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At the top of this episode, the gang’s resident advisor (Mike) who is about thirty-five years old announces that he will be hosting Thanksgiving dinner for a group of underprivileged kids. For this reason, he can’t use his NFL tickets.

Mike offers the tickets up to the group and only-child Zack pitches a whole sob story about how his “brother” Teddy has just returned from the Peace Corps and would love to attend an NFL game with him because Zack is a sociopath. He doesn’t even want to go to the game. As it turns out, his plan is to scalp the tickets.

Meanwhile, Slater coaches his girlfriend, Alex on how to make a good impression at his family’s Thanksgiving Dinner.

Don’t talk politics with Slater’s father
Laugh at his uncle’s jokes
Pretend to be Mexican when speaking to his grandma

Sounds like this relationship is destined for long-term success!

A college friend, Leslie, declines an invite to spend Thanksgiving with Kelly, opting instead to help Mike with his dinner. She says her family isn’t big on Thanksgiving, which Zack is surprised to hear because her ancestors were on the Mayflower.

Leslie asserts that some of her ancestors were at the First Thanksgiving, and invented the three bean salad. (No amount of facepalm emojis will suffice. Please go back and click that link if you skipped over it.)

Leslie spends most of her day making turkey place cards out of construction paper and school glue. They’re actually pretty cute. But Mike reprimands her, saying: “These are tough street kids, not the Olsen kids.” Because I guess only wealthy white kids enjoy crafts? What the actual fuck, Mike?

Saved by the Bell: The College Years" A Thanksgiving Story (TV Episode 1993) - IMDb

A lot of things happen in quick succession: Mike and Screech attempt to lift a pool table. Mike injures his back. Screech tries to help Mike by pushing his wheelchair, but Screech sucks so he rams the wheelchair into a wall at top speed. Mike ends up with a concussion. Screech decides to stay with Mike and “help” him even though Mike begs him to go back home to LA with everyone else.

Lucky for everyone else, Screech isn’t with them when they take a shortcut on the drive back to LA and breakdown in the middle of nowhere. I can only assume the one thing that would make that awful situation worse is Screech.

Zack is stressed because he wants to get back home and sell the NFL tickets. When they see a car, they all try to flag it down except for Alex who scares off the passing vehicle by pretending her flashlight is a gun because she believes them to be Pod People…because they drive a Chevy.

AC Slater and Alex Tabor trading card Saved by the Bell 1994 Pacific #24 Kiersten Warren Mario Lopez at Amazon's Entertainment Collectibles Store

Everyone thinks she’s stupid, and she is deeply heart by their reactions. She sounds delusional. Like maybe it’s just the stress of breaking down on the road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, but like she may want to consider seeking professional help.

After spending the night by the broken down car, the gang gets towed back to college on Thanksgiving morning.

Zack announces that he’s trying to fly back to LA on standby. Kelly tells him he’s selfish. (He is.) He denies it. (Of course he does.) And Slater calls him out for not adding anyone else’s name to the standby list.

After talking things over with Mike, they all decide to spend Thanksgiving with the underprivileged kids. The only problem is that Screech switched out the order for cooked turkeys to an order for frozen turkeys in order to save a little money.

So the kids show up to eat while the turkeys are still frozen. Zack runs off to find an open store while Screech tries to thaw the turkeys with a hair dryer. (I am sure this is not a best practice for food safety.)

Before he leaves, we learn that Zack secured a spot on the standby list by pretending to be a doctor picking up an organ donation. (Just in case you thought he wasn’t a piece of shit. Wanted to set that record straight real quick.)

Zack returns from Seven Eleven (the only open store, which he tells us repeatedly in an offensive accent like he’s trying to be Apu or something.)

While Screech tries to thaw the turkeys in a sauna (yikes), the news interviews Mike. In the middle of the interview, Screech serves the kids a platter of turkey jerky…ugh. Zack also tries to co-opt the interview to request an extra plane ticket to LA. GEEZE.

Then Jonathan Brandis shows up with an actual cooked turkey and if you’re a millennial girl then you’re heart just broke in one thousand different ways. (If you’re not a millennial girl, Jonathan Brandis was like a baby River Pheonix whose life also ended tragically at a young age.)

