Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great moments, too. I’ve reflected upon all of them. Unfortunately, remembering so many other moments, I just have to shake my head and say, “D-Man, what were you thinking?”
So, for every one of you I ever hurt (unless you begged me to hurt you because that’s what you were into), from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.
Sincerely yours.
Dustin
P.S.: Call me.
APPENDIX C:
A FAN’ S TOP EPISODES (a very unofficial list)
This might disappoint many hard-core SBTB fans, but when I look back on the taping of the individual episodes and try to recall strange backstage happenings and juicy tidbits of Bayside trivia, each show just seems to blend together with the next into one long blur. At the time, I tried to key in on one aspect of each week’s show that made that show unique and fought the monotony, and sometimes boredom, of retreading the same plots and storylines for the principle characters. But there are only so many trials and tribulations that characters can realistically (or even unrealistically) face in a make-believe high school in Southern California. As I’ve mentioned, we did often pull pranks on one another to keep the week fresh. Each of us handled the occasional ennui of network television in our own unique fashion.
What follows is a brief selection of episodes that nonetheless still stick out in my mind.
“DANCING TO THE MAX” (Air date: August 20, 1989)
Casey Kasem hosts a dance contest at The Max. Kelly demands a dance-off between Zack and Slater because she can’t decide whom to attend the dance with. Jessie teaches Zack his dance moves, so when Kelly picks Slater, Zack convinces Jessie that they were meant to be partners all along. Lisa Turtle sprains her ankle and is stood-up by her date. Screech comes to the rescue with his new dance, the “Sprain.”
The Sprain was another dance routine coordinated by Maria Henley. It’s amazing to me how many people still ask me in person to do it. If you see me on the street, please don’t ask me to do the Sprain anymore. Now that I’m in my thirties, it’s more likely than not I’ll suffer an actual sprain in the process. What’s interesting, though, is that the plot calls for Screech to save Lisa (who has injured her ankle) from disappointment and failure by performing his triumphant improvisational dance—a concept that pre-dates by fifteen years Napoleon Dynamite’s heroic effort to save Pedro from embarrassment through the power of funky movement. I think Joseph Campbell, the eminent scholar of storytelling, would have agreed that it’s a classic mythological plot construct for the nerd archetype: The nerd hero completes his journey into the unknown by poppin’ a nut on the high school dance floor.
Also, I must say that I felt it patently unfair that Screech, who pined for Lisa Turtle all those years, never had any romantic satisfaction in that relationship, indeed, no closure at all. Quite the opposite. When Lisa made out with Zack at her house in “The Bayside Triangle,” and then again backstage at her fashion show (which Zack organized for her, of course), and Screech was made to watch this transgression backstage in tortured silence, that episode struck a low point for me. From a storytelling perspective, Zack has maintained a friendship with Screech since the beginning of SBTB and is well aware of Screech’s infatuation—his love—for Lisa, but he goes ahead and scumbags him anyway. He is stealing away the only girl Screech has ever been after. Meanwhile, the main story and character arcs for the series as a whole are in total service of the epic on-again/off-again romance between Zack and Kelly, culminating in their eventual marriage in the Las Vegas movie. This seemingly insignificant plot point—Zack choosing to make out with Lisa—(I mean, insignificant as far as the producers and writers were concerned), solidifies Zack Morris as a blue-ribbon douchebag, who gives not one shit about anyone but himself. For the viewers of SBTB—the target demo being primarily pre-pubescent young people—there’s the core personality of your lead character revealed, there’s the face of the whole Peter Engel franchise, there’s the Golden Child. He’s a self-absorbed pretty boy who makes no bones about nailing the one girl his “best pal” adores with all his heart and soul and, further, is convinced he can talk, grin, and “Aw shucks” himself out of any situation, no matter how intentionally vindictive.
“CREAM FOR A DAY” (Air date: October 7, 1989)
Kelly is nominated for Homecoming Queen but doesn’t want to leave her room when she discovers a zit at the end of her nose. Meanwhile, Zack and Screech accidentally invent a cream in chemistry class that clears up acne. They begin selling it at school. Only one problem: it turns everyone’s face purple. Bayside plays Valley in the Homecoming football game. News footage provided at the end by KNBC shows number 3, A.C. Slater, scoring the winning touchdown.
