Well, the other doctors had a different theory.
There are a few fan theories floating around the interwebs that are hard to not believe. One of the more fun fan theories I have found is the Saved by the Bell one.
As any decent American knows, the show first started off as Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Set in Indiana at John F. Kennedy Middle School, the show centered around Miss Bliss, an eight grade teacher played by Hayley Mills (the Parent Trap OG). Zach Morris was one of her students, along with Screech and Lisa, plus smart girl Nikki and super cute Mikey. Oh, and Mr. Belding was there, too. Plus a few other faculty members, who I only really remember being referred to by their first names, even at school, which seems weird.
Good Morning, Miss Bliss was rebooted on NBC and became Saved by the Bell. Zach, Screech, Lisa, and Mr. Belding were suddenly living in “the Palisades”, California and attending Bayside High. Mikey, Nikki, Miss Bliss, and everyone else from Indiana were never seen or heard of again. It was like Zach, Lisa, Screech, and Mr. Belding left Indiana and entered The Twilight Zone or something – any and all aspects of their previous life were wiped from memory and Zach suddenly had childhood memories with Jessie that made no sense.
The original Good Morning, Miss Bliss Zach was definitely a cool kid but was by no means the total stud who could call “time out” on life AND had a cell phone at a time when NO ONE else did. He was nervous around girls and got picked on by older kids. His friends were nice, fairly good-looking kids, but they weren’t the center of the school universe like Kelly, Slater, and Jessie were. Mikey was pretty adorkable, Nikki was pretty much a nerd, and Screech… well, actually he was a bit less of a punchline in middle school. Basically, the fan theory is that the entire Saved by the Bell show was a figment of Zach’s imagination.
This makes total sense. Zach was just an average kid in Indiana who WISHED he was The Zach Morris of Bayside. Instead of life in the boring Midwest, he wanted to be jacking around at the Malibu Sands. When he got in over his head (for example, the time he lost Miss Bliss’s money in the stock market), Zach would have hoped that he got freeze time and come up with a solution. You know how every kid now aspires to be instafamous? Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we just wanted to go to a “cooler” California school and be popular.
The other amazing thing about this theory is that it means Mikey still exists. I always LOVED Mikey – Mark-Paul Gosselaar, of course, is totally hot, but Mikey was the less obvious, sweeter, more tall, dark, and handsome choice. (For the record, Slater always seemed ultra-trashy to me, even as a child. Between the hair, the tank tops, and calling Jessie “Mama”, nope!)
It also means that Max from The Max doesn’t exist. I thought that he was lame, too. It would have been amazing if one day Jessie lost it on Max and was like, “We don’t care about your dumb magic trick! Just fuck off and bring me a burger!”
Bayside didn’t exist… mind-blown….
Totally unrelated, it did occur to me how diverse the cast of Saved by the Bell was, but I never felt like the casting was in a PSA, school textbook kind of way. Lark Voorhies (Lisa Turtle) is African-American, Mario Lopez (A.C. Slater) is Hispanic, I feel like Screech was Jewish (or at least was in one episode), and Mark-Paul Gosselaar is one-fourth Indonesian. You know, in that episode about their ancestors, instead of making Zach the epitome of a white guy in claiming to be partially (read: negligibly) Native American, they should have just used the actor’s actual heritage and discussed Bali.
Also unrelated, I remember when Saved by the Bell: The College Years premiered, my best friend told me that the theme song was so much better. Which is note-worthy (possibly), because I now cannot for the life of me remember the theme song… well, I’m off to Youtube to watch the opening credits to The College Years. I’ll be back in two hours when I have watched every other show from my childhood’s opening credits and perhaps some bloopers. Oh Youtube, you make procrastinating so easy…
(Note: The title of this post comes from the Real Housewives of Atlanta, when Phaedra tells her “friends” that she is only seven months pregnant, but the doctors think her baby is coming early. Then when Kandi sees her in the hospital and references Phaedra delivering early, the doctor says that she is full-term. Phaedra, with no shame in her game, says that the other doctors had a different “theory” to her pregnancy. Amazing…. When/if I get pregnant, I will have to have a few theories to throw around.)
