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Post by sbtbfanatic on Sept 5, 2015 4:32:36 GMT
The New Class Season 3, Episode 24: “The Fallout”
Isn’t it great that, a whole six weeks after we had part one of this huge ripoff of the Zack Morris and Kelly break-up, we finally get to have part two? Yes, after touring the seas on the S.S. Suspension of Disbelief, learning the evils of cigarette smoking at the mall, and even witnessing Screech’s delusions of importance in his own mind, we’re back at the ski lodge which, if you can remember from six weeks ago, is now buried in snow. So, do we get a recap of this episode to remind us what happened?
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Of course not! You’re supposed to remember everything that happened over a month ago because we go directly to Ryan obsessing over a photo of Lindsay and pulling the petals off a daisy. To be fair, that daisy is the best damned actor in this episode.
Ryan’s pissed that he’s snowed in at the ski lodge and can’t get off this damned show because there was so much snow it trapped them there and now he has to eat food prepared by Lindsay and what’s his name. Seriously, I couldn’t remember the guy’s damned name. After all, he was a living breathing doll six weeks ago that served no purpose other than give Lindsay a girl erection. The snow sure didn’t stop Tommy D from finding a way to make it there, though, because he’s here to give us some more of his stupidity as the rest of the gang come in trying to cheer up Ryan. Aren’t I just lucky.
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Since Ryan doesn’t want to come down stairs for fear of seeing Lindsay and her breathing blow up doll, Screech comes in to try to cheer him up by reminding us of the plot point about the gang running the ski lodge, and to come right out and say he still pines for Lisa. She needs to get a restraining order before she ends up a victim on America’s Most Wanted. Seriously, he’s still obsessed over here when he left Bayside three years ago and, as far as we know, has only seen her three times since? He has issues…
Screech’s talk inexplicably convinces Ryan to get dressed and go downstairs. After all, this plot isn’t going to advance itself!
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Downstairs, Ken and Barbie…I mean, Lindsay and the living breathing plot device…talk about what’s bothering Lindsay: that she hasn’t seen Ryan since she told him that the writers were pulling her strings in a different direction and she’s worried about him. McGuffin tells Lindsay that maybe she should try to talk to him, and Ryan just happens to walk in with the rest of the gang at that very moment. How convinent! Of course, he won’t talk to her, and walks by in the best version of an awkward moment actors on The New Class can cook up.
Ryan sits down for breakfast with the gang and Rachel decides the best way to get Ryan’s mind off Lindsay is to establish the subplot of the week: R.J.’s birthday which, inexplicably, nobody knew about until this very moment so let’s throw him a party and shit! They’re not even trying at this point, are they? Are the writers just phoning this shit in from the beach and saying, “Yeah, let’s do the Lisa’s birthday suplot from ‘The Aftermath’ too except let’s make it R.J. since he’s the blandest character this season”? God, could this show get any more derivitive? Have they never heard of an original plot?
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As if to answer my nightmares, it’s time to introduce the second subplot, involving Grandpa Ernie and his bat-shit crazy friends being involved in a lodge called the “Fraternal Order of the Spotted Hoot Owl.” No, I’m not kidding. They are, seriously, running around imitating this little guy with insane dances and bird calls:
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Now I like owls. Why did The New Class have to go and besmirch their good name with an episode about three old men recently escaped from a mental asylum doing a Daffy Duck-like impersonation of them? I take it all back. Give me the derrivative plots! At least they’re not…this!
But, no, Mr. Belding and Screech decide they can only hope to rise to the level of crazy these three are exhibiting, meaning our third subplot is going to involve the two of them acting crazy to become spotted hoot owls. I can’t believe I just typed that…
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Lindsay and the Maltese Falcoln, meanwhile, makeout on the back deck to console Lindsay over Ryan having emotions regarding the forced break-up bad television writers are forcing him to endure.
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Ryan leads Jackie Kennedy out and sees the kiss. He naturally runs back inside, cursing the writers of The New Class for predictable writing and emotional tug-o-wars.
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Time for the spotted hoot owl initiation to begin, starting with giving them special names and flapping their arms around the room as the extras look on in horror. God, shoot me now…
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Ryan decides the best way to get back at Lindsay is to get a date with pretty girl Sonya, and she must be a knock out, because she says her name and the audience loses their shit. Seriously, somebody needs to get this audience laid before they explode in their pants. I don’t know why they’re so exicted about Sonya. The only other thing she ever did was appear as “Pancake Breakfast Extra” in a 1998 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. A truly distinguished career she had. But, yeah, Ryan asks her out to dinner that night as Jackie Kennnedy looks on in the background.
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God, this shit again? Yeah, Tommy D, Rachel, and Maria make a video for R.J.’s birthday that includes Mr. Belding and Screech insanely making owl noises anytime someone says, “Who!” Why, R.J. will be able to look back on this tape years later and know exactly why he’s in rehab!
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The next step is to record Lindsay and the mannequin making R.J.’s birthday cake. Unfortunately, they leave Tommy D in charge of the icing and, being a complete dumb ass, he eats all the icing. How many more episodes is he in again?
Ryan comes in and invites Lindsay and her blow-up doll to dinner, saying he’s decided it doesn’t help anyone to be mad.
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At dinner, Lindsay’s surprised that the Pancake Extra came to dinner. Ryan acts about the ass you’d expect, and I’m not defending him like I did Zack Morris. At least Zack Morris was just going on dates to The Max when he was in this plot. Ryan’s putting Lindsay down and giving Pancake Extra Lindsay’s necklace from six weeks ago.
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Lindsay gets pissed when she realizes what’s going on and pours her soup all over Ryan. She drags blow-up doll off to have another make-out session.
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Pancake Extra’s none too happy, either, and pours her soup on Ryan as well. Actually, if my career consisted of pouring hot liquid on a The New Class actor and later being in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, you know, that might not be such a bad career after all.
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The final part of Mr. Belding and Screech’s initiation is to wear ricidulous looking owl costumes and spend the night in an area notorious for grizzly bears. Grandpa Ernie’s just fucking with them at this point, isn’t he? Mind you, if this subplot gets Screech killed, it may be well worth it.
Ryan gets pissed that the gang think he’s a tool for going along with this stupid subplot. He decides to leave in the morning, meaning he’ll miss R.J.’s birthday party.
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On a set with fake snow, some obviously fake bear growls can be heard, and suddenly out pop three people in bear costumes. Of course, as seems to happen in every television show and movie, Mr. Belding believe that these are real bears and run off. At this point, I could have believed this was The New Class‘s actual response for the need to have a grizzly in an episode but, no, it’s Grandpa Ernie and his insane friends. Yeah, they’re fucking with Mr. Belding and Screech.
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At the ski lodge the next morning, Ryan has a very special talk with Mr. Belding, and you can almost hear the manipulative music coming on. Ryan says he doesn’t want to stay at the lodge because of Lindsay. Mr. Belding tells him to get the fuck over it and finish out the season since she’ll be gone in a few episodes anyway. Mr. Belding tells him if he can’t grow the fuck up, he has Mr. Belding’s blessing to leave.
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At R.J.’s birthday party, Mr. Belding and Screech tell all kinds of stupid lies about wrestling grizzlies and shit. Grandpa Ernie’s crazy friends reveal it was them the whole time, and they tell Mr. Belding and Screech they were just fucking with them and they’re now official spotted hoot owls. God that was a stupid subplot.
R.J. watches his video, starting with Tommy D sneezing and being covered in snow Looney Tunes style. Then there’s a special message from Ryan about being at his birthday and then out pops Ryan and shit and happy birthday, bland character who really had nothing to do with this episode! The video must not have been very interesting, too, because Ryan’s presence makes everyone forget to watch the rest and go off to dance instead. How kind of them to be so considerate of all the people who made the stupid thing.
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Ryan takes Lindsay outside and they make-up and agree to be friends for the two more episodes she’s on the show since their love was never much more than making out anyway. And our episode ends with Ryan and Lindsay going into the party to get some cake and prepare for one more stupid episode at the ski lodge. God, I wish I had some cake instead of thirty less minutes of my life I spent watching this stupid show.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Sept 5, 2015 4:33:17 GMT
The New Class Season 3, Episode 25: “The Christmas Gift”
What? We’re not going to wait another six weeks to go back to the ski lodge? It’s a Christmas miracle, folks!
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And it is Christmas at the ski lodge, where Mr. Belding’s bitching and moaning about being made to dress in funny costumes since he’s at the beck and call of the crazy spotted hoot owls now.
Grandpa Ernie announces that the ski lodge is magically back on its feet after only a few days of the gang working there so he’s going to start paying them for their work. To call this a plot contrivance is an insult to plot contrivances everywhere. No, this is more like, “We’re tired of the plot we constructed in the last two episodes so let’s abandon it in anticipation of ripping off an unrelated Saved by the Bell episode!”
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Tommy D’s supposed to be fixing the Christmas lights over the door when he inadvertently blocks this girl from getting in. Meet Robin, who’s here to replace the Walking, Talking Plot Device who’s conveniently home spending Christmas with his family. Geez, there’s a lot of convenience in this episode, sort of like a bunch of lazy writers decided to do whatever the hell they felt like to put out this episode!
Grandpa Ernie tells Robin he tried to call her but the number on her application has been disconnected. Robin stammers for a response and says her family just had to move.
Oh god. Oh, god, no. Christmas. Lame excuses about phones being disconnected. Please don’t fucking tell me they’re going to rip off the episode I think they’re going to rip off…
Also, it looks like this is going to be a Tommy D episode. Aren’t I just lucky? It’s like a Christmas miracle…
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Meanwhile, Mr. Belding, who’s bussing tables…for some reason…has a little boy randomly squeeze his nose to humiliate him for his decision to continue on this show. BEST KID EVER!
Mr. Belding starts crying and Screech assume it’s just because the kid made fun of him, but Mr. Belding says he’s sad to be away from his wife and sun for Christmas. So…why are you chaperoning six of your students? Why not, I don’t know, be at home?
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This makes Screech make one of his constipated faces, at which point he tells Ryan and R.J. he’s going to spend his money to bring Mrs. Belding and Little Zack to the ski lodge.
Lindsay tries to make small talk with Robin, who seems to avoid Lindsay’s questions about going skiing all the time and shit. As if to further cement my fears that this is going to be a rip off of the episode I think it is, Rachel and Maria come up excited to be going into town so they can buy shit with their money. Robin doesn’t want to go, though, saying she doesn’t want cashmere sweaters like Rachel and Pearl Jam box sets like Maria and…sunglasses…like Lindsay. Did Lindsay just become the lamest girl on this show? I mean…sunglasses. That’s what she’s excited about?
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Tommy D continues his infatuation with Robin by picking her some flowers…from the vase in the front desk. While I tend to think this is another moment of Tommy D idiocy, the audience thinks it’s fucking amazing and loses their shit over the flowers. If he finds chocolate for Robin, the audience is going to have an aneurysm…
Robin can’t go to a movie with Tommy D later, though, because she has to make dinner for her brothers and her sisters. God, no…
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Tommy D catches Robin stealing food in the kitchen and even he realizes something’s up. Robin tells him that they are indeed in a horrible ripoff of “Home for Christmas,” except she’s just almost homeless because her father lost his job and her family of six is living out of a motel room. She has to make $800 as quickly as possible so he can get a new transmission for his car and he can get a new job so she can get the fuck off this show. Tommy D suggests that she switch with Rachel or Maria since waitresses make more money, but Robin doesn’t want anyone else to know and Tommy D promises not to tell.
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Screech arranges with Mrs. Belding to come to the ski lodge for Christmas. She puts Little Zack on the phone, and he’s apparently still as awesome as he was back in “Belding’s Baby” since he wants nothing to do with Screech and hangs up on him. Best. Kid. Ever.
Tommy D comes in and convinces Screech that Rachel’s really upset she can’t work the kitchen but doesn’t want to tell anybody. Screech is officially more of a moron than Tommy D and buys his story that Rachel should be moved to the kitchen and Robin to the dining room.