My dad played the chemistry teacher in this episode. Screech was in the miserably hot Bayside Tiger mascot costume.
“HOUSE PARTY” (Air date: October 6, 1990)
Screech’s parents leave him in charge of the house while they go on a vacation to Graceland. The boys break Mrs. Powers’s explicit “no parties” rule and, in the process smash her prized Elvis statue. The gang has to find a way to replace the statue before she returns.
Guest starring: Ruth Buzzi as Mrs. Roberta Powers, Patrick O’Brien as Mr. Dewey, Jeffrey Asch as Maxwell Nerdstrom, and Tori Spelling as Screech’s love interest, Violet Bickerstaff.
This episode featured Laugh In’s Ruth Buzzi as Screech’s mom, and the producers tried to get Michael Richards (a.k.a. Kramer) to play my dad. It was only the first season of Seinfeld, but Richards passed on the role, claiming he didn’t want to get locked into comedy roles so he could branch out into more serious material. I thought that was strange, because a few years later he played Doug Beech in Airheads, a guy who basically crawls around inside the air ducts of a radio station. It may have been a minor role, but apparently it was an important, serious one. I would have loved teaming up with Richards as Screech, Sr., patriarch of the Powers clan. Oh, well.
During the party scene in that episode, when Screech’s mom returns and they drop a surprise “Happy Anniversary” banner from the ceiling, standing beneath the banner is a girl (I think she has dark hair and is wearing pink overalls) who was appearing on the show because, somewhere in America, she was awarded first prize in a “Win a Chance to Be In the Background of an Episode of SBTB” contest. You can tell from her body language that she isn’t nearly as comfortable on camera as the other extras.
This was also a Tori Spelling/Violet Bickerstaff episode while she was lobbying hard to get with Mark-Paul, using me as her inside informant. Did he mention me today? Did he? Did he?
“THE GLEE CLUB” (Air date: December 23, 1990)
The gang joins the Glee Club trying to win a trip to Hawaii. Violet Bickerstaff (Screech’s girlfriend) is the only one who can sing. Screech bombs with Violet’s parents, and she quits the Glee Club. He’s told to stay away from Violet, but later, when she chokes onstage, Screech comes to her rescue. Also in this episode, Zack uses a “time out” to freeze the space-time continuum.
Guest starring: Tori Spelling again, Jack Angeles as Mr. Tuttle (our real-life NBC accountant) and another uncredited Scott Wolf appearance.
Every time I sang the song in this episode, the director kept encouraging me to do it louder and louder and more over-the-top, until I belted out the outrageous version that made the final cut.
“THE LAST DANCE” (Air date: September 14, 1991)
Zack and Kelly plan to go as Romeo and Juliet to the big costume ball. Kelly’s new boss at The Max, Jeff, comes between her and Zack, and they break up. At the ball, Zack Attack sings “Love Me Now” and “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” Jessie’s knee has not yet been split open, so she is the band’s lead singer. Kelly isn’t in the band at all. In one scene, on drums, is Ollie Creekly, a minor, African American nerd character with a deep, gravelly voice.
Guest starrng: Patrick Muldoon (Starship Troopers) as Jeff Hunter and an uncredited Scott Wolf (Party of Five,
Go).
In this especially cheesy episode, Slater and Jessie are singing at the costume ball for Zack’s eponymous band, Zack Attack. Not for nothing, but did everything have to be named for Zack? And another thing: how did this apparent schemer and ne’er-do-well, who was always involved in some half-baked plot to skirt authority and shirk responsibility, manage to earn a near-perfect score on his SATs? I’ll tell you how—magic. (For more on this brand of magic, refer back to the section on Ed Alonzo and Neil Patrick Harris.)
