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It's nothing more than the escapist fantasy of a disillusioned young man named Zack Morris. Oddities or failures (Tori, Kelly dumping him) are simply signs of his subconscious trying to break through. Any problems he has in real life disappear when he's in his dream world. The show even tells us, once every episode, what Zack's real life is actually like in the theme song. The lyrics tell the tale of a day in the life of a high school student, stumbling through an unpleasant world of consequence. He starts in a panic:

By the time I grab my books, and I give myself a look,

I'm at the corner just in time to see the bus fly by ...

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And then later:

If the teacher pops a test,

I know I'm in a mess,

And my dog ate all my homework last night.

Riding low in my chair,

She won't know that I'm there.

As a summary of the show, the theme song makes no sense. Zack has never had a bad day at Bayside in his life. He's never in a mess. Everything bounces off of him. If he's unprepared for a test, he doesn't ride low in his chair like some depressed teenager; he gets the teacher to turn the test into a bake-off, and then wins the bake-off by cheating.

It only starts to make sense when you look at the structure. The song begins with a bell taking the narrator out of his dream world:

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When I wake up in the morning,

and the 'larm gives out a warnin' ...

The middle of the song takes us through the narrator's miserably realistic life at school. But then at the end of the song, right before the show about Bayside starts, he gets saved by the school bell, which frees him to go home, to a world where ...

... tomorrow it'll be all right.

It's alright 'cause I'm saved by the bell.

Thus, the song ends with Zack being released from the harsh realities of life by escaping to the one place where everything is all right for him. A place that exists in the border between today and tomorrow: the night time, when you sleep.