Mr. Belding comes in and tells Screech that he’s decided that, if he goes home and leaves the gang in the hands of Screech and Grandpa Ernie, they might just accidentally be killed, so he’s decided to go home for Christmas after all, sending Screech into a tizzie. Speaking of which, who the hell ever heard of a random school trip on Christmas? Why are none of the gang spending time with their families? We’ve seen Tommy D’s father and Lindsay’s mother, but do they still exist? Oh, the mysteries this show presents…
The next day, Ryan and R.J. help Screech keep Mr. Belding from going to the bus station. How do they accomplish this, you ask? Why, by moving all the clocks forward and convincing him he missed his bus. And he buys it and dejectedly decides he has to take the afternoon bus. Wow, that was easy. No wonder Zack Morris never had trouble conning Mr. Belding. If these idiots can do it, anyone can.
Screech tells Robin he’s changed her assignment. Tommy D tells her he didn’t tell anyone her secret and that it must have just been good luck.
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So the plan to prevent Mr. Belding from making the afternoon bus is to get him to help Ryan and R.J. cut down a tree. Yeah, no kidding. Mr. Belding goes along with it because he thinks he has plenty of time and because he hasn’t learned after eight years in this franchise not to trust anyone.
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Meanwhile, Rachel’s pissed about being in the kitchen and Maria thinks Robin’s snooty for wanting bigger tips. They go to take a break while Tommy D checks on Robin. She’s upset she’s running out of customers to fleece so Tommy D takes a couple from Maria’s section and reseats them in Robin’s. Rachel and Maria see this and, of course, it’s jumping to conclusions time as they think Robin’s greedy because she waited on customers while Maria was outside getting it on with Rachel.
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Ryan and R.J. give Mr. Belding a rubber headed ax to chop the tree down with and tell him not to touch the head. No joke, he listens to them and just starts trying to chop the tree down. And he keeps on chopping. And doesn’t even question why he’s not making even a dent in the tree. This continues until Mr. Belding only has a half hour to catch his bus and decides to go catch the bus. Screech distracts him for the last half hour by, and I’m not joking, running around the tree in a circle. And…Mr. Belding doesn’t question it. He just runs around in a circle around the tree for a half hour until he misses his bus.
Is everyone in this universe an idiot?
Mr. Belding says that, tomorrow being Christmas, there’s only one bus, and nothing will make him miss it because he wants a break from all this idiocy with the wife and son he neglects most of the year to go to ski lodges and on cruise ships and while he’s working in the mall.
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Robin, meanwhile, is grateful for being a waitress, which automatically makes Lindsay, Rachel and Maria assume that she’s been sucking up to Screech. They go over to tell off Robin and she tells them to fuck off with their “Walkmans” and cashmere sweaters and sunglasses. She rushes off to a better show where coworkers act like real coworkers.
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It’s Christmas Day and, what’s the plan for keeping Mr. Belding from catching his bus today? Why, lock him in luggage storage and claim the door’s broke, of course! Mr. Belding’s really bad about getting locked in closets. This just happened back in “Air Screech.” He just needs to come out of the closet and get it over with.
However, I do have to say that this is cruel and I don’t know why shows do this sort of thing. I mean, I get Screech is trying to surprise Mr. Belding, but he’s got the poor man thinking he’s going to miss his bus and not get to see his family on Christmas. This is just mean and I’d be upset at whoever pulled this bull shit on me.
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Tommy D asks the girls if they’ve seen Robin and the girls tell Tommy D all about the encounter last night. Tommy D tells them they’re all selfish self-righteous bitches and proceeds to give them the plot of the episode. The girls feel bad and want to apologize but Grandpa Ernie told her not to come in and to spend Christmas with her family.
We cut to the exact same scene where Tommy D’s asked Screech to call Robin in for the Christmas party.
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Meanwhile, Screech, Ryan, and R.J. learn that Grandpa Ernie let Mr. Belding out of the luggage room and that he should have been just in time to make his bus. This makes Screech realize how much of a failure of a human being he is, but not so much that he isn’t going to be around for four more fucking wonderful seasons to remind me why this was one of the worst shows ever created.
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Speaking of incompetence, they actually brought Mrs. Belding back, and Screech has to explain to her and Little Zack why he’s such a dumb ass. Is it just me or is Little Zack Hyper Growing. I mean, last time we saw him, two years ago, he was but an infant. Now it looks like he’s a preschooler. Guess he has that disease kids on television shows get that make them age really fast.
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Robin comes in and is overwhelmed to discover her family there. The gang brought her family in to share a nice Christmas with her. Check out the boy on the left, who I assume is supposed to be her brother, looking like, “Why the hell did you bring me on this show with these stupid dumb asses?”
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Mr. Belding comes in and says he hopped on a bus but that it’s the wrong bus and happened to be the circle route that brought him right back to the ski lodge. That…makes absolutely no sense, like most of this episode. In any case, Mr. Belding is about to give it to Screech for ruining his life…
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When Little Zack runs up and greets him with a hearty, “Daddy!” Yep, hyper aging. Mr. Belding isn’t pissed at all for the psychological trauma Screech inflicted on him, but, instead, thanks him for nearly ruining his entire Christmas.
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The gang give Robin all the money Grandpa Ernie paid them so her dad can get a new transmission. See, I told you there was a contrived reason Grandpa Ernie suddenly wanted to compensate his underage employees! Robin thanks Tommy D with a kiss on the cheek, which excites the audience so much I’m convinced at least one member had a stroke.
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And our episode ends with Mr. Belding, Screech, and the gang gathering all the guest stars and extras to regale the customers as well as you and me with a rousing rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” And it would be a Merry Christmas if it weren’t for the fact that it’s June and that I’m watching The New Class. At least it’s the last real episode of the season. God, I hate this show.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Sept 14, 2015 2:31:45 GMT
The New Class Season 3, Episode 26: “New Year’s Resolution”
Well, we’re back at the ski lodge for one more episode. How much I have looked forward to the day we can put this wretched place behind us.
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As the name of the episode would suggest, it’s New Year’s Eve.
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Mr. Belding, Screech, and the gang are helping Grandpa Ernie set up for his annual New Year’s Eve party. This involves Screech being incompetent with balloons and talking about how, last year, Grandpa Ernie made him dress up as the New Year’s baby, diaper and all. Somehow, I’m surprised that isn’t the plot of this episode. I mean, they do tend to take every opportunity they can to show Screech nearly naked.
Mr. Belding has an idea to save the producers money on the season finale: the gang will think of resolutions based on things that have happened to them over the last year. This will allow the producers to shoe-horn in another clip show episode in place of a real season finale, because who the fuck cares about season finales since you only have to wait ten months on this show for new episodes!
Screech goes off to find the gang so they can reminisce on the last six months of my blogging life and the pain I’ve had to endure. In the meantime, he inhales helium and gives us an unfortunate preview of what’s going to happen to his voice in the coming seasons. I’ll give you a clue: my emotions surrounding the change are annoyance and depression, not joy and amusement.
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Screech first finds Ryan, who throws a shovel full of snow in Screech’s face. I like to think this was just Richard Lee Jackson getting pissed off at Dustin Diamond and not realizing the camera was on, but it was so good the producers left it in. Anyway, Ryan realizes how much of a dumb fuck he’s been over the past year with Zack Morris-like schemes and, after some clips, decides his resolution is to think before he acts. Ryan asks Screech what his resolution is, and Screech is terrified to realize his life is so fucked up he can’t decide on just one thing.
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Screech finds the girls next, and decides to blow on Grandpa Ernie’s nasal inhaler, which just happens to be sitting there with a bunch of noise makers…for some reason. After watching the clip of Lindsay not trusting Rachel and Ryan during the play, Lindsay vows to trust her friends more. Rachel remembers her mild case of sexual assault at Cal U. Maria vows to be up front with people after remembering how she and Lindsay lied to Rachel at the mall. Screech is filled with dread, though, to realize he still doesn’t have a resolution.
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Lastly, we have Tommy D and R.J., who are in charge of food. Unfortunately, R.J. let Tommy D do the taste testing, which Tommy D took to mean, “be an idiot and bite into every sandwich.” Oh, Tommy D, how I won’t miss you at all next season. Your presence this season has contributed nothing! But Tommy D does have a resolution: to be himself, based on the stupid episode where he tried to act cultured and smart to get a girl. R.J., meanwhile, vows to judge everyone for who they are since he remembered how much of a dick he was to a girl with a disability on the S.S. Suspension of Disbelief. Screech feels even more of a loser that even Tommy D has a resolution and he still can’t come up with one.
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So it’s time for the party, and Mr. Belding brings everyone outside to give their resolutions. Screech says he thought of one despite the fact that he and Mr. Belding didn’t get their own set of clips. What does Screech do? Why, he just reads off the gang’s resolutions. When they threaten to kick his ass for plagiarism, he apologizes, saying he’s such a dumb ass he thought he came up with them on his own. Mr. Belding says that it’s okay because everyone realizes Screech is a bit touched in the head and that, even if they’re borrowed and he took the thunder away from everyone else, they’re great resolutions.
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And our episode, and our season, closes with our principal cast counting down to the new year and then embracing in one more happy cast moment while I thank God I had enough whiskey to make it through this season.
Now you might have noticed the problem with this episode: it takes place mid-school year, while they’re on Christmas vacation. Since Ryan, R.J., and Maria just came at the beginning of the school year, that means every episode they used a clip from had to have happened between September and December. That means, in four months, the gang manged to have a bunch of school episodes in which they had a television station, a gymnastics meet, a school play, and a ballet recital at The Max, plus a multiple episode arc at the mall, a trip to Cal U, three months on the S.S. Suspension of Disbelief, and episodes at the ski lodge. I’ve heard of conflated time lines but this is ridiculous. There’s no possible way the gang accomplished all that in the span of four months, especially if three of those months were spent on a damned boat! These producers just don’t fucking care. They knew that they could take any old shit they wanted to, dress it up with the Saved by the Bell franchise name, and that we would all eat it because they believe we’re all maniacal raving idiots who can’t bother to tie our shoe strings without directions to follow!
God, I really hate this show.
For what it’s worth: here are what the resolutions should have been:
Mr. Belding: Fire Screech. Rachel: Get a personality that isn’t borrowed from random bits of Megan’s leftover character traits. Maria: Do something other than be a super bitch. Lindsay: Acting lessons. Ryan: Stop being a dick. R.J.: Do something to make internet reviewers twenty years from now give a shit that you were on this show. Tommy D: Just leave already. Screech: Die, preferably as painfully as possible.
In any case, three seasons down, four more to go. As usual I’ll have a recap of season three this Wednesday. And, next Monday, we’ll start in on season four of The New Class. Will it be better than the previous three seasons? Based on what I already know, I’m not holding my breath…
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Sept 14, 2015 2:33:35 GMT
The New Class Season 3 Recap
This season…this season had so much potential. After the cluster fuck that was season two, they had the perfect opportunity to start over and rebuild The New Class. So were they successful? Well, yes and no.
Taken as a whole, season three is much better than season two. Ryan and Maria were welcome additions to the cast (which I’ll discuss more when I analyze characters). There even seemed to be new life breathed into old, tired characters like Lindsay and Tommy D, at first anyway. And, for the first time in nearly a year and a half of watching this show, there was an episode I genuinely liked on its own merits. Season three seemed to do something completely unanticipated at first: turn around this horrible spin-off.
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For all the promise the new season brought in the beginning, though, there was so much disappointment in the ultimate payoff. For one, this season suffered from one of the same problems of season two: too many episodes away from Bayside. As I discussed in the season two recap, part of what made the Malibu Sands episodes of the original series work was that we’d had two years to get to know the same six teenagers. Setting an arc of episodes away from Bayside gave us the opportunity to see them grow more in a different setting with new supporting characters.