Stage coordinator Maria Henley, who was with SBTB forever, would choreograph all our dance routines, like for the Zack Attack music performances or for the “Buddy Bands” episode. Slater and Elizabeth’s Zack Attack performances were lip-synched to professional performers, whose voices were intentionally paired with theirs because, supposedly, they mirrored what Mario and Elizabeth’s real singing voices might sound like if they possessed the talent to sing. Our music was usually arranged by Scott Gale, though there were others whose names now escape me. The music guys would come down whenever they had a number to arrange and then disappear just as quickly. They would give us cassette tapes (because that was the technology back in the day) along with our scripts to be read and listened to over the weekend.
They were also in charge of matching up the voice-over talent for the musical performances—all performers we never met. So, if it was Tiffani singing, she would lip synch while the voice track played, and not only were the vocals supposed to sound excellent as music, they were also intended to sound like Tiffani’s voice if she were singing in real life. It was apparently important to at least attempt to pull this trick off, though in my opinion it failed miserably and sounded ridiculous. Just listen to Mario as he opens his mouth for the first stanza of “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?” It’s an all-time classic moment in the annals of lip-sync-dom, resting somewhere in that golden pantheon alongside Milli Vanilli and C & C Music Factory.
Speaking of music, a lot of people don’t remember—or never knew—that SBTB had two recorded versions of the theme song. For one season, St. Peter commissioned a new theme from Michael Damian. (Remember “Rock On,” the hit from his Dream a Little Dream album?) I don’t think it ever became popular with the fans or, most importantly, the powers that be, and it didn’t last long. I don’t even know if the new theme ever aired on television or made it to the DVDs, but it would play in studio as the intro to the show’s Friday tapings.
Another factoid about the music on SBTB : there wasn’t any played on set. If there was a dance scene or band scene, it was silent on set because any music would have stepped on the dialogue. All music was mixed in during post-production.
“CHECK YOUR MATE” (Air date October 5, 1991) Zack and Slater bet $300 that Screech will defeat his Valley High opponent in the chess championship. When Valley students steal Screech’s lucky beret, Zack and Slater steal Screech’s opponent.
This episode is a direct result of those questionnaires the writers and producers made us fill out. Since I was a chess player, they designed this episode around Screech competing with a wager laid down on the results. There’s a bogus, campy chess move in this episode called the “Spassky bishop block.” Boris Spassky is a real guy, but the chess move is pure fabrication. I only mention it because I’m a chess player and kind of a stickler for such things, but it’s all in the service of great comedy—I suppose.
When it came to Screech, the producers and writers of SBTB insisted on a number of stock geekoid clichés (i.e., a high-stakes high school chess championship). They gave him the wacky, loud clothes, the bunk beds, the ant farm, the robot, chess—the only affectation they fell short of was the plastic pocket protector. It was always important to me from day one to understand and portray the emotional side of Screech, but there was only so much I could do within the confines of how the character was written. Screech was gullible with a big heart and had his fair share of eccentricities.
But what was interesting to me was that, as time went on, the writers would introduce new, minor nerd characters (like Maxwell Nerdstrom, who played the wealthy love interest trying to lord over Violet Bickerstaff) who were the proto-stereotypical nerdy-nerds with the white tape wound around glasses, the high-waters with bright white socks, etc. It was interesting because, in the main cast, Screech filled the role of the nerd archetype, yet when other nerds were portrayed in minor roles (like Ollie, Alan, or the lazily named Nerdstrom), there was never any depth to their characters; they were total, unabashed cartoon caricatures. It always made me wonder if that put Screech in the same category of nerd as those other, throwaway characters in the mind of the viewers. My question was: If Screech defined the nerd archetype in the fictional universe of SBTB, then why were actual nerds portrayed so utterly different from him in both appearance and mannerisms? I think this conflict between the societal concept of nerdiness and the stock television portrayal of nerdiness is what made Screech the most realistic of all the main cast members. I received numerous letters from fans that said my portrayal of Screech helped them “get through high school.” Many of the letters were heartbreaking because, while all the ridicule and disappointments I faced as Screech were through a character I played on TV, the letters I read were filled with the troubles these “nerdy” kids were actually experiencing in their real lives.
