Everyone I know who watched Saved By the Bell talks about this episode!

I watched it simply because there was nothing on Monday night, and I was a fan of the show. But having Screech narrate the movie, and it essentially being about his struggles, was a turn off. Plus you never know what beef he has with the other actors today, so you don't know who is portraying in a bad light.

It was interesting to see how the show started as I never knew it started on Disney and was cancelled. I just remember watching it in syndication in the early 90's.

I thought the same thing too, but they are actually shot in non-anamorphic widescreen. If they were shot in fullscreen, like the show was, there would have been no black bars at the top and bottom. Plus, look at the monitors they are using. They are modern 16x9 monitors.

Not exactly a high bar you've set there.

I noticed that too. I remember hearing years ago that Dustin Diamond and Dennis Haskins hated doing the New Class because they never other offers due to type casting. The New Class cast members pretty much have never talked about their time on that show. The only cast members from that show that are somewhat known are Bianca Lawson and Lindsey McKeon.


This TV movie was slightly better than I expected it to be. I liked that they included the early history of Good Morning Miss Bliss on the Disney channel. I was surprised that they briefly mentioned Leanna Creel and the Tori character that briefly replaced Jessie and Kelly.

I remember when Lark Voorhies was briefly on Days of Our Lives. She left that show because she opposed a storyline that went against her Jehovah Witness beliefs.

I only remember Sarah Lancaster since she had some recent success with Chuck.

Yup. Sarah Lancaster is who I remember the most.

Samantha Esteban does ok still. She was just in From Dusk Till Dawn.

Natalia Cigliuti has had a pretty long career too. It's amazing how forgotten most of the cast of the new class is though. I guess its kind of like the cast of the later series of Power Rangers.

I watched this last night and man was I bored through the whole thing. There are good TV movies about classic TV series(Back to the Batcave being an example) but this was just boring. The biggest thing that threw me was looking at the cast. The guy they got to play Zach looked like a fourteen year old, and the guy they got to play Slater didn't look right at all. The guy who played Screech and the girls were pretty good though. So was the guy who played Mr. Belding.

Also as someone who actually read Behind the Bell it's amazing how much they changed, ignored, or didn't acknowledge what the book had in it. It felt more like it was pulled from Wikipedia and less like it was based on the book like it said.

Am I the only one who thinks that none of the kids they casted were even remotely as good looking as the original cast?

whats funny was the movie was cast by the casting director for SBTB the TV show

For the guys and Thiessen yes. I thought the girls who played Lark and Elizabeth were more attractive than the real life versions. Although the real life people are still very attractive.

I'm sad I didn't find out about it on time, I would have liked to see it, hopefully they will re-air it.

I'm pretty sure they are re-airing it on Friday night.


I did not know there was a book on the show, what was different? Is there any good revelations in the book that weren't shown on the TV movie?

Well, Behind the Bell was Dustin Diamond's "Tell all book" about what happened in the series. There is some interesting stuff about what it's like working on a TV series but there is a lot of stuff that you question also. From what I remember from the book.

What made it in:
-The part about Diamond thinking that the show would revolve around him and Zach.
-Mark Paul's Mom only giving him $20 a week.
-Elizabeth going to the writers to get more serious story line's
-The part about Diamond being black mailed
-Diamond getting drunk at a promo event in South Carolina
-Mario constantly bringing women to the set.

What didn't make it in:
-The network executive who was blonde? That was supposed to be Linda Mancuso and Dustin claims he slept with her when he was 14. She's also dead now.
- The part about Tiffany and Mark Paul going to Paris only happened because he claims that Tiffany, Mark, and Peter Engel had a three way in their office. After that he was kicked out of going to Paris for Tiffany.
-Talks about the cast all smoking Marijuana.
- Claiming that Mario Lopez rapped a girl and it was covered up.
-Claiming that everyone of the cast was having sex.

I haven't read Dustin Diamond's book, but I remember when it first came out, some old articles about Mario Lopez rape accusations were linked on a few forums. Mainly this one was linked.

http://variety.com/1993/scene/people...charge-106708/

Scheduled on the TiVo