This is something the producers of The New Class never seemed to have gotten. The episodes set away from Bayside on this show fall flat because you’re replacing up to half of the characters every season. We don’t get to know these new members of the gang at all before we’re thrust into outside situations that we just don’t know how to react to. Add on to this that none of the characters ever develop in these episodes outside single episodes crises and you have a recipe for disaster. Not to mention I believe that a show about high school should set the majority of its episodes in, say, HIGH SCHOOL! Season three featured thirteen episodes set entirely outside Bayside. That’s half the episodes this season! If I were a new viewer, I could easily forget what this show is supposed to be about.
On top of this, there’s signs the producers were getting desperate. On several occasions, plots used in seasons one and two were recycled for a new episode in season three with the hope that no one would notice. On top of that, two episodes were completely rip-offs of the Zack Morris and Kelly break-up with only the location changed. Add to this two of the worst very special episodes ever seen in the franchise, and you get why I’m disappointed with how this season turned out. There was no effort in most of the episodes this season. At this point, it’s like the writers were phoning it in. I long ago gave up on the idea that this show may be as goofy and lighthearted as the original but, when I’m forcing myself to watch out of duty with absolutely no desire to see what happens next, something’s wrong.
As if that’s not enough, the time line of this season is nearly as bad as season two’s. I was having a hard enough time figuring out when all of this was taking place until that revelation in “New Year’s Resolution” just came out of nowhere that this entire season, including multiple trips and three months aboard a boat, all took place in four months during the first semester of this school year. I don’t think anyone thought this through. If there’s one thing that’s become crystal clear about The New Class over the last two years is they don’t give a damn about things making sense or taking place in an orderly time period; they’re just banking on the fact that you, the viewer, are such a moron you won’t realize that all of the things that happened this season could not have happened in four months.
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Behind the scenes, changes were happening as well. Not only did we lose supporting characters Milton and Ron, both of whom had been with the show since the beginning, but this would be the last season produced by Franco E. Bario, who had been a producer on the franchise going all the way back to Good Morning, Miss Bliss. I can’t find the reason Bario departed, but it’s unlikely he was upset at Peter Engel or NBC since he remained with California Dreams another two years. Bario’s often been credited as the third most influential person on the franchise behind Peter Engel and Don Barnhart, and his departure will signal a shift in the show next season.
Maybe it was time for new blood in this franchise.
Let’s talk characters.
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Let’s face it: for worse and worse, The New Class has turned into The Screech Show for the last two seasons. Screech has to be involved in everything and, if anything, his boundaries with his students gets worse this year, as he lets Maria talk him into giving her a better grade in Driver’s Ed and actually takes Rachel to a school dance. Screech is a creepy, creepy little man in this show and his importance to Bayside only emphasizes how the writers don’t seem to have a grasp of what administrators actually do in a school. On top of that, there’s some just plan mean scenes where Screech, desperate to keep his plan to bring Mrs. Belding and Little Zack to the ski lodge for Christmas, cruelly keeps Mr. Belding from getting to a bus just to keep the secret going. The fact that nobody sees through his incompetence is utterly amazing. If I’d been Mr. Belding, I may not have been able to restrain myself from punching Screech over the whole ski lodge thing.
The writers squandered opportunities to explore Screech this season as well. From his random breakup with Alison, who hadn’t been mentioned since last season, to his return to Cal U, there could have been some explanation about just why the hell Screech is still at Bayside after his year internship. Unfortunately, the writers didn’t think characterization was necessary for Screech so we’ll never know the answers to why we’re still being subjected to Screech so much.
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My theory on why Mr. Belding continues to put up with Screech is that he’s becoming a sad, broken shell of a human being with Screech’s constant idiocy. Think about it: why else would he not have fired Screech when he had the chance? Mr. Belding’s presence is often baffling: he continues to take jobs at the mall, apparently needing the money to support his family, as if principals in Los Angeles County don’t make any money. Is he using all his money to bail Screech out of his constant foibles? I don’t know. It’s a mystery that will only deepen in season four, though.
For what it’s worth, I still like Mr. Belding. Mr. Belding is at his best when he’s being the kind, supportive, and caring adult figure in the gang’s life, and he had several opportunities for that this season. Unfortunately, he’s also at his worst when he’s painted as Screech’s lackey, especially during the ski lodge episodes. I’m still convinced the reason the original series got rid of Max was because he simply wasn’t needed as Mr. Belding’s character developed more and more. Unfortunately, The New Class doesn’t seem to realize that it only needs one adult character, preferably the more competent one and not the brain dead moron.
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Out of all the returning characters this season, Rachel may be the most baffling. Last season, she had a major arc during the country club episodes and her relationship with Brian overshadowed even the Tommy D and Lindsay relationship. This season, she’s just there most of the time. They’ve all but forgotten that she was a Lisa rip-off in season two and seem to just randomly insert her into plots when they can’t figure out who else is suitable for a particular episode. In fact, I dare say that every episode this season where she was the focus could have just as easily been Lindsay in her place.
What’s more, Rachel seems to have randomly picked up some of Megan’s old traits this season, such as being smart. Maria wasn’t a direct replacement for Megan, but it still makes no sense that Rachel just suddenly took on the role of the smart one in Megan’s absence when it had never been established that this was one of her character traits.
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Ryan was one thing they got right this season. Last season, Brian was, perhaps, the weakest character on the show. Ryan feels like Scott 2.0. It’s like the producers actually realized that it was a horrible idea to make their lead male an emotionless guy with a funny accent who has nothing to do other than talk about being from Switzerland and loving Rachel. Ryan goes back to the Scott and Zack Morris mold of lead male characters and brings energy back to the role that was drastically missing last season. In fact, it felt like Ryan was Scott at times, between his rivalry with Tommy D and his desire to date the most popular girl at his new school.
That doesn’t mean they used Ryan perfectly this season. Too many episodes involving Ryan revolved around his relationship with Lindsay, which felt like one of the most force and least developed relationships (and eventual break-ups) in the history of the franchise. I hate to say it, but I think I bought even Screech and Alison more than Ryan and Lindsay, which is sad, quite sad.
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The writers hardly did anything with Maria this season. She has very few episodes centered around her and her sole characteristic seems to be being an unlikable bitch, even towards her friends. So why am I giving her a pass over R.J.? Well, it’s for two reasons. One, she’s not a direct replacement for Megan. Instead, she’s actually an original character. I found that utterly refreshing in itself that somebody at The New Class looked at these six characters and decided to take a risk on something outside the normal Saved by the Bell formula.
Second, there’s hints of a character coming through. She was the only character to have been smart enough to realize R.J.’s talent scout was a scam artist and she geuinely tries to keep the identity of a celebrity in the mall a secret even when all her friends are being little assholes about it. At times, Maria is almost a female Slater, which might not be so far from the truth considering her name is an obvious feminization of Mario Lopez’s. I’m genuinely interested to see what they do with her character next season.
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I can’t exactly say the same thing about R.J. There was never a reason to give a damn about R.J. He was a slight improvement over Bobby but that’s not saying much. About all he had to do this season was be shitty to a girl in a wheelchair and show his idiocy in being conned by a fake agent. Most of the time, he was just there, and the show was no better or worse for his presence. Replace him with a coat rack and you’d have most of the same plots.
His actor, Salim Grant, has never had much luck in the acting business. His longest stint on a show other than The New Class was a two episode gig on Salute Your Shorts. Connoisseurs of bad movies will recognize him as Bill Cosby’s son in the horrible Ghost Dad. Grant has continued acting on and off through the 2000s. Today, he’s primarily moved into the music business and is a music producer with Rising Platform Productions LLC. He also maintains a Twitter presence, if you’re at all interested.
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I wrote in the season two recap that Lindsay didn’t really have much to do after she and Tommy D broke up. Well, this season they tried to remedy that by…having Tommy D try to get back together with her! And having Ryan chase her too! The problem with the episode ordering is there was never really much question where this plot was going since episodes away from Bayisde clearly showed Ryan and Lindsay together even before they started dating on the show.
Even more of a problem than that, though, was I never bought the relationship. The closest we saw to development was when Lindsay got pissed at Ryan for betting the money for Mr. Belding’s present, and that seemed pretty forced in an attempt to start a conflict that went nowhere. Other than that, we really just see the two of them kissing a lot, and not much more. So, when they broke up in “The Fallout,” I really had no emotional investment or care in their relationship. Other than not understanding why Lindsay fell in love with the human plot point as fast as she did, I really just didn’t care.
Maybe it’s good this is Lindsay’s last season. I honestly don’t know what they would have done with her for another season now that she’s dated Ryan and Tommy D.
Natalia Cigliuti hasn’t done bad for herself post-The New Class. She had a starring role on the short-lived Aaron Spelling dram Pacific Palisaides as well as alongside Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the only marginally more successful Raising the Bar. She’s had recurring roles on Beverly Hills, 90210, All My Children, and The Glades, and you may have heard her as the voice of Scarlett in G.I. Joe: Renegades.
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Oh, Tommy D…
By the end of this season, it really felt like Tommy D was being kept around because they needed six characters. I don’t think the writers for The New Class knew what to do with Tommy D so they made him a complete moron. The rivalry with Ryan worked fairly well but it ended really quickly and without any bitterness, unlike Zack Morris and Slater’s rivalry over Kelly, and Tommy D often felt like window dressing. He just didn’t need to be there. The gang even seems to treat him like an outsider sometimes, as when they gave Lindsay shit for smoking but didn’t give a damn about him.
It’s a shocking devolution for a character that started out as a tough guy greaser who hates sports in season one to become a bumbling idiot who’s the football star by the end of the third season. It just goes to show how there aren’t any clear characterization plans for this show at all and that the writers seem to be winging it on the seat of their pants. In the cases of Tommy D and Lindsay, they just ran out of things to do.
Jonathan Angel has kept pretty low-key post-The New Class. For a guy that was once marketed as a new teen idol to replace Mario Lopez, he’s done very little and has largely dropped out of acting with the exception of a few low budget projects (including two, amusingly, as Han Solo) through the 2000s. This is even more astonishing when you realize that, according to the blog Cookies and Sangria, his father, Joe Angel, is a radio announcer for the Baltimore Orioles. Jonathan, if you read this, whatever you’re doing nowadays, I hope it’s more dignified an bringing you much more happiness than your The New Class gig.
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Many people have warned me that The New Class takes a drastic shift after this season, some for the better but much of it for the worse. Only time will tell what’s in store for the final year and a half of this blog. One thing is for sure, though: for a brief moment, in the year 1995, The New Class actually got better, and that gives me a bit of hope. I know that my hope will probably get crushed on the same rock that gave Screech his brain injury, but I’m determined to see it through to the end, even if it means subjecting myself to more horrible choices by St. Peter and his gang. Lord have mercy on my soul.
My Picks
As usual, I’m going to pick five episodes from this season that I absolutely loathed above all the rest. But, first, I’m going to do something I’ve never been able to do with The New Class before…
One Episode I Loved:
Episode 4: “What’s the Problem”: How surprising was it for me to realize that the first episode of this series I loved was a very special episode. This episode is well executed, believable, tackles a problem many in the target demographic may actually face, and utilizes Mr. Belding very well. It’s so good that Screech’s stupid sub-plot barely distracts from the episode itself. I was quite impressed and surprised, which is more than I can say for the other five entries on this list.
Five Episodes I Hated:
Episode 5: “Air Screech”: Good lord, this was a shockingly bad episode that assumes your basic view of humans is that they’re gullible morons who will buy anything they think is possible. And, okay, that may be true to a degree, but, come on, people lining up to buy shoes that are horribly spray pained? Ugh! It doesn’t help that it’s a Screech-centric episode, either. What makes it even worse is that it followed the one episode I liked! It also may be the worst episode to this point.
