http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/SavedByTheBell

— Stuart Millard, So Excited, So Scared "We don't see Zack's discovery of a discarded brick-phone in a storm drain, or Screech being bitten by a radioactive dickhead, or a homeroom roll-call of each character, with voice-over exposition of their trademark traits and crushes. And we don't need to, because it's unthinkable that a time could exist when Zack, Slater and co., and their various interpersonal foibles, weren't as much a part of our cultural database as Stairway to Heaven or the great flood . They went to Bayside, but we did too; all of us."

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"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, what is going on here?"

Saved by the Bell is a sitcom that aired on NBC from August 1989 to May 1993. Heavily inspired by the films of John Hughes, the show centered around the spokespersons from each of the archetypal cliques: The Beefcake, The Cheerleader, The Fashionista, The Revolutionary, The Nerd—and most importantly, The Hustler, as embodied by the fourth-wall breaking, time-freezing Zack Morris. In spite of its achingly outdated (even for the time) '80s fashions and lingo, it remains the archetype of the TV High School, to the point where it is widely theorized that the entire Saved by the Bell universe is contained within Bayside High, and that Zack is, in fact, God.

The show began life as a Hayley Mills vehicle titled Good Morning, Miss Bliss (1988-1989), which centered around a junior high school teacher named Miss Bliss as she dealt with her quirky students, among them Zack Morris. Though an NBC pilot, the network rejected it and the Disney Channel picked it up instead. It was not a success, but the series found its way back to NBC and was given a drastic retool: focus was shifted to the student body, and only Zack, Samuel "Screech" Powers, Lisa Turtle, and Mr. Belding made the transition. The name of the school also changed from John F. Kennedy Junior High to Bayside High, but this is possibly less of a mystery than the school's unexplained move from Indiana to California. The new show, now titled Saved by the Bell, was led by Zack and it is this version that is the one most viewers are familiar with.

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Powered by the Law of Disproportionate Response: characters won't even bat an eyelash at the absurdities of their lives (such as the fact that Screech designed and built a self-aware robot), but will explode over something trivial. Though they began and ended as friends, the Bayside Six had a rigidly-enforced pecking order in which Zack lurked somewhere near the bottom, with only the Renfield-like Screech (imprisoned in a locker at least Once per Episode) to boss around. Most episodes revolved around a Zany Scheme hatched by Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) with 1 of 3 objectives:

Cheating/bribing his way up the social ladder, only to get knocked down again. Concocting a get-rich-quick scam to enslave Bayside to his whims. Woo back his on-again off-again girlfriend Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Theissen).

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Without fail, Screech (Dustin Diamond) would spoil the plan while attempting to help.

His nemesis A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) also had his eye on Kelly, leading to a tug-of-war between them as "Preppy" tried and failed to discover Slater's nonexistent weakness and break his seduction spell on the school. Slater would repeatedly win Kelly with little to no effort, but would later hook up with the armchair activist Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley). Lisa (Lark Voorhies) rounded out the cast as the Token Minority and debutante who acquired an unwanted admirer in poor Screech. Dennis Haskins, as Principal Richard Belding, ended up playing his role longer than anyone else associated with the show: he and Vice Principal Screech would form a double-act in The New Class.

The show is quite camp, with a high level of rewatchability, though not without its finger-wagging moralizing (which one could argue is part of the joke). The most infamous "message" episode involved Elizabeth Berkley having a conniption as a result of a caffeine addiction. Her ensuing rant has become legendary among fans and non-fans alike, and belongs in a gallery of television's greatest narm moments.

The series ran under four titles:

Good Morning, Miss Bliss (a.k.a. Saved by the Bell: The Junior High Years; 13 episodes, 1988-89)

Saved by the Bell (87 episodes, 1989-93)

Saved By The Bell The College Years (19 episodes, 1993-94)

Saved by the Bell: The New Class (143 episodes, 1993-2000)

After graduating from Bayside, Zack, Slater, Screech and Kelly ended up at California University for the more adult-oriented sitcom Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Unfortunately, it failed to attract an audience and ended after one season, though it did lead to a television movie that finally saw High-School Sweethearts Zack and Kelly get married. Ultimately, the producers' attempt to cater to both younger fans of the original series and older primetime viewers proved unsuccessful as both demographics felt alienated by the series: The show was too hokey for older viewers and younger fans were turned off by the show's focus on relationship drama instead of wacky schemes.

At one point, Cartoon Network aired Saved by the Bell on their [adult swim] block (despite the show's rating of TV-G) as a April Fools' Day prank. The series soon became a worldwide phenomenon as Universal, the current owners of the trademark, started doing a massive product brand revival of their #1 TV show in 2015.

In September 2019, it was announced that a Saved by the Bell revival would be produced for NBC's upcoming streaming platform Peacock. The revival will return to the halls of Bayside High, facing an influx of new students from lower-income schools after Zack, now the governor of California, scandalously closes too many schools, forcing them to merge into Bayside. Lopez and Berkeley will reprise their roles as Slater and Jessie, while Gosselaar will return as Zack in a recurring capacity and Thiessen is also expected to re-appear as Kelly. As for new characters, Josie Totah has been cast as mean girl cheerleader Lexi, Haskiri Velazquez as the intelligent Daisy, Alycia Pascual-Pena as tomboy Aisha, Belmont Cameli as Jessie and Slater's athletic son Jamie, and Mitchell Hoog as Zack's privileged son Mac, while John Michael Higgins will play Mr. Belding replacement as principal. Tracey Wigfield (30 Rock, Great News) will serve as showrunner and executive producer, alongside Lopez, Berkeley, Gosselaar, returning producer Franco Bario, and original series executive producer Peter Engel.

For the trope described by the "saved by the bell" phrase, see Just in Time or one of its variants.

This series contains examples of: