‘Saved By the Bell’: How the Reboot Changes Bayside High In 2020
Saved By the Bell is an artifact of the ’90s. The high school sitcom took place at Bayside High before cell phones and social media even existed. Peacock is bringing the classic comedy back for 2020. Their Saved By the Bell reboot features Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Thiessen), Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) and A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) returning with a new cast of high school students.
30 Rock writer Tracey Wigfield created the new Saved By the Bell. Wigfield was on a Television Critics Association panel in August to preview the Peacock reboot with her new cast. Saved By the Bell premieres Nov. 25 on Peacock.
It’s a new Bayside High in ‘Saved By the Bell’
Wigfield said Saved By the Bell introduces students from a different school to Bayside. The culture clash with Bayside will provide a lot of comedy.
“The fun thing of our show is Bayside is sort of this bubble that is a little bit like the Bayside you saw in the original show,” Wigfield said. “It’s a bunch of kind of weird, clueless kids who never have any real problems. I wanted the premise to be kids from this other school coming into this weird Bayside bubble and being like, ‘Hey, this place is really strange’ and responding to it as though they’re walking into this original show in the ’90s.”
Coming soon on ‘Saved By the Bell’
The new cast includes Zack and Kelly’s son Mac (Mitchell Hoog), Jessie’s son Jamie (Belmont Cameli) and classmates Lexi (Jamie Totah), Devante (Dexter Darden), Aisha (Alycia Pascual-Pena) and Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez).
“There are definitely one-off stories about Mac and Jamie fall in love with the same girl without ever knowing her name,” Wigfield said. “[They] can’t figure out they’re in love with the same girl for like 25 minutes of the story. We kind of poke fun at stories on the original show mixed with sort of larger arcs and love triangles. We follow Daisy as student class president changing the school.”
It’s okay if you’ve never seen the original series
Wigfield promised to pay homage to the classic Saved By the Bell for fans. She also promised you’d be fine if this is your introduction to the show.
“It’s a little bit of a reimagining,” Wigfield said. “While the original show was basically a kind of Saturday-morning show for kids about high school, this is a single-camera, edgier comedy that I think will be exciting for people who love the original. Also, if you never saw the show, it’s just a funny comedy about high school in 2020 that I think you’ll enjoy.”
The ‘Saved By the Bell’ reboot is nicer to nerds
On the original Saved By the Bell, Slater was the jock and Zack was the cool “preppy.” Nerds like Screech were the butt of jokes. Wigfield says that’s changed.
“It was a rough show for nerds,” Wigfield said. “Poor Screech and all the nerds were shoved into lockers. Slater would pick someone up and put just them in a garbage can. That’s not great to do now.”