Episode 9: “Boundaries”: This one just pisses me the fuck off. They basically trivialized a very serious issue, sexual assault, and didn’t even have the guts to follow through on the plot or show any consequences for the perp; he just gets a stern talking to from Mr. Belding! It doesn’t help that the subplot is Screech being sexually assaulted by a pushy woman who doesn’t take no for an answer. Way to include a subplot making light of sexual assault in an episode on sexual assault!
Episode 16: “Screech’s Millions”: Ugh, another Screech-centric episode. Screech walks around talking in a fake accent that makes Thurston Howell III sound pleasantly working class by comparison! Add to that the fact that Mr. Belding finally fires Screech…but then immediately hires him back, and you have an episode that I’m very bitter about. I almost wished Screech had won a million dollars so I’d never have to look at his stupid face again.
Episode 20: “R.J.’s Handicap”: Both episodes centering around R.J. are painful, but this is a special kind of stupid that does nothing but make R.J. look like a jackass and make me grateful he left at the end of the season. On top of that, Maria’s subplot where she dates a guy who sounds like Gilbert Gottfried after he inhaled helium might be some of the most painful moments of television I’ve ever heard. To round out the badness, this is the first of the “Semester at Sea” episodes, which was just a bad idea. Bad. And I sure hope that The Suite Life of Zack and Cody didn’t copy this arc…
Episode 23: “No Smoking”: Nobody wanted The New Class to tackle the topic of teen smoking, especially in such a way that it makes everyone look like judgmental pricks. This episode does nothing but show how the writers for The New Class don’t understand at all why kids start smoking nor, if I was watching it as a teen smoker, would it give me incentive to give it up. This makes “No Hope with Dope” look successful by comparison.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Oct 1, 2015 6:16:56 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 1: “Oh, Brother”
Our episode and our season starts with the dawn of a new school year at Bayside. And, with The New Class renewed for another season, the writers once again have the opportunity to prove that this show deserves to occupy the same time slot as its predecessor. Will it do so? I’m willing to lay odds it won’t.
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We get right to the point as the gang gathers to give an exposition dump about what’s going on in this episode. Eric’s excited he made the football team, Ryan just got back from New York where he gave his mom away in her wedding, and Maria and Katie are excited to meet Ryan’s new stepbrother and hopefully have a guy for them to fuck this season. Rachel comes in and informs everyone that Lindsay transferred to Winward Academy, which means the gang will never see her again considering they’re not allowed to socialize outside Bayside. Screech comes up crying hysterically because Tommy D moved to Florida and he’s terribly upset about this since he has horrible boundaries with his students and was probably hoping Tommy D would move back in with him and consummate their love for each other.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That was such an information dump, I’ve got to make sure I have everything down. To recap:
Two of the new members of the gang are Eric Little (Anthony Harrell), who plays football and has lots of siblings, and Katie Peterson (Lindsey McKeon), who’s the new Kelly I assume except she engages in a lot worse acting than Tiffani Thiessen; she doesn’t do much in this episode. And, yeah, this is quite literally how they’re introduced to us: as if they’ve always been there and always will be. They are even equally bummed as Rachel, Ryan, and Maria over Lindsay and Tommy D’s departures, even though they never met them! Also, the audience loses their shit over Eric even before they know who he is just by virtue of him existing. This is a special audience. A very special audience. Four seasons in, the writers decide to explain the departure of characters for the first time in the history of this franchise. I get that Tommy D may have had to go to Florida if one of his parents were transferred, but why would Lindsay transfer to a private academy in what should be her senior year of high school? That makes no sense. And nobody mentions what happened to R.J. because he apparently sucks ass, even though he was supposed to be Ryan’s best friend last season. Oh, and why would Lindsay and Tommy D not say goodbye to the group of people who are supposed to be their best friends in the world? That seems like kinds of a dick move… Ryan’s mom suddenly got married, so this is going to be a bad rip-off of “Wicked Stepbrother.” Not even three minutes in and the writers are proving they’re just as lazy as ever. The time frame of this year isn’t established, either. Rachel’s been around since season one so she should be a senior this year. There’s no fanfare and no mention around that fact, though, so I assume the writers are hoping you forgot how many years she’s been on this show in case Sarah Lancaster wants to renew her contract again next year.
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Well, with the information dump out of the way, it’s time to get on with more important things, like this old woman, a teacher named Miss Biddy, who rivals Mr. Magoo for sheer blindness on the road and apparently hit Mr. Belding pulling into her parking space. Mr. Belding wonders aloud who the dumb ass is that put Miss Biddy next to him so he can murder them. Of course, it’s Screech, but we couldn’t get so lucky to have a Screech is murdered subplot. It’s also inconvenient because Mr. Belding’s personal auto mechanic is no longer around to help him with Miss Biddy’s dumb assery.
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Meanwhile Screech, now with fifty percent more Afro, gives some balloons to Katie and tries to charge her $45 for them. Yes, the subplot of this episode is Screech running a fucking balloon business out of Bayside because he bought too much stock. Shoot me. Shoot me now. Maria and Katie rightfully tell him to go fuck off so he tries to chase down some nerds to unload his contraband on. Only in the Saved by the Bell universe do the peer pressure sales from creepy adults come in the form of balloons and not narcotics.
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In Ryan’s room, we’re introduced to Ryan’s new stepbrother, Nicky Farina (Ben Gould) as Ryan can’t seem to look directly in front of him and see there’s a skateboard on the floor. Ryan’s not happy because he has to split up his room with the guy with a Dawson’s Creeck haircut who thinks he’s a tough guy because he’s from New York and even wants him to knock to enter his room. How dare Nicky make a reasonable demand! I mean, is Ryan hoping to walk in on Nicky masturbating to the early years of internet porn?
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Rachel consoles Ryan about his troubles with Nicky and, as she walks away, he tells Eric the creepy stalker-like look in his eyes is the realization that the writers are going to force a romance between Ryan and Rachel this year since Lindsay’s gone even though they showed no signs of liking each other before and even did their best to emphasize how they didn’t like each other in one episode. Eric suggests Ryan ask her out to the sports rally where the football team is to be introduced because we need a random excuse for tensions over romantic dates.
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Nicky, meanwhile, makes himself at home with Maria and Katie on each arm. They think Nicky’s a great guy, which naturally sends Ryan into a jealous tizzy because HOW FUCKING DARE NICKY MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE FRIENDS WITH RYAN?!?!?! IT’S DISGUSTING AND UNCONSCIONABLE! Also, Nicky borrows clothes that we’ve never seen Ryan wear, which pisses him off even more that Nicky would dare wear his Salvation Army hand-me-downs.
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Screech inhales some helium, giving him the voice of a dying fly because high-pitched voices are funny. Mr. Belding catches him running his balloon business instead of working but buys an excuse that the balloons are for his and Mrs. Belding’s anniversary rather than the order Screech just took. Oh, Mr. Belding, it’s so cute how you’re selectively stupid. Also, Mr. Belding tells Screech to switch parking spaces with Miss Biddy because we haven’t forgotten that subplot yet.
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Screech, desperate to blow up balloons, tries to get the girls’ soccer team, who look like they’re trying out for a production of Oliver Twist, to violate child labor laws in order to help him. Also, when did Rachel and Maria suddenly start playing soccer? I swear I need a flow chart to keep up with these teenagers’ extra curricular activities!
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A balloon pops, making Screech jump into the arms of the soccer coach, Coach Krumlauf, who tells Screech to fuck off because no one likes him. Coach Krumlauf comes in to tell the team that, once again, Bayside is unable to buy uniforms for a sports team because, no doubt, Mr. Belding is embezzling the money to buy cocaine in order to deal with Screech’s bullshit.
Ryan comes in and the girls are bummed they have to wear their Oliver Twist garb another year. They could at least buy new socks. I mean, those have to be, what, $2 a pair? Rachel gets the idea to have a sports fashion show and raise money for uniforms. Ryan thinks it’s great because he wants to get his dick wet and agrees to go talk Mr. Belding into holding it in the gym.
Nicky comes in to pick up Maria and Katie for lunch and meets Rachel. Since we need something else totally not Nicky’s fault in order to have Ryan act more of an ass towards him, this time Nicky’s attracted to Rachel and asks her to have lunch with him. How dare he ask out a girl who hasn’t had a long-term boyfriend since her fake Swiss one two seasons ago just because Ryan wants to touch her breasts!
After lunch, Nicky tells the girls how much fun he had at lunch, especially with Rachel. When Ryan and Eric spot him sitting on the trash can, though, he’s gone too far, and Ryan decides it’s time to do something about the obviously horrible human being that is Nicky!
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Ryan and Eric convince Nicky that Screech is tougher than Mr. Belding and that he really doesn’t want to let anyone in on his stupid balloon business. Ryan gives Nicky the idea that someone helping Screech could make lots of money and impress Rachel by buying new soccer uniforms.
Naturally, Nicky falls for the plan and, going with the running thread that no one seems to be able to figure out how stupid Screech is at first sight, he goes to see Screech, who instantly cuts himself in on the business instead of writing a proposal to the school board that they match whatever the girls raise at the fashion show because you can’t do both if you’re TNBC’s biggest idiot!
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Screech and Nicky go into The Max dressed in lots of balloons trying to sell them to random people. When no one buys any after a literal song and dance and Screech starts floating into the air since The Max doesn’t seem to have a roof, Nicky realizes that Ryan tricked him and runs off.
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At the fashion show, Ryan dresses Eric up in sassy drag and parades him around as the epitome of bad soccer fashion. You know, Eric’s a bit sassy in this scene and, even though Anthony Harrell is definitely not a good actor, I like that he’s having fun with this scene and actually doing something kind of funny here. Why do I suspect this means eventually they’ll have to give Eric lots of gay panic jokes to make up for this?
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So the plan to get the students to donate money towards new soccer uniforms is…for the girls to buy new soccer uniforms themselves and show them off to the student body. Yeah, this makes about as much sense as it sounds. Teenagers being teenagers, nobody’s interested in helping to alleviate Bayside’s financial mismanagement until Nicky steps in and offers his 1956 Micky Mantel rookie card worth $300. Nicky apparently has peer pressure skills rivaling Johnny Dakota’s friends because everyone suddenly steps up and donates.
Mr. Belding and the girls think Nicky’s great for saving the fashion show but Ryan’s all, “How dare he do something positive for the plot in his first episode!” Nicky continues his horrible streak by asking Rachel to the sports rally because he was magically supposed to know that Ryan liked her! How dare he!
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Back at home, Ryan’s ready to throw all of Nicky’s things out because he’s just such a horrible, likable person! Ryan storms out, declaring he’ll just go spend the night at Eric’s house since he doesn’t want to be in the same house with such a despicable person. Also, we find out Ryan’s sixteen years old here.
You know, in “Wicked Stepbrother,” Eric was a complete dick to everyone and that’s why the gang all hated him and wanted to see him die. Here, Nicky’s biggest crime is wearing one of Ryan’s sweaters. Other than that, he’s been nothing but nice and helpful to everyone. I am not going to defend Ryan here like I defended Zack Morris. Ryan’s just being a complete dick. I guess it comes with being Jonathan Jackson’s younger brother.
The next day, Ryan’s still refusing to talk to Nicky and even Eric thinks Ryan needs to back the fuck off.
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Meanwhile, Screech is still forcing his fucking balloons on people. Mr. Belding comes in and says that the president of the school board never received the matching grant proposal and asks Screech why. Screech is all, “Because I’m a complete moron and obsessed with balloons this episode. I don’t know why people trust me with shit!” Mr. Belding says he better give up the fucking balloons by tonight or he’s going to lose his job at Bayside.
…
Keep with the balloons, Screech! You were always meant to be in the balloon business! It suits you! Why, you could become the Bill Gates of balloons if you try hard enough! Oh, who am I kidding…of course he’s going to give up the balloons so he can inflict me with pain for the next four seasons, but not before having to break the news to the girls and disappoint them.