This dichotomy bothered me. I was worried that the producers had designs on getting rid of Screech and replacing him with a more archetypal nerd. This may seem far-fetched now, but at the time I was consumed by it. We were engaged in negotiations over my contract renewal. My initial three-year contract was up, and I was smack in the middle of the conundrum of whether I should demand more money and risk getting canned from the show or play ball and simply go along to get along. Sometimes in the industry, when you feel your leverage is weak, you have to take a little screwing on the money side to ensure that you have steady work. I certainly didn’t want to be the next Denise Crosby. She played Lt. Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation. In 1994, she was unceremoniously shit-canned when she held out for more dough. Denise may live long, but, thanks to that decision, she will not prosper.
My negotiations stretched out, and at one point it didn’t look like the network was going to come through with what I was asking. Meanwhile, the writers had all sorts of new nerds stepping to the fore on SBTB. I was happy for the extras who were getting more lines, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling a bit hinky about where it was all headed. Fortunately, my contract was settled favorably, but I always thought it was interesting that when they brought their gaggle of new nerds to Bayside, they were all ridiculously over-the-top. One kid was named Kevin (in the show and real life). He had the blonde, frizzy hair and used that urgent, nasally stock nerd voice. Then there was Nerdstrom and low, robot-voiced Ollie. They all made their bid to grab the laughs, but I knew my audience better than all of them.
“PIPE DREAMS” (Air date: October 26, 1991)
Zack and the gang adopt “Becky,” an injured duck (named after Mr. Belding’s wife), during a biology project in the pond beside Bayside High. Workers strike oil while digging for a new goal post on the football field. As a result, an evil oil company wants to destroy the pastoral pond. This episode features the cast doing their high-fives shown in each show’s opening credits.
In “Slater’s Friend,” Mario lost his pet chameleon Artie, and in this episode Mark-Paul loses his new friend Becky the duck. This episode is most amusing to me for the lengths of absurdity the writers would go to make Zack Morris a little slice of pretty much every vocation and bleeding-heart cause a human being can be involved in on planet Earth. This time: animal activist.
“ROCKUMENTARY” (Air date: November 30, 1991)
The great Casey Kasem narrates the rise and fall and rise again of Zack Attack. It starts with their garage-band beginnings and progresses into their days of fame and fortune. The band breaks up over Zack falling for their publicist and arguing with the other members. The others bran
ch out into solo careers. In this episode, Kelly is the lead singer.
Guest starring: Casey Kasem as himself, Stacie Foster as Mindy Wallace, and Nick Brooks as Brian Fate.
Notice that Elizabeth Berkley does not appear in this seminal episode. However, She was supposed to, however. The episode had to undergo an emergency, last-minute rewrite after Elizabeth tripped and fell during rehearsals and camera blocking the day before shooting. She stumbled and split her knee open like a soft-boiled egg on the metal floorboard between the stage doors that led out to the dressing rooms. Screaming and writhing, blood everywhere, she was rushed to the hospital, and it was soon clear that she would be out of commission for a while. The writers had to scramble and write out her part, distributing all her dialogue to the other cast members. In this episode, when Zack Attack is performing on stage and the camera cuts away to a shot of the audience, in the audience sits a kid with an oily forehead, glassy eyes, and a tiny nose. That handsome chap is Skyler Thiessen, Tiffani’s little brother. Somewhere in there too, I believe, sits Lauren Engel, St. Peter’s daughter (she also appeared in SBTB: Hawaiian Style and a bunch of other episodes). Cast parents often made it onto set in small roles as well. My dad played a chemistry teacher and a study hall teacher who once told Mario, “Mr. Slater, this is study hall, not Soul Train.” And yes, my dad did walk away with a SAG card.
“MYSTERY WEEKEND” (Air date: December 28, 1991)
The gang travels to a murder-mystery weekend in an old mansion. Strange things start happening and people start disappearing.
Guest starring: Christopher Carroll as Bartholomew, Larry Cedar as Steven Jameson III, and Lisa Montgomery as Jeanette.
Here’s a weird, random tidbit: the actress who played the French maid with the over-the-top accent in this episode—she had the line, “You ayrr a seeef and a mayrdayrarrrr” (Translation: “You are a thief and a murderer”)—was dating Jon Lovitz at the time.
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