arc, and the abundance of clip shows outside of it.
  • Special Effects Failure: Given the time frame and quality of the show, some of the examples are pretty obvious, particularly involving Screech:
    • In "Screech's Birthday", when Screech has an Imagine Spot that he's RoboCop, when he "shoots" the rival hall monitor, the way he disintegrates is really cheap-looking.
    • In "Zack's War", when Screech imagines himself this time as an Army General, upon getting a random bully named Butch who was mouthing off to him to stand on his feet, when he lifts him up with one arm and throws him up into the sky, it's an obvious dummy.
    • In "Palm Springs Weekend (Part 1)", when in the exercise room on a treadmill and Screech tries a pick-up line on a random girl ("How would you like to run away with me?"), upon the girl rejecting him and her turning up the speed of his machine, if you look carefully, you can see that he's only marching in place and that the treadmill isn't even turned on.
    • In "Video Yearbook", when Zack does his famous "Time Out" to stop himself from being punched by Slater and stop Kelly from making out with her "new" boyfriend, Vince, in front of him, he moves out of the way and slides a piece of paper in between Kelly and the guy's faces. Even though she is supposed to be "frozen" in place, you can see her slightly move her head so the paper can go in between them.
    • In "The Lisa Card", when Lisa is trying to evade Screech from kissing her during an earthquake drill, the scene of them playing hide-and-seek has the still background of the characters hiding under their desks as being poorly spliced.
    • At one point in "Dancing at the Max", Zack chews bubblegum in music class while playing the trombone. Aside from the impossibility of the action, the "bubblegum" is clearly just a pink balloon.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Kevin the Robot, Screech's robot buddy, is a sentient AI built by him from scratch. Unfortunately, he's only seen in three episodesnote  and as his creator's characterization mutated, he had to be phased out in accordance.
    • Penny Belding, Mr. Belding's niece. She's sweet, cute as a button, genuinely interested in Screech, er, "Zack" and someone for him to love who loves him back other than uninterested Lisa. Yet she was only seen in "Blind Dates".
    • Violet Anne Bickerstaff. Despite being very adorable and having a lot of chemistry with Screech, she is never seen or heard from again after a few episodes and he goes back to being a loser who can't get a date.
    • Maxwell Nerdstrom. He seemed like a Worthy Opponent to Zack, as he'd successfully countered all of Zack's plans for revenge and would've made a great rival in the future. However, he's never seen again after his initial appearance.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Zack and Lisa hooking up and making quite a nice couple and having Screech move on to Jessie, two potentially interesting bits of plot which was completely ignored afterwards.
    • In the episode with Lisa's secret admirer, she meets a person she thinks is Zack at a costume party and announces she loves him. When it turns out to be Screech, the entire plot is dropped forever.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: As it started in 1989 and ended in 1993, it is chronologically the latest example of an identifiably '80s program, showing how '80s fashion and culture hung on into the '90s.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Screech. His Dogged Nice Guy traits, while considered endearing in the '80s and '90s, does not hold up well over time. This is especially notable in "The Bayside Triangle", where Screech's Entitled to Have You antics reaches its peaks and he challenges Zack to a fight over Lisa.
    • Zack in "The Bayside Triangle". Zack realizes that he and Lisa are developing feelings towards each other, yet he doesn't even think this warrants a conversation with Screech, the guy who is also in love with Lisa and Zack's best friend for 13 years. After the kiss happens, all Screech wondered was why Zack didn't even talk to him about it and to give him space. While the episode itself seems to focus on that Lisa doesn't owe Screech anything, it glosses over that Zack didn't even talk to the one person who would do (and has done) anything for him.
    • Lisa's attitude towards Screech can put her in this category. Her rude remarks towards Screech was portrayed as funny because he was a geek who kept pursuing her. Often times though, she would take it way too far and was never called out on it. She has insulted Screech many times he wasn't flirting with her, insulted girls who did show interest in him, and some of her insults were incredibly personal attacks like telling him his parents weren't happy he was born and that no one wants him on the planet. Even worse, these personal attacks were usually made towards him when he wasn't flirting with her so it makes her come off as being mean for the sake of being mean rather than being annoyed with his unwanted advances.
    • Kelly in the whole Jeff arc. Basically, she dumps Zack for a guy about three years her senior. And when everyone is rightfully mad at her, we're supposed to sympathize with her. Especially after Zack does the heinous act of, well, dancing to the song he and Kelly danced to with another girl at The Max (which may have been a little rude but nowhere near as horrible as it was treated). Then comes "Fake IDs", when Zack tells Kelly he saw Jeff with another girl, Kelly yells at him for supposedly lying despite Zack having got over his jealousy by that point. When Kelly catches Jeff in the act, we're supposed to see him as a cheating dog, despite him doing exactly what she did to Zack. In fact, Jeff even brings up the valid point that he and Kelly were never going steady, so it can be argued what Kelly did to Zack was even worse than what Jeff did to her. Plus, her comment of "I broke up with a great guy for you!" also showcases how stupid she was in the first place.