Back at home, Nicky says he’s tired of this shit. Nicky’s all, “I didn’t ask to be on this horrible spin-off replacing a guy with the IQ of a ceiling fan and I was just trying to make it in a new place where I don’t know anybody so, if you’re going to be such a dick, I’ll move back to New York and live with my aunt since that was the threat in the episode this is ripping off!” We also find out that Ryan and Nicky are both only children.
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This is a sports rally? Why did I expect anything different from a school that held a ballet recital at a fifties-themed diner Casey Kasem once visited? In any case, the girls came up with a plan to get themselves new uniforms and get rid of Screech’s balloons: Screech gave up his parking space and put a chance to win it in one of the blown-up balloons the girls are selling for $10 each. At the end of the night, everyone’s going to pop their balloon and the one with a parking pass inside wins the parking space.
Mr. Belding’s impressed Screech did something like this even though he’s still a fucking idiot. He never learns.
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Ryan tells Nicky that that, since the episode’s almost over, he’s learned his lesson and wants Nicky to stay around and give their living together another chance. And so brings the main plot to a close.
Maria and Katie announce that they’ve raised enough money for new uniforms so it’s time for everyone to pop their balloons. Everyone does and… vlcsnap-2015-06-18-17h15m01s16
…the winning ticket belongs to Miss Biddy, because this is the closest to actual irony The New Class will ever be able to achieve, even though it makes no sense why she’s at a sports rally that resembles a dance more than a sporting event and the soccer coach is nowhere to be seen, but so is the stupidity of Saved by the Bell: The New Class!
Firsts: Nicky Farina, Eric Little, Katie Peterson, Ryan likes Rachel, Ryan and Nicky live together, the disappearance of a main character is explained.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Oct 1, 2015 6:17:32 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 2: “Unequal Opportunity”
Ah, it only took two episodes to get out of the school because why should a show about high school take place in high school anyway? Yes, we’re at the mall this week where the stores have once again changed. Geez, having a store at this mall is bad for business since gone are the sports store, video store, candy store, and clothing store of previous seasons, replaced with a frozen yogurt store and a hairdresser.
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Ryan wants Nicky to be his personal slave and sell sun block on what I presume is an unauthorized kiosk. Like The Max, though, we’ve long ago learned that the mall basically lets our gang do whatever the hell they want because they’re the only six people who visit it on a consistent basis.
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Nicky’s not terribly upset by the slave labor or Ryan’s stupid laziness, but wearing a dumb hat is the last straw for him so, when Rachel comes by and suggests that the movie theater she’s working at needs an usher, he’s out of there. And thus ends the “Ryan sells sun block” sub plot. Yeah, it’s never mentioned again in the episode. What was the point of that if it wasn’t even going to last past the three minute mark?
Also, Nicky’s defining characteristic seems to be that he’s from New York as he keeps reminding us of that every episode. Good, you’re from New York. Go back and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, and bring Screech with you while you’re at it!
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Maria’s super excited that Katie has a job as an apprentice for Jean-Paul. OH MY GOD! NOT JEAN-PAUL! THAT’S FABULOUS! BEST SUBPLOT EVER! Wait…who the fuck is Jean-Paul? Well, we get some exposition that explains he cuts hair for the girls on Melrose Place and Friends, which doesn’t date this episode at all, and it makes complete sense that a high priced Hollywood hair stylist is working out of…the fucking New Class mall. Yeah, this is hurting my head too much. Can we move on to more important things?
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…like Eric getting a job working at Yukon Yogurt. And you won’t believe who owns it.
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Yes, the man who, two seasons ago, had to work the summer at a shitty golf club to make ends meet now has enough money to buy a frozen yogurt store in the mall. I guess his brother-in-law must have been paying him some amazing money at all these random mall gigs he’s had that a man who can’t be at the store five days a week now owns it. And, proving Mr. Belding never learns from past mistakes, he hired Screech to be his manager, because having the world’s biggest dumb ass work for you in two jobs sounds like the best idea in the world. Also…are they just open on the weekend? If none of your employees or managers can be there through the week, that’s a problem! And, no, this doesn’t take place during the summer because, at one point, Rachel actually says that Nicky just moved there from New York. It’s good to see that some things never change, like The New Class explaining its timeline.
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Meet our main plot, Rachel’s boss at the movie theater, Mr. Dimmick, who doesn’t know his own schedule and automatically assumes she’s late because she’s a girl and girls are always late. No, really, that’s what he says. It’s going to be that sort of episode
Rachel introduced Nicky to Mr. Dimmick as a candidate for the usher position and, since it’s critical to understanding Nicky’s personality, tells Mr. Dimmick Nicky is from New York. Mr. Dimmick starts to instantly fall in love with Nicky, what with his being from New York and his XY chromosomes, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is a very special episode about sexism or about special touches.
So, predictably, Mr. Dimmick instantly hires Nicky and we cut to Nicky in uniform and shadowing Rachel. He’s obviously overwhelmed by how complicated it is to serve popcorn and soft drinks, as is to be expected from a character replacing Tommy D. Mr. Dimmick tells Rachel to take tickets. She asks Nicky to come watch her but Mr. Dimmick tells her she can handle it on her own since he’s not only sexist but a bad manager as he thinks it’s more important to have a conversation about baseball than to actually show a new employee how to do his job.
How did this guy get a job as a manger again?
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At the yogurt store, Screech decides that, since everyone thinks the yogurt tastes like shit, he’s going to change the recipe to make sure the store doesn’t go out of business and Mr. Belding lose their money. His solution? He and Eric add lots of hot fudge to the yogurt but still market it as non-fat. Oh, rich white people problems: is your yogurt really fat free?
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At the hair salon, Maria begs Katie to get her an appointment with Jean-Paul.
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As can be expected from a greatly admired character on The New Class, he’s bat shit crazy and thinks this extra’s hair needs “freedom.” This is the guy Maria wants to cut her hair? Yeah, nothing bad can possibly come out of this…
Katie says he’s booked ahead for months but Maria gets her to ask him. Also, Jean-Paul likes yogurt so Maria runs off to get some for him in order to kiss ass.
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And, yeah, in one scene, people are already loving Screech’s new flavor so much they want to riot to get some. I don’t get this…why is he yelling at them on a megaphone instead of serving them? I mean, we see Ryan, Rachel, and Nicky eating some so we know they’ve already been selling some yogurt. The biggest mistake of all in this scene? I expected something on The New Class to make sense!
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Mr. Dimmick randomly track down Nicky to tell him that he’s hiring him as the new weekend manager over Rachel because an inexperienced manager you wouldn’t even allow to learn to take tickets is the perfect person to run your theater while you’re gone because penises make you more qualified for everything.
After a commercial break, Rachel tells Ryan she’s really depressed over being passed up for the promotion because she, too, expected something on The New Class to make sense. He suggests that she talk to Mr. Dimmick about her feelings because that always works with a boss who’s being so blatantly sexist that he might as well be slapping Rachel on the ass and sending her out to get his lunch and dry cleaning.
Oh, and Katie got Maria an appointment with Jean-Paul because I’m really giving a shit about that subplot right now when there’s so many more important things to worry about…
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…like does Screech’s new recipe pass the “fat test.” Yes, this machine is supposed to instantly tell you if a product is low fat or not with scientific terms like “chunky” and “big fatso.” Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t, but Screech and Eric hide the results from Mr. Belding so he doesn’t know they’re engaged in false advertising in case someone else has one of these magical machines.
What they do instead is throw a bunch of chocolate chips on the floor and convince Mr. Belding they’re ants. That way, they don’t open for business and Screech and Eric will have time to come up with a real low fat recipe. Shoot me now. I never thought I would have to type those things in the same paragraph.
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Mr. Dimmick continues pursuing his blossoming love with Nicky over lunch at the food court as they bond over a shared love of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs. When he gets up to leave, Rachel accosts him and tells him she doesn’t approve of his inability to run a movie theater in a competent manner. He throws a few more stereotypes about women out like that they’re less competent to be managers and that they’re overly emotional, and he says he has to go because he’s late for his meeting of the local MRA chapter, Zack Morris, president.
After witnessing the entire exchange, Ryan agrees with Rachel that this episode is bull shit while Rachel decides that Mr. Dimmick will never treat her fairly as long as she has a vagina.
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Oh, and in that subplot I’m still not giving two shits about, Jean-Paul gave Maria a shitty ’60s style haircut. She says she’s going to ask Jean-Paul to do her hair over but Katie begs her not to because this will somehow get Katie in trouble if Maria dares criticize an insane man. Or, if he’s so insecure he’ll get upset at criticism over his work, you could, I don’t know, go to another stylist? Yeah, but that would make sense and you know what The New Class thinks about common sense!
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Ryan confronts Nicky about Mr. Dimmick’s sexism but Nicky rejects Ryan’s thoughts because he’s all, “Mr. Dimmick’s just a nice old pedophile! Quit thinking horrible things about him!”
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At the movie theater, the projector breaks and the audience wants to throw stuff at Nicky to make themselves feel better.
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Rachel rushes in and saved the day by offering the audience passes for the “preview” tomorrow night, whatever the hell that is. Because previews are so awesome, this quells the audience’s anger since previews are so awesome, whatever the hell a preview is. I always thought previews were those things shown before a film that teased other upcoming films you may want to spend your money on. Seeing those wouldn’t satisfy me about not being able to see the end of my film.
Mr. Dimmick praises Nicky for handling the crisis, even as Nicky tries to give credit to Rachel. This is the last straw for Rachel, who says she doesn’t need a caricature as a boss and quits.
In the food court, Rachel looks for a new job but can’t find anything as Maria continues to complain about her hairdo. Also, Screech’s new recipe, which is low-fat, sucks ass and he finally comes clean with Mr. Belding, who gives them a guilt trip about false advertising and having fifty pounds of yogurt he can’t sell.
Nicky tells Ryan he was right about Mr. Dimmick being sexist and that the vice-president of the chain is coming to the preview tonight. Nicky’s supposed to find a replacement for Rachel, a male replacement, by tonight. Nicky says he should tells the VP, but Ryan says it’s his word against Mr. Dimmick’s, unless they can prove he’s sexist. I smell a ridiculous contrived scene coming on that will prove absolutely nothing in the long run!
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Yes, Nicky brings Ryan and Katie as the applicants because it’s completely normal to interview two people for the same position at the same time. Naturally, Katie is the more qualified one, even bringing a plagiarized letter of reference from Steven Spielberg. Ryan, however, hates everything but sports. Katie tries to speak up several times and Mr. Dimmick tells her to shut her woman hole. He hires Ryan because it’s good business to have penises around a theater and tells Katie to get her non-penis bearing body the hell out of there.
Wait, how the hell is that going to prove anything? They didn’t record it or anything? Basically, it’s still their word against Mr. Dimmick’s!
But there’s time for Screech to come in and propose that the yogurt store cater the preview with the fifty pounds of high fat yogurt because theaters don’t care about selling their own over priced concessions at all! Since Mr. Dimmick is the king of bad business decisions, he allows the yogurt store to sell at the preview.
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At the preview, Mr. Belding loves that Screech came up with the great idea to market their yogurt as high fat instead, which makes no sense because why wouldn’t you just buy ice cream if you don’t care about fat content? But at least this awful subplot is over because they sell all the high fat yogurt.
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Miss Phelps, the vice-president, gives an overly rehearsed speech about wanting to see how each of the theaters is running while Maria tells Jean-Paul that his hairstyle sucks ass and she wants a redo. He agrees with her and tells her to come back in for him to do it again, rendering this entire subplot stupidly inane.
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Ryan’s purposely rude with Miss Phelps and, as expected, she doesn’t much like it. Miss Phelps demands to know who hired Ryan and Mr. Dimmick tries to throw Nicky under the bus. Nicky tells Miss Phelps that he brought a girl who was much more qualified but that Mr. Dimmick chose to hire a boy instead. He brings Rachel over and tells Miss Phelps how he was promoted over Rachel because of his penis. Naturally, even without any proof of his accusation like a recording that Ryan and Nicky could have easily produced with their unlimited resources, Miss Phelps believes them because we’re short on time and do not want a two-parter. Miss Phelps suspends Mr. Dimmick and sends him to sensitivity training while rehiring Rachel as manager for the preview.