Sweet Angel Jonathan Brandis saw the turkey jerky news report and decided to deliver an actual meal to the kids! It turns out a few celebrities had this same idea (and all evidently live in the San Francisco area) because Marsha Warfield from Night Court shows up next with another beautiful turkey. Jenna von Oy from Blossom arrives next (btw Kelly Kapowski is announcing all of these people as they enter.) Jenna brought pie btw.

Jonathan Brandis in Saved by the bell: The College Years - video dailymotion — Marsha & Jonathan sit down for dinner with no food.

Then Mr. Belding from the show’s original run show up to honestly as many fan cheers as Jonathan, Marsha, and Jenna got. And this sounds like a live studio audience but honestly idk I guess it could be a track. He’s in town to visit his mother and decided to bring by some mashed potatoes, which he promptly asks Jenna von Oy’s to sign her name. Considering that Jenna is approximately sixteen years old at the time of this filming, it’s more than a little weird.

Kelly makes a nice little speech about thankfulness just in time for Brian Austin Green to show up with cranberry sauce. OMG THIS WAS A LEGIT 90’S WHO’S WHO. I truly wasn’t into this episode at all but this ending was all very heartwarming to my millennial heart. (Fun fact: This episode was probably filmed shortly before Tiffani Thiessen became Brian’s castmate on 90210.)

Brian Austin Green & Tiffani-Amber Theissen | Brian austin green, Tiffani thiessen, Beverly hills 90210

Zack pulls Kelly aside to do something truly nice for once. He’s gotten a ticket back to LA and he’s giving it to her. Zack tells Kelly her happiness is more important that money and she says, “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” which is really kind of a bummer when you think about it.

Very Special Thanksgiving Lesson: Do not outsource your supply chain management (unless you live in an area with a lot of very giving celebrities willing to pitch in at the eleventh hour.)

In other exciting news. The SBTB reboot is now streaming on Peacock! Have any of you watched it yet? Let me know in the comments!

This Week in TV: 'Saved by the Bell,' 'Flight Attendant,' Thanksgiving NFL | Hollywood Reporter

Hello! Happy Saved by the Bell Day! I did a cursory Google search and I’m honestly not sure if this holiday is anything more than an attempt to sell sandwiches but hell, we need something to celebrate in 2020!

On that note, let’s talk about gender roles. This episode is from very early in the series, airing way way back in 1989. Zack’s voice hasn’t even changed! Like I think I just heard it crack.

Anyway, they’re all adorable babies. Who for some reason need to spend a class learning about what it’s like to be married? WHAT???

Anyway, curious to know if this was like a “real thing” that people did in school back in the days of home economics. Also curious to know if taking care of an egg in order to be a “good parent” was a real thing.

Okay, so the kids are paired off into “marriages” — this is as heteronormative as you would expect. The couples are (I’m sure you can guess) as follows:
-Zack/Kelly
-Slater/Jessie
-Screech/Lisa

True to form, Jessie and Slater’s relationship is immediately contentious. Jessie won’t take Slater’s last name and he says that one of the important parts of a relationship is “great legs.”

As per usual, Screech is creepy stalking Lisa throughout most of this episode. This causes her to have night terror in which she cannot escape him. Freddy Krueger take note. Incidentally, I have to imagine this is Lark Voorhies felt for much of her time on the show acting opposite Dustin Diamond.

Alright, so the true plot of this episode comes from the weird stuff they’re required to do during class for their “marriages.” This involves running through scenarios…while Principal Belding grades them on how they behave in their “marriages”…I’m sorry…what? This doesn’t feel like it should be legal.

Of course, this turns into Jessie and Slater fighting again. She’s trying to get him to help with the household chores. He’s trying to get her to call him “Tiger Man.” Jessie tells the principal that Slater, “doesn’t want a wife. He wants a maid.” So it seems like this is the point in time where Principal Belding should be “helping” them solve this issue, right? Nah, he just says, “that’s a problem you two will have to work out.”