    • Jessie in both "S.A.T.s" and "Wrestling with the Future". Granted, perfect grades are quite important to her to the point of being part of her identity and the disappointment/rejection she had in both episodes would make her sympathetic, but given how she constantly flaunts one of her worst traits to even her friends puts a stop to it. In the former episode, she not only lies about her results to a "dumb" classmate who ended up with a higher SAT score than her, but even gloats her superiority on the test over Kelly and Lisa when they're trying to console her while also ranting how Stansbury wanted "meathead" Slater (due to his wrestling skills) over her and has a breakdown in spite of the many other things she has going for her (grades, being class president, popularity, etc.) Then in the latter episode, she consoles herself with a copious amount of junk food for every rejection letter she received while dismissing the schools that turned her down as stupid.note 
  • Values Dissonance:
    • There's "The Lisa Card" where Screech buys Lisa's lingerie and tells her to her face that he'll sleep with it. The same episode also features Zack selling tickets to various guys for a chance to kiss Lisa without her consent. Zack's stuff towards Kelly is just slightly less bad, since they do end up in a relationship and Zack is always called out if he ever oversteps his boundaries.
    • Screech's attitude towards Lisa. Essentially, he acts as if they're already together, frequently refers to her as his woman and is often mentioned to have gone to some really excessive "romantic" gestures (writing "I love you" in syrup on her mother's white couch). The dissonance is that Screech is portrayed as the Dogged Nice Guy while Lisa is framed as if she were a bitch for not reciprocating his affections. Except that she's incredibly up front that she wants nothing to do with him and never leads him on. Though the episode where Zack and Lisa hook up does finally seem to address this; Screech spies Zack and Lisa kissing, gets revenge by ruining Lisa's fashion show and is prepared to fight Zack over it. Lisa immediately calls Screech out and tells him he has no right to do any of this - "You're not my boyfriend. You never were" and is presented as 100% in the right. The bit where afterwards Jessie tells Screech, "The next time you meet a great girl, don't take "no" for an answer," has Jessie basically telling him to stalk and harass another girl even more than he's done to Lisa. When Screech immediately begins making goo-goo eyes at her, Jessie immediately proves herself to be a hypocrite—and hoists herself by her own petard when she rejects him, but thanks to her idiotic advice, he of course doesn't listen
    • The episode "No Hope With Dope". These days, a sitcom featuring teens reacting negatively to the idea of a famous person smoking pot would probably be used to portray the teens themselves as being too conservative. The show would probably use a more serious drug like cocaine or heroin to get the message across.
    • One scene in "Aloha Slater" has Slater and his father, an Army Major, pretending the latter is an angry and unstable eccentric due to a brain concussion that he suffered in an effort to derail a scheme Zack has to send the former away. More than twenty years after the episode aired, with the attention given towards people in contact sports like football and in the service having to deal with the lasting effects of brain injuries like CTE, the scene looks quite bad if taken out of context.
    • Some of the later episodes (like "School Song") had some of the gang using the limp arm across the chest motion (i.e., an offensive stereotype of a mentally disabled person) to make fun of someone lacking common sense or acting stupid. In 1992, it was just a thing that was somewhat frowned upon; these days, it would be considered highly controversial.
    • "The Friendship Business", namely Zack's fantasy about being rich. As pointed out in Zack Morris is Trash, not only are Slater and Lisa just his factory workers (and the latter is considered overworked), but Jessie and Kelly are implied to be a glorified secretary and a Gold Digger, respectively. Also, there is a rather uncomfortable (and incredibly poorly-aged) joke about him "buying" Bill Cosby.
    • The show frequently has adults hitting on the kids even while they're still in high school. The most egregious example is in "Fake IDs" when a grown woman openly makes a pass at Screech at a club despite looking twice his age (which became Harsher in Hindsight, in turn, when years later Dustin Diamond revealed he'd had an affair with an NBC executive twice his age while in his late teens). Related to this are Kelly's relationship with Jeff and Zack's relationship with Mindy from "Rockumentary". The show tries to show them as being compatible, but it ignores that a college-aged student and a manager in her late 20s to early 30s, respectively, flirting with/dating high school students (even with the latter example realizing how much of a selfish jerk Mindy is and it being All Just a Dream). "The Last Dance" features Jeff, a UCLA sophomore and presumably 20-21 years old, becoming involved with Kelly, who is not only 16-17 at the time but his employee, a two-pronged power imbalance that doesn't play well by modern standards. (Out of universe, Tiffani Thiessen was 17 at the time and Patrick Muldoon was 23)
    • Another episode Zack and Slater get arrested after Slater got Zack to pretend to be him to bomb a college interview. Zack tries to get out of it by promising the officers, who look to be in their late 30s, dates with high school girls. Slater calls him out for this, because they can now add bribery to the other charges.