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Firsts: Yukon Yogurt, Rachel and Nicky work at the movie theater.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:43:41 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 3: “Backstage Pass”
Welcome back to the mall where, this week, we’re having a dance contest! Unfortunately, by this time, Casey Kasem had discovered his dignity and decided not to appear in the franchise for a third time so we’ll have to do without his witty commentary for our “Dancing to the Max” rip-off.
And, what’s more, best new dance wins backstage passes to the MTV Video Music Awards! Gee, I wonder if our gang will want to take part! This will be such a surprise!
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And here’s Screech with some stupid stuff about carrying a freezing cold bucket of frozen yogurt in his hands or some shit. He also rips off A Christmas Story by briefly getting his lips stuck to the carton because…seeing Screech be stupid and nonsensical is funny I guess? I mean, how many times can I really say, “Screech is an idiot” before the words lose all meaning? This is the comedy genius Dennis Haskins was praising on our behind the scenes documentary. Just remember that.
Also, how did Screech’s lip get stuck to the compartment but not his hands? All I ask for is at least consistency within the same gag! Is that too much to ask for?
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So, as if I didn’t see it coming from a mile away, the guys want to enter the contest. Ryan wants to enter with Rachel so he can take her to the music awards for their first date but she wants to win so she’s entering with Maria. Katie enters with Eric since he’s the black character and obviously knows how to dance. That leaves Nicky, who nobody wants to partner with because he sucks ass. In fact, Ryan enters alone to avoid entering with Nicky. Man, Nicky’s getting more and more like Tommy D with every appearance!
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At the yogurt store, Eric throws his arms and legs around in some semblance of dancing to simulate dancing. It’s nice that, at Yukon Yogurt, one can just do whatever the hell they want without consequences rather than working. Besides, Katie thinks Eric’s dance sucks ass because it doesn’t include her.
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Meanwhile, it’s time to get creepy with Screech again as he has a bumbling, moronic crush on this customer, Linda, to the point he does stupid things like put ice cream in his hand for her and stare at her as if he’s never known the touch of a woman. She remains polite to him despite the Ted Bundy vibes she’s getting…
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…and Screech continues staring at her ass as she walks away while Mr. Belding just thinks, “Maybe he’ll finally get married to some out of state girl and get the fuck out of Bayside for good.” Oh, yeah, and, as if it’s not creepy enough, Screech is already in love with this girl.
Linda turns down Screech’s opportunity to enter the dance contest but says she wishes she could go to the music awards. Gee, I wonder what Screech’s stupid scheme is going to be. Yes, he’s decided to enter the dance contest since he has a history of winning stupid dance contests in this franchise. Oh, how will I ever contain my joy? Bring back the Sprain, Screech!
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Well, it’s nice to see they kept one mall location from last season, the club. Yeah, Rachel and Maria practice heir routine and, relative to what we’ve seen so far in this episode, it’s not as bad as it could be.
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Nicky, meanwhile, continues to suck ass, but it’s the sort of sucking ass when you can tell a bad actor is pretending really badly to suck ass. This episode isn’t going to get any better, is it?
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At the movie theater, where apparently neither Nicky nor Rachel are managers any longer since the events of last episode don’t matter anymore, Nicky’s depressed that everyone thinks he sucks at life. He says he’s thinking of quitting the dance contest, and Rachel does the smartest thing I’ve seen her do on this show yet: she asks Nicky to finish cleaning up since he’s not in the contest any longer so she can go practice. Wow, Rachel just found the perfect way to get through this show: do not engage with its stupid plots and just ignore what’s going on! Unfortunately for me, if I took that route, this blog would die and I’d lose all my readers so I can’t take the Rachel way out!
Also, what theater has this messy of patrons? Did they have a midnight showing of Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie that pissed everyone off so bad they just threw their garbage everywhere? I know Mackenzie Astin was a bad actor, but this is just mean to the employees!
After Rachel leaves, Nicky stomps on a few containers and starts to hear a rhythm. Oh, god, no! Please don’t let it be this stupid!
The next day, Screech meets Linda in the food court before the contest and…
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…
Holy. Fucking. Shit. I was so distracted with Screech’s idiocy in the last scene I didn’t realize who this was. If you were going through puberty in the mid-’90s and found girls attractive at all, this was your wet dream! It says a lot that Screech is so moronic that I missed this in the last scene.
Why, it’s Amy Jo Johnson, better known as Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger from the first three seasons of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers! And…fucking hell, this would have been the year she left the show! She went from Power Rangers, a goofy but respectable kids show, to Saved by the Bell: The New Class, a horrible spin-off of which nothing positive can be said, and she’s in a subplot about dating Screech.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Kimberly, because that is your name and not “Linda” or any shit like that, adolescent straight boys and lesbian women won’t want to touch you anymore if you get it on with Screech! Run! Run like the wind!
Wait, would that make Screech the green ranger? No, because, in my eyes, he will always be the lost idiot ranger who gets sent out on recognizance in hopes he won’t come back.
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So it’s time to start our dance contest, hosted by a DJ named “Daffy” Don Lewis. And ‘ole Daffy Don here is played by…
…no…you’re shitting me…
This is legendary voice actor Wally Wingert, who most will remember for doing a million different voices on Family Guy. They couldn’t get the voice of Shaggy so they got another voice actor. Fitting for this show I suppose.
So Rachel and Maria drop out after the first act rips off their dance. I would say they should be more assertive about their intellectual properties but it does save me from having to watch them dance.
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Next is Eric and Katie. Eric’s great but Katie sucks ass, knocking Eric down at one point and both of them out of the contest.
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Ryan tries to do a back flip but must have been paying more attention to Lindsay’s ass than her form last season so he fails miserably.
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Screech does some dancing that makes Carlton’s from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air look utterly competent by comparison.
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And last up is Nicky and…oh god…he quite literally just stomps on things on the ground to a rhythm while holding a dust pan, and the judges love it because they need cataract surgery to remove the obvious blindness that’s preventing them from seeing how awful this is. I mean, good lord, even if everyone else sucked, the girls who ripped off Rachel and Maria weren’t bad. Give the fucking award to them if you need to give it to somebody!
No, we need a redemption story so Nicky wins and my soul dies just a little bit inside to think someone on the directing staff was dropping so much acid they thought Nicky’s dance was a good idea.
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So, yeah, most of the rest of the episode (except for Screech’s stupid subplot about wanting to date the pink ranger) basically consists of the rest of the gang sucking up to Nicky in hopes he’ll take them to the awards while he contemplates how they all thought he sucked ass until he had something they wanted. No, I just summed up most of the rest of the episode. Ryan, Eric, and Rachel suck up to Nicky in the food court. Katie and Maria suck up to him in the hair salon. Ryan tries to pull family bull shit on Nicky. And, what’s sad, the sucking up isn’t even all that obnoxious, even by Saved by the Bell standards, but it upsets Nicky to the point he’s ready to turn green and rip his shirt off.
Really, I just saved you watching a lot of this episode. You’re welcome.
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Unfortunately, I do need to pick back up on the Screech sub-plot, where Screech thinks Kimberly’s dating this guy, who’s not famous like many of the other guest stars this episode and seems to have worked as an extra on Hot Shots and Camp and in a soft-core porn film. I guess the producers ran out of money for guest stars. Screech’s jealous makes him decide that the way to win her heart is to lie and say he owns the yogurt store since this guy owns a sports store in the mall. Yeah, this will turn out well.
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After some more time wasting in the main plot, Screech finally goes to lunch with Kimberly.
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Daffy Don’s taking publicity photos with Nicky and his tickets and, when it comes time for the store owners to take photos with Nicky and Daffy Don…for some reason which is baffling considering this was a radio station contest and not a mall contest. Also, why do store owners just randomly hang out at this one particular mall in LA? Is every store in this mall locally owned and operated? Kimberly pushes Screech up on stage. Mr. Belding comes around and lays an instant guilt trip on Screech, who confesses he’s a big fat liar to Kimberly. She rushes off upset to see if she can still get it on with Alpha 5 since he’s a much more preferable boyfriend to Screech.
Nick finally decides to advance the main plot and gets pissed off enough at the nagging that he tears up the backstage passes and rushes off.
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After a commercial break, Screech and Nicky commiserate over their shared idiocy. Nicky regrets tearing up the tickets and Screech wishes he had the tickets to take Kimberly to the awards and…god, is this going anywhere? Anywhere at all?
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Screech spies Kimberly from across the room and, deciding he doesn’t know when to quit, he goes over and apologizes for lying to her. He finds out porn guy was just her boss from the sports store…
Eww…
Yeah, since no one can see how inherently flawed Screech is, Kimberly forgives him and agrees he can come visit the Megazord next time he’s in Angel Grove.
Kimberly leaves just as the gang sans Nicky find Screech. They tell Screech they feel bad for pestering Nicky so much so they have a plan to get a new pair of tickets for him? You mean, tell the radio station the tickets were lost and you need a new pair? No, that would be too obvious!
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This is The New Class, where solutions come in stupid costumes that are possibly racist! Yes, the plan is to convince Daffy Don that Screech is an up-and-coming reggae artist named “Screechio” who Daffy Don should get an interview with. Because Daffy Don apparently doesn’t realize how stupid it is that a white guy has a really bad Jamaican accent, performs reggae, and it wearing culturally misappropriated items from African-American culture, he buys Screech’s bull shit like every other idiot character in the Saved by the Bell universe and gives Screech a pair of tickets.
Ryan takes the gang as he and the rest of the gang give the passes to Nicky and apologize to him for being mildly annoying. They say that, no matter who Nicky decides to take to the concert, they’ll understand.
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At the dance club, Nicky reveals he decided he’d rather watch the awards with all his friends and shit because why not? So, the main plot has a happy ending I guess, but who did Nicky give the tickets to?
vlcsnap-2015-07-04-20h51m55s973 Why, to Screech and Kimberly, who looks utterly horrified to be seen on camera with this abomination of a human being! And our episode ends with Daffy Don continuing to be an idiot and believing that Screech is a reggae sensation and not some racist caricature dreamed up by idiot writers.
And now, I picture Kimberly morphing into the pink ranger so she can fight Lord Zedd’s latest evil creation, the Screech-o-saur, which is threatening to destroy LA and one reviewer’s sanity. Go, Kimberly! Go, go, you Power Ranger! You mighty’ morphin’ power ranger! Make all the teary-eyed pubescent boys of the ’90s proud that you would destroy this evil creation!
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:44:09 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 4: “Baby Care”
We’re back at Bayside this week where Eric convinces Ryan to just fucking ask out Rachel already since you know the writers are going to keep pushing the possibility of another forced romance until he does. Instead, Ryan asks Rachel to be his partner for the health project. Now, this may look like Ryan’s chickening out, and Eric thinks he is, but what you don’t realize is that Ryan thinks the health project involves an oral examination of his penis.
In exciting subplot land, Nicky passes out fliers for a New York Coffee House Night he’s holding at The Max. First, yay for Nicky’s one character trait coming out this early in the episode! Two, it seems Nicky’s fitting in with the cast just fine since The Max is already just letting him do whatever the fuck he wants on their premises. Also, Maria wants to sing at the coffee house and Katie thinks she sucks ass.
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Mr. Belding and Screech come in with the gang’s health class project…because they’re now health teachers for some reason. Our project this year won’t involve the gang taking care of Little Zack again since he’s got rapid actor aging disease, but will instead mean the gang take care of baby simulation dolls for the week. I don’t know how many of you had these in your schools, but they’re pretty lightweight methods for showing you what it’s like to take care of a real baby. Plus, if you were seen with one in my school, you were made fun of mercilessly.
