Which episode do you think inspired producers to add Screech to "The New Class"?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Saved by the Bell
TadowScott — 2 years ago(August 22, 2023 04:45 PM)
I can think of so many moments that made him and Mr. Belding another version of Carl Winslow and Steve Urkel:
- When Screech compared Mr. Belding's hairline to his brother, Rod's, right in front of Mr. Belding.
- When Screech played his version of "Home on the Range" on the piano.
- When Mr. Belding vented that his wife wants him to go to a sensitivity seminar, so Screech stabbed Belding's hand with a pencil, to prove that Belding's already sensitive.
- The "Earthquake" episode when Screech and Mr. Belding were locked in his office.
- When Mr. Belding told Screech, who he thought was marrying Kelly, "You can't elope," and Screech said, "Who are you calling a canteloupe, you melon head?"
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Toilet_Clogger — 2 years ago(August 22, 2023 09:58 PM)
What about the “Miss Bayside” episode when Screech won and Mr. Belding crowned Screech and sang the Miss Bayside song? The gay tension between Screech and Belding in that episode was so strong that the producers decided to reunite them during the New Class. Dustin Diamond actually complained about this in his book and claimed that the writers didn’t like Dennis Haskins and so they introduced subtle gay jokes/storylines to get back at Haskins.
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TadowScott — 2 years ago(August 23, 2023 03:21 AM)
Wow, I never knew there was a backstory to the gay writing of their characters. Did Dustin explain why Dennis wasn’t very well-liked?
On a side note, regarding the “Miss Bayside” episode, I don’t know if you remember the part where Mr. Belding asked each contestant a question (“what would you do to make the world a better place?” and such). But when Belding said to the first contestant, “Are you ready?” as he proceeded to ask her a question, she walked up to him and spoke into his microphone, “Yes. That was an easy question,” and then walked back to her spot on stage. cue Belding’s derp face. Well, that was her very first acting gig. Years later, she played Bud Bundy’s ditzy girlfriend on “Married With Children”. It’s a shame that she was typecast as the bimbo from the jumpstart of her career. -
Toilet_Clogger — 2 years ago(August 23, 2023 03:43 AM)
Dustin Diamond essentially said that Dennis Haskins pissed off the writers by telling them how they should be writing storylines for Mr. Belding. This is what Dustin Diamond wrote about New Class storylines he thought were gay:
I was still playing Screech in SBTB: The College Years when SBTB: The New Class began production, so there was a brief gap in time when I was still part of the original SBTB and hadn’t yet transitioned all the way with [Dennis Haskins] into the new format. When I started with The New Class, that’s when all the weird scripts started getting handed down to Den and me—scripts with all sorts of blatant homosexual innuendo between Mr. Belding and Screech. It was clear that the writers were either getting bored or had a bone to pick and were taking it out on us. Den was the first to vocalize his objections to whoever would listen. Stage directions started to be inserted into scripts that said things like, “Screech and Mr. Belding embrace and stare into each other’s eyes.” Weird **** like that. Look, I don’t care anything about people’s sexual preference. As far as I’m concerned, people can hit any hole they choose. But in the context of the long- standing relationships and backstories that had been established over years of creating the characters in SBTB, the **** they were handing us was totally inappropriate, and they knew it. Maybe it all was to get back at Den, who seemed to always be up in the writers’ room lecturing them on how he wanted Mr. Belding to be written. Maybe Den had told each of the writers that he was from their individual hometowns, and they’d finally compared notes with each other, deciding he was full of ****. Den was telling them how to do their jobs, and they were like, “Okay buddy, we’re the writers; you’re the actor. We’ll write the lines, you memorize them, and everybody will be happy.” I think Den just got on their nerves after a while, and they started taking it out on us in the scenes we had together. They’d write action like, “Screech gets scared and wraps his arms around Belding for safety.” It was a comedy show with a number of slapstick, cartoonish set pieces, so that wasn’t so bad. But then when scenes weren’t coming off as the writers envisioned, they started getting more graphic.
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Later, Ron Solomon and Brett Dewey’s partnership ended after Ron went on to other projects. Brett stayed with SBTB, sitting up in the seats of the darkened studio during rehearsals, uncorking that high-pitched, Revenge of the Nerds laugh of his whenever we performed one of the overtly gay gags he’d written into the script. You always knew which writers had written which jokes by who laughed the loudest. Den started mumbling, “It’s ****ing Brett. He’s the one who thinks this ****’s so funny.” -
TadowScott — 2 years ago(August 23, 2023 03:01 PM)
Thanks for the read, since I didn't want to waste money on his book. Ever since I read the reviews on Amazon in which it was stated that Dustin's grammar was atrocious, and that some of the excerpts from the book were repeated on additional pages, I declined.
It must suck that Dustin and Dennis are the only cast members who played their characters for a consecutive 11 years: from 1988 ("Good Morning, Miss Bliss") to 1999 ("The New Class"). So, besides their "suspect" characters, they will always be associated with each other. -
Toilet_Clogger — 2 years ago(August 23, 2023 05:18 PM)
I was able to find a free .pdf version of Diamond’s “Behind the Bell.”
Dustin Diamond tells blatant lies about certain things in that book. For example, he claims that the writers ran out of ideas and that in order to keep the show interesting and help the ratings, he grew an enormous poofy Jew-fro during the last season, an action which forever typecast him as Screech and prevented him from getting other roles after the New Class was cancelled. However, he actually grew that huge Jew-fro during the fourth or fifth of the seven seasons of the show, so his explanation as to why he grew it makes no sense. -
TadowScott — 2 years ago(August 23, 2023 07:20 PM)
I remember Dustin's Jew-fro phase. If you watch the final episode of the third season, his hair is somewhat short, whereas it's poofy in the first episode of the fourth season. Therefore, he definitely started growing it during hiatus.
Despite the failure of "Saved by the Bell: The New Class," the producers definitely stayed true to the subtitle, because literally every season, there was at least one "new" student in the "class":
Three cast members were replaced after seasons 1, 2, 3. And just one cast member was replaced after seasons 4 and 5. In case you're wondering why I didn't acknowledge season 7, "The New Class" technically lasted six seasons. The second-half of season 6 was aired the following year, in an effort to prolong the series, which is why 6 and 7 are the only seasons where you see the exact same archive footage during the theme song, as opposed to any "new" faces.
Somewhere out there, the producers are quoting Barney Gumble and Magic Johnson, "Looks like I pulled a Homer." Eat your heart out, "Two and a Half Men" (the "half" man turned 18 a few episodes into season 9)!