    • Mark Paul Gosselar has personally apologized for the episode "Running Zack", in which Zack dresses in full Native American regalia for a class presentation in order to honor his recently discovered heritage, outright calling it "cringeworthy". Ironically, it was probably seen as progressive at the time it aired, considering that this happened as a result of the teacher punishing him for having Screech dress like this in a previous presentation that did nothing but embody Native American stereotypes.
    • In "Rent-A-Pop," Zack schemes to avoid Mr Belding and his father meeting. Screech at one point suggests Zack tell Belding he has two mommies. This was a ridiculous, absurd laugh line in 1990, but nowadays, it's not that bizarre a thing.
    • In "Teen Line," Zack dates a girl who uses a wheelchair. The episode frequently uses the word "handicapped," which has very much fallen out of use nowadays. It uses "disabled" a couple of times, which largely replaced "handicapped" in common usage, though that word is itself losing credibility in favour of wording like "person with a health impairment." The episode would likely also receive criticism if released in contemporary times due to casting an able-bodied actress as the wheelchair-using character.
  • Values Resonance:
    • "Miss Bayside" has Screech entering a female beauty contest and winning. Even though the win is somewhat tainted due to the false pretenses of why he won (Zack started a rumor about fellow male contestant Slater giving him a black eye), it was still seen as revolutionary that Mr. Belding was not seen as a sexist in eventually allowing him to join in (after convincing by Jessie and Zack) and an early example of not shaming boys out of doing "girl" things, or vice versa. Furthermore, an episode of The College Years has the students overwhelmingly wanting to make a guy the Homecoming Queen, even though Dean McMann denied this: these days, there would be little fuss made about it.
    • In "Date Auction", Lisa has a crush on a handsome brainiac. However, he isn't interested in her because he thinks that she's an airhead. When she pretends to be a bookworm, he's suddenly mad for her. Yet she soon discovers that she doesn't like having to hide who she is, especially when he makes fun of her friends, which is what drives her to break it off with him. A great Aesop on how girls shouldn't change who they are just to attract a boy.
    • "Jessie's Song" might be narmtastic in it's handling of pill addiction, but recent years have shown heavier work loads for students, causing them to turn drugs for help studying.
    • Kelly planned to go to community college and get a job since she couldn't afford college and all of her friends are okay with it and she seemed mostly content with it. Nowadays, community college is viewed as a great option for people who are short on cash.
    • While "Running Zack" is overall considered cringeworthy these days (Zack dressing up in Native American regalia for a class presentation to honor his recently discovered heritage), Zack's teacher punishing him for making a mockery of the project—it was initially Screech who was dressed this way and embodied every Native American stereotype—and ordering him to redo it and take it seriously is still significant.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's aimed at tweens actually and looks down upon whatever objectionable content it deals with, and overall has the cheery spirit of a sitcom, but MeTV for whatever reason airs the show with an "E/I" label and it's the only show aired as part of their Sunday morning lineup of educational programming. It doesn't help that shows with the E/I label are mostly used for television shows aimed at preschoolers, who are unlikely to be interested in a sitcom about high schoolers dealing with teenage problems, but even if they are, the show still deals with (albeit discourages in the process) touchy subjects like drug use, drinking, and contains on-screen kissing and teen flirting.
  • The Woobie: Despite his Unintentionally Unsympathetic status, Screech doesn't deserve a good amount of the crap he gets. Seriously, he's not as clueless as the gang makes him out to be. Even when he tries hitting on other girls his lack of experience and social awkwardness causes him to make a fool of himself. Plus, he often gets hurt during Zack's schemes.
    • Zack becomes this after he and Kelly break up at the end of “The Last Dance.”
  • WTH, Costuming Department?:
    • In "Rockumentary", Zack wears a very gaudy outfit in addition to (in all likelihood a clip-on) earring and obvious rouge.
    • While rehearsing their song "Did We Ever Have a Chance?" from the same episode, Kelly is sporting some pants with some very large rose pins on them, including on the backside.
    • Screech, along with Jessie, have been put into the most questionable outfits, but in "Palm Springs Weekend, part 2", he is seen wearing what looks like sweatpants with a clashing dress shirt and tie.

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