There’s a catch, though, because the gang actually have to use fake money to buy stuff for their babies. They only get 50 Baby Bucks per pair, though, which means that all the women must be stay at home moms while the men are waiters at Waffle House. Seriously, this isn’t realistic. Even a minimum wage job would give you more than $50 in a week, even factoring in your own needs. Hopefully the exchange rate from Baby Bucks to dollars is freaking amazing!
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Since we’re not progressive enough to have same-sex couples on The New Class, Maria pairs up with Nicky. They immediately don’t take anything about this project seriously and decide they have more important things to do, like plan the coffee house and masturbate. When their baby starts crying, Maria even throws it in her locker. Mr. Belding hears, though, and tells her to treat her baby with some decent fucking respect.
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Ryan and Rachel decide to name their baby Tori after their favorite former Bayside student who no one remembers. You know, Violet’s actress! Who else did you think I was talking about? You didn’t think they were going to connect Zack Morris’s Tori back into the Saved by the Bell universe, did you? That’s just crazy talk right there!
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Eric and Katie team up and Katie thinks she has it made since Eric’s inherited Kelly’s many, many siblings.
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At The Max, Nicky auditions acts for his coffee house night. Aren’t coffee houses usually open mics where you don’t audition or is there something special about a “New York” version of the night? In any case, all the acts seem to suck, including this one where a nerd hits glasses of water with a mallet.
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His act doesn’t suck as much as Screech’s poetry, though.
I hear a bell, I hear a ding, Together they sing, A-Belding! A-Belding! My chief! My king! A-Belding but a ding doesn’t bell!
I never thought I would see a poem on this show make Brian’s love poem to Rachel and Zack Morris’s school song both sound amazing by comparison. I’m beginning to believe that Screech has unhealthy feelings for Mr. Belding and that he should get the hell off this show as quickly as possible. Luckily, Nicky doesn’t think Screech is good, even if he is new to this show, and lets Screech off with a speech almost identical to what you would tell your five year old who just drew a picture for you.
Meanwhile, Eric’s a bit possessive of the baby and doesn’t want to leave it with Katie while he goes to football practice. Maria brings their baby, which won’t stop crying, to dump it on Nicky. They squabble over who has to take the baby when Screech says that, for a small fee, he can babysit the child. They gladly give the baby to Screech, the last time I ever hope to have to type those words.
This does raise the question: some of the background characters have baby simulators. Why aren’t their dolls ever crying? Why is it only the gang’s? I know the answer is laziness on the part of the writers but still…
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In any case, Screech starts reciting his poetry again to the doll, and even inanimate objects think he sucks ass.
Ryan and Rachel admire their baby’s new dress, which means it’s definitely not Tori Scott. Ryan tries to ask out Rachel again but the baby starts crying before he can, foiling his plans of touching Rachel’s woman bits for a bit longer!
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Back at Bayside, Nicky and Maria come to ask Screech to watch their baby a bit longer, but find out that Screech is charging 30 Baby Bucks. They pay Screech his exorbitant fee and take their stupid baby back.
Ryan and Rachel bring their baby in to see about babysitting so they can go see a movie but find out they can’t afford the fee since the writers suddenly remembered that Rachel likes fashion and bought her baby a new dress. Ryan tells Rachel to go get her stuff and he’ll see if he can get the baby to stop crying.
Pervis, the president of the computer club, comes in and Screech asks him to look at a baby that won’t stop burping and see if he can make adjustments to it. You know, Screech was once supposed to have fulfilled this trope on the original series; why does he need someone else to do this for him?
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Why, to advance the plot of course! After giving a look like he just pooped his pants, Screech asks Ryan and Pervis to watch the babies while he goes on a “diaper run,” which I assume is code for “change my Depends.” Once Screech is out of the room, Ryan bets Pervis he can’t reprogram Ryan’s baby to not cry. Given that Pervis has no investment in any of the events of this week since this is his only scene, he gladly accepts Ryan’s challenge.
After a commercial break, Rachel can’t believe how well their baby behaved at the movies. Ryan asks Rachel to the coffee house with the comfort that they have the good baby, unlike Nicky and Maria’s sucky ass baby who won’t stop crying at all. They argue and argue over who’s going to take care of the baby while Ryan and Rachel gloat over how good their baby is.
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Eric and Katie bring their baby to Mr. Belding with a blinking red light on its head, apparently signifying the baby has a fever. Unfortunately for this baby, the pediatrician for the school project is Screech, who fixes the light by flicking a switch on the back of the doll anyone should have been able to turn and charges them an exorbitant amount of Baby Bucks since he doesn’t take Medicare. Eric blames the whole thing on Katie since she must suck ass as a mother.
Nicky and Maria bring their baby to Mr. Belding and beg for an alternative assignment since they have a big night ahead at the coffee house. You know, it is kind of unfair that Mr. Belding just sprang this n them with no prior warning. Had Nicky known ahead of time, he could have scheduled his coffee house for the following week. But this is no time for logic and fairness when there’s a plot to advance! Mr. Belding refuses refuses, but Maria comes up with an idea to get a quiet baby like Ryan and Rachel’s…
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In Ryan and Nicky’s bedroom, Nicky distracts Ryan and Eric with talk of cookies. Once they’re out of the room, he throws Ryan’s baby out the window and down to Maria and switches their doll instead. It’s like the Charles Lindbergh baby all over again!
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At the coffee house, a girl dances like someone dumped fire ants down her dress. How exciting.
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Since Nicky and Maria now have the reprogrammed baby, Maria’s able to perform a song. She seems to play the guitar very well, too, since it’s a magic guitar that doesn’t require her to move her hand to change chords or actually strum in a discernible rhythm.
And what a song it is, too. In the tradition of bad songwriters everywhere, it’s full of cheesy metaphor and defining terms already established within the song.
We are all alone now, No one else around, The beating of your tender heart, Makes the only sound. Whisper to me softly, The words I long to hear, Everything is quiet now. You are finally here.
During Maria’s sucky ass song, Ryan and Rachel’s baby starts crying. Ryan’s immediately suspicious but his suspicions are confirmed when Rachel finds an ugly diaper on the baby, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
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Nicky comes up to demand Rachel and Ryan keep their baby quiet. Ryan confronts Nicky and tells him he knows Nicky switched the babies since he had theirs reprogrammed. This pisses Rachel off for some reasons, despite the fact this was actually pretty smart thinking on Ryan’s part and impacts her negatively in no way.
Also, since they have a reason to be pissed at each other, Katie gets fed up with Eric when he springs a list of reasonable demands regarding the care of the baby on her.
All this fighting makes the random adult patrons who came to see the show realize they came to the wrong New York Coffee House Night at a place once known for launching “The Sprain” to fame, and they leave as the gang all want to kill each other as Screech tries to intervene since he’s the one everyone most wants to see die if one of the gang goes homicidal.
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In Mr. Belding’s office, Mr. Belding lectures the gang for not taking his whim seriously and tells them that this project is very important for the duration of this episode. Rachel and Katie want their own babies but Mr. Belding tells them that they have to figure out a way to get along for the sake of their fake babies and that if they don’t turn around their projects in the next few days, they’ll fail.
The gang vow to put their differences aside so they can pass the projects. This naturally leads to…
A MONTAGE! IT’S A CRAPPY MID-NINETIES MONTAGE, COMPLETE WITH SOOTHING LULLABY MUSIC!
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And in this montage, Ryan randomly has lots of baby models in his now fashionably outdated denim jacket, because it’s a montage and Ryan’s a great father now! And Eric’s a great father who drops his baby off with Katie following football practice and not before because they needed a replacement football to play with this week and Eric’s trying to be a suckier father because it’s a MONTAGE! A crappy mid-nineties montage! And Nicky and Maria put on a diaper with chewing gum because they’re good parents now and it’s a montage!
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And Ryan and Nicky get up in the middle of the night to take care of their babies because it’s a montage! A crappy mid-nineties montage!
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Following our exciting montage, we see that the gang’s exhausted from that fast-paced action they just experienced. Two things: shouldn’t only three of them be tired since the other three should have gotten a good night’s rest? And why aren’t all the extras tired? Does that mean they’re still horrible parents who fail since they weren’t part of the montage?
In any case, Mr. Belding tells them he’s impressed with how well they turned around their projects and, since the episode’s nearly over, they all pass. He tells them to pass up their babies to Screech…
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…who has a doll of…the hell if I know? John Travolta with Dina Ross’s hair? The hell if I know. It’s a strangely placed gag that makes no sense, but let’s run with it since the episode’s nearly over. Mr. Belding dismisses the students early to go take a nap since his him physically exhausted them and he wants to continue to abuse his power.
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And our episode ends with Rachel admitting Ryan was a pretty good father and Ryan finally asking Rachel out, who says yes because she’s given up hope of ever finding her fake-Swiss boyfriend again.
So…does this mean they’re dating now? The hell if I know. A lot of things happened in this episode without much plot happening at all so I’m still trying to figure out if any of it was actually important.
Firsts: Ryan and Rachel possibly dating?
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:45:10 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 5: “The Tall and the Short of It”
Oh, yay…a Sadie Hawkins dance. I’m almost certain this is ripping off something from the original series but my brain is too fried right now from the drugs I have to take to keep sane while reviewing this show to figure out what that could be. Oh, well, in any case, it’s time for gender role reversal, which should be a good thing…
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Except Rachel’s all shy and shit to ask Ryan out despite the fact they’ve already dated at least once. She’s all, “But I’m a girl being caricatured as if I live in the 1950s and I have no power in the relationship and must await the boys to always ask me out!” Maria’s all, “Fuck that shit!” and instantly runs over to push herself on a guy.
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Meanwhile, Screech is depressed that, for once, Mr. Belding seems to be acting stupider than him. He thinks “Sandy Hopkins” is having a dance in the gym because he apparently doesn’t hear about anything going on in the school during this episode unless he reads it after it’s been approved. Screech tells Mr. Belding that he’s finally going blind with old age and needs to get his vision checked, which Mr. Belding rejects out of hand as he goes in the girls’ restroom hoping to perv on some underage hotties.
Tell me they are not seriously going to force the lame “Jessie needs glasses” subplot from the original series onto Mr. Belding…
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The boys conspire about who they want to ask them. Nicky really wants Katie to ask him to the dance because he suddenly has a thing for her that came out of nowhere. Ryan reminds Nicky that there are plenty of background characters whom Katie could ask to the dance, so he goes off to find a way to be a pushy asshole, New Yorker style.
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Eric wants Jennifer here to ask him to the dance, but she doesn’t even know his name, which can only mean wacky hijinks will ensue!
In class, Maria forces Rachel to go and ask Ryan to the dance. He says yes, which means that this subplot is over amazingly fast, right?
Unfortunately no.
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See, Screech needs a photograph for the school newspaper in an article about the dance since he’s apparently still writing for it as a staff member and, when he finds out Ryan and Rachel are going together, tries to take a picture of the couple, but Screech’s utter incompetence and inability to work basic machinery give him trouble trying to frame both of them.
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Nicky starts acting like a pushy little jack ass trying to get Katie to ask him. When she tells him that she’s a liberated woman of the nineties and will make up her mind herself, he decides that the best way to get her to ask him is to pretend someone else wants to ask him because nothing can possibly go wrong with that idea!
Oh, and Jennifer still doesn’t want anything to do with Eric. This depresses him and Maria tell him girls are having trouble as well since they’re repressed 1950s housewives like Rachel. Eric says he would pay for advice on how to get Jennifer to ask him out and, since four simultaneous subplots isn’t enough for this show, Maria decides to start a fifth subplot by running a matchmaker service.
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At The Max, Maria starts her matchmaking service: for $10, she’ll guarantee anyone a date to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Fuzzy, who will be a recurring nerd this season, decides to take advantage of her services so she tells him to fill out a personality profile, and Fuzzy practically wets himself at the prospect of the touch of a woman.
Nicky tells Katie that another girl wants to ask him and Katie tells him he should go with her instead then. Nicky looks on, shocked that something went wrong with his foolproof plan.