Up next are Kelly and Zack. Kelly asks Principal Belding to refer to her as Mrs. Morris. Barf. The scenario is that she must tell Zach she has wrecked his car. HIS car? Are they married or not? Is this car a joint asset or NOT? Anyway, Zack pretty much just tries to seduce her the whole time. He’s trying to get her to make out in class. It’s A LOT.

Screech and Lisa are up next. Their scenario is that Screech has been fired and Lisa must comfort him. She responds by doing an offensive impression of a Spanish speaking maid and Screech mistakes this for German. The stress of all this causes Lisa to develop a literal allergy to Screech. Fearing the risk of anaphylaxis, Principal Belding annuls their “marriage.”

If you thought that everything up until this point was extremely strange and disturbing, I would have to agree with you. I’m also not sure how to warn you or prepare you for what comes next, so I’m just going to jump right into it.

Evidently, there are other kids in the class who are not assigned to “marriages.” These kids sit in desk and watch this whole mess unfold. Then Belding tells the “couples” tha tthey will now select children, played by their classmates, Let’s Make a Deal-style. I’ll pause here until your head stops spinning.

Zack and Kelly end up selecting Screech while Slater and Jessie pick Lisa. Cut to: Screech writing Lisa’s name in toothpaste on the mirror in the boy’s bathroom. WHY WAS THERE NOT A GUIDANCE COUNSELOR AT THIS SCHOOL?

Slater discovers Screech as he begins his slow evolution on the path to becoming the next Green River Killer and offers to help him out by pressuring Lisa into dating him because she “has to listen to her Daddy” in order to get a good grade. Annnnndd I’m going vomit EVERYWHERE.

This transaction involves some kind of quid pro quo, but we cut away after Screech offers to teach Slater how to (literally) inhale a slurpy. I assume this wasn’t the offer Slater was looking for, so I’m not sure where they landed.

In a shock to absolutely no one, Zack is a terrible father. This upsets Kelly, so she and Zack split up. I assume this was how their actual marriage unraveled, unless their Vegas wedding ended in a quickie divorce before they even had kids.

Honestly, this episode could have been titled “Slater is Trash” because he’s trying to manipulate Kelly now by pretending to be a “good father” to Lisa. This is back in the early days of the show when Slater was trying to date Kelly. They must have seriously rewritten his character after she and Zack got together because Slater is truly awful in this episode. And I am UPSET about it.

Anyway, in his ploy to get an IRL date with Kelly, Slater has agreed to be a stay at home dad with Jessie and take the last name of Spano-Slater.

When Lisa still refuses to go out with Screech — because no grade is worth that — Screech announces to the class that he broke up his “parents” because Slater promised him that Lisa would go out with him.

All of the boys end up in the principal’s office and somehow a thirty second conversation turns into a genuine change of heart. They apologize and ask to continue the project. Belding says he will only allow this with the girl’s permission. They agree and they all go on a creepy family dinner date at The Max.

Slater orders for Jessie at dinner because he thinks that’s what’s men do. Jessie tells him a “real man wouldn’t be threatened by a woman who knows what she wants.” He responds by saying, “You’re really a great girl, but I think we should break up before I send you to the moon” — a callback to a 1950’s joke about spousal abuse.

Meanwhile, Zack and Kelly reconcile. Somehow Screech has ended up under the table with his head stuck “on a platter.” I don’t even want to know. Kelly closes the lid and decides that all marriages need some alone time. Wtf. This was so weird. I can’t. I cannot even comment.

I am truly so sorry for that visual. I simply didn’t know how to use words to describe this. Please know that I truly understand if you hate me forever because of it.

Very Special Lesson: Uhhh. Maybe virtual learning isn’t so bad. At least you would probably be in the vicinity and could shut this toxic shit down if you kid was unfortunate enough to attend Bayside High.

**Also sorry for posting this so late. Hopefully it’s still Saved by the Day at least on the west coast by the time I post this!

OH and in other very important news, Mark-Paul Gosselaar started a podcast with Dashiell Driscoll of the excellent Funny or Die series Zack Morris is Trash, and my personal favorite, A Very Special Episode. Evidently Mark-Paul has never watched the series and will now be going through every single episode of Saved by the Bell for our listening pleasure.