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Mr. Belding still has trouble reading and mistakes “Chicken Noodle Soup” for “Chinese Poodle Soup” because now the writers just aren’t even trying with this subplot and I wish they’d get it over with as quickly as possible. Screech finally convinces Mr. Belding to go and get his eyes checked.
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Also, Screech’s incompetence at knowing that moving back can do wonders for photographic framing means that Rachel’s head got cut off in the paper. Naturally, since this is Bayside, the only place in the world where height differences really matter, random background characters make fun of them, calling them the Jolly Green Giant and the Keebler Elf.
People, people, why can’t we just make fun of the person who really deserves to be made fun of in this situation: Screech, for sucking at life!
Of course, this makes Ryan and Rachel instantly insecure about their height difference. Normally, I’d point out how contrived this is just for the purposes of this episode since neither Ryan nor Rachel have ever commented on their own or the other’s height so it’s not an established character insecurity like with Jessie. However, I’ll give them a break in this case because, if my school were full of little assholes making fun of my height, I might be a bit insecure, too.
After a break, Ryan and Rachel establish they’re okay with their height difference, even though they’re obviously not.
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Katie gives Maria a personality profile and makes sure to put in it the person she doesn’t want to go to the dance with is from New York, because, since that’s still Nicky’s only character trait, Maria might not be able to figure it out otherwise. Wait, Katie was annoyed by Nicky’s persistent nagging to get her to ask him to the dance? I guess I was supposed to be able to figure that out in the previous scenes, but Lindsay McKeon’s bad acting lead me to believe she put about as much feeling into Nicky’s actions as she would put into cooking a baked potato.
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Mr. Belding does need glasses, which makes him a sad panda. Screech tells him not to worry because he’s going to help him look cool and hip, which means he’ll succeed in making Mr. Belding look like a moron.
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Case in point, the Elton John glasses Screech gives Mr. Belding to try on. Fortunately, Mr. Belding’s optometrist is the most generous soul on Earth and gave him a whole box of glasses to try on. He does find a pair that he likes and decides wearing glasses might not be so bad after all.
Ryan comes to see Screech and he apologizes to Ryan for any embarrassment his incompetence may have caused. Ryan says he wishes he was a few inches taller so that his height wouldn’t embarrass Rachel, and Screech says he might be able to help Ryan out with that the same way he helped Ryan with his sucky ass picture.
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Yes, on their date at the movies, Ryan’s in platform shoes with a Vanilla Ice haircut, because that will solve all his problems. Screech is there to “help” (in the loosest sense of the word) and rigs a chair to make Rachel fall down and look short.
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A really tall guy randomly sits in front of Ryan like a little asshole…
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So Screech does the sensible thing and dumps popcorn on him. How does Rachel not notice Screech is there doing random shit? Does she need glasses as well? Well, in any case, the moral of the story is don’t let Screech do anything for you. At all.
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At The Max, Nicky’s turned down three girls Maria tried to set him up with because he really wants to go with Katie. This is becoming stalker-esque at this point. Maria says he’s even pickier than Katie, revealing Katie doesn’t have a date. Nicky realizes he really fucked up and goes off to drown his tears with some hookers and blow.
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Maria tells Eric that Jennifer really likes coin collecting so he pretends to be interested in coins right in front of her. This instantly gets Jennifer’s lady boner going and she notices Eric’s existence for the first time.
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And Ryan and Rachel break off their date to the Sadie Hawkins dance because height suddenly matters to both of them so much. After all, we’ve got to keep this stupid plot going another eight minutes!
Back at Bayside, Katie says that Mr. Belding’s glasses look like her grandfather’s, instantly making him take them off and hope that his subplot will be over soon, but not before Screech wants him to fill out a refreshments order for the dance!
Maria tells Rachel it’s stupid she and Ryan aren’t going to the dance over height but Rachel says it’s important to keep the plot going so the five people watching at this point think something may actually happen.
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Eric has a bag of coins from his piggy bank he wants to go through with Jennifer. This makes her wet and excited and they decide to meet during lunch and look through them for rare coins, because I know rare, valuable coins show up all the time in my pocket change! Jennifer asks Eric to the dance, which he gratefully accepts. So…all this money…does that make Jennifer like a prostitute at this point?
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Ryan’s depressed, meanwhile, and Maria decides to try and cheer him up by having him fill out a personality profile. She convinces him to trust her because she’s not Screech and he sees the logic in her argument.
At The Max, she convinces Rachel to fill out a profile as well and tells her to just be at the dance. I sense an actually sensible plan in the making!
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Fuzzy comes in upset because Maria hasn’t found a date for him. She tells him that everyone else has been matched up and there just isn’t anyone left for him. Maria’s date picks that moment to come tell her he’s sick and has to back out of their date, which leaves Maria dating Fuzzy since Maria hasn’t had near enough conflict in this episode thus far.
Nicky apologizes to Katie for being a manipulative asswipe and tells her he doesn’t really have a date to the dance. If she really thought he was going with someone else, why did she try so hard to get Maria not to match her up with Nicky? I’m confused! In any case, Katie says that, since Nicky’s really sorry and not just pulling a Zack Morris to get on her good side, she’ll go to the dance with him.
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At the dance, Eric’s bored to tears because Jennifer doesn’t want to dance and, instead, wants to sit around and talk about coins.
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While Maria has a really good time with Fuzzy because she finds out nerds can dance. Are we seriously going for the shallowest possible “looks don’t matter” moral for this episode?
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I guess so because Mr. Belding finds out he accidentally ordered too much guacamole and too few chips for the dance and tells Screech he feels stupid with glasses. Screech convinces Mr. Belding he’s the same guy, with or without glasses, and Mr. Belding feels so emasculated by being corrected by Screech he vows to wear his glasses from now on. I’ll put Mr. Belding wearing glasses in the “firsts,” but why do I have the sneaking suspicion this is the last time we’ll ever see his glasses>
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Maria reveals that she’s setting Ryan and Rachel up with each other because they’re both being stupid, petty human beings for the sake of the plot. She reveals that they both said look don’t matter (ha! yeah right!) and they decide that this entire plot has been stupid anyway. And our episode ends with Ryan and Rachel dancing and vowing to forget they ever cared about their height.
Firsts: Fuzzy, Nicky likes Katie, Mr. Belding wears glasses.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:46:14 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 6: “Little Hero”
Oh, Mr. Dewey. WHY! You went four seasons without staining your reputation with this spin-off! Why did you choose to suddenly to tarnish your character by appearing on this show? Excuse me while I go sob quietly into my pillow.
Yes, after a four season absence from the franchise, Mr. Dewey is back, now as a communications teacher. I guess he took over the role of “most versatile” teacher after Mr. Tuttle left since the only thing he’s ever taught before is algebra. In any case, he gives the gang their assignment: a video assignment to film someone they consider to be a hero. Oh, god, please don’t let one of them choose Screech…
Also, what happens if a group can’t afford a video camera? Oh, wait, this is Saved by the Bell, where even Kelly Kapowski, despite supposedly being poor, can afford to take a trip to Hawaii with five of her closest friends and own the latest fashions, so I guess “poor” in this universe means you do without Cinemax.
And, yes, in case you’re wondering, The New Class does manage to fuck up Mr. Dewey’s character. I’m not sure how the fuck you manage to screw-up a character who just stands and talks in a monotone, but some idiot decided he needed to show emotion, and he frequently does, as when he enthusiastically encourages the Bayside football team to beat Valley.
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On their way to a pep rally, Ryan and Rachel practically jack each other off in the hallway over the fact they’re both dressed like they’re on the Bayside golf team. Wasn’t Rachel a cheerleader before? Why doesn’t she need to be on stage? Nicky doesn’t want to get involved in this circle jerk until he realizes his new forced love interest is a cheerleader because she’s Lindsay’s replacement. Also, Maria brings up the fact that Todd Miller, Katie’s old boyfriend, is coming back to town next week and she totally blows Nicky off in the not so good way as the girls all walk to the pep rally talking about how awesome Todd Miller was.
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At the pep rally, Eric thinks Mr. Belding’s going to recognize how important he is to the team as a bench warmer.
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Unfortunately, for Eric, Mr. Belding actually means Melvin, the water boy, because water boys are frequently recognizes water boys.
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Mr. Belding hands over the pep rally to the worst possible person to give encouragement. Screech reminds the assembled teenagers how much Bayside has sucked against Valley ever since he’s been on this show because they haven’t really had a football related episode. And, proving that, even in his absence, Tommy D is still a dumb ass, Screech relates how, last year, Tommy D had the opportunity to score the winning touchdown against Valley and, instead, ran the football into the opposing teams’ end zone. Oh, Tommy D. Your legacy will always be to be a complete moron, won’t it?
Also, Nicky’s jealous of Todd Miller because he and Katie just started dating. I guess that happened off screen. Thanks, The New Class, for not including something as trivial as two main characters deciding to date in an episode! Nicky decides that the most important thing he can do in this episode is spend as much time with Katie as possible!
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In the locker room, we find out that the Bayside/Valley game’s currently in progress, and a player named Kapowski ran into Mr. Belding and was too shaken to go back in the game. Wait…are they making a reference to one of Kelly’s myriad of younger siblings here? If so…kudos on an inside reference! Also, Mr. Belding took out a cheerleader in the process, which seems thrown in but will actually matter in a minute.
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In any case, we don’t get to watch the game in progress because filming is difficult. Instead, we get the excitement of Screech watching from the window and telling us what’s happening, because that’s a great substitute. Show, don’t tell, guys!
Screech tells us that Eric’s put in for Kapowski. The team throws a long one to Eric, he zigs and zags through and makes it to the end zone. He makes a touchdown and, lucky for contrivance, that just happens to be the end of the game and Eric wins the game for Bayside.
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At The Max, the background extras just eat up Eric doing a random victory dance for them. Meanwhile, Rachel and Maria get the idea to do their class project on Eric as a Bayside hero. He agrees because he doesn’t want to be as under-appreciated as R.J. from last season so Rachel and Maria go to get their camera, which I guess they just left in their car since break-ins aren’t a huge problem in LA or anything. Also, Ryan gets the idea to sell autographed Eric Little t-shirts.
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Heather, a snobbish cheerleader who’s been kind of a bitch to Eric throughout the episode, suddenly wants to jump his cock and convinces Eric to come to her house and fuck. Ryan reminds Eric he’s supposed to wait for Rachel and Maria, but he’s all, “Fuck that! I’ll be another R.J. if it means becoming the first person in the history of this show to get laid!”
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Katie has no time to hang out with Nicky because she has to find a replacement cheerleader for the one that Mr. Belding injured. Nicky lies and tells Katie he was a cheerleader in…wait for it…NEW YORK! Ah, it’s like playing, “Where’s Waldo?” finding the New York reference for Nicky in every episode! This excites Katie, or at least it would if she had the ability to emote, and she rushes to tell the cheerleaders.
Rachel and Maria return and are pissed off to find that Eric ditched them to get laid. There’s not much reaction to this revelation other than the indecisive stock music of The New Class playing us into a commercial break.
At Bayside, Eric and Heather are a couple, and Rachel and Maria get pissed at Eric for standing them up. He promises they can interview him in the gym before practice.
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Also, Ryan shows Eric the t-shirts he’s going to autograph and sell for $20 each. He’s ordered a ton of them in anticipation that Eric won’t get his comeuppance later in the episode for acting like an ego inflated jerk to everyone.
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Nicky approaches Screech and asks for some cheerleading tips since he heard Screech was once the mascot on the cheerleader squad because being the mascot, you definitely learn all the moves all the other cheerleaders do. That makes complete sense! Nicky still hasn’t learned it’s not good to trust Screech with anything and doesn’t sense a bad omen when Screech injures Mr. Belding trying to come out of his office.
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So, yeah, we get Screech’s bad cheerleading advice now: all you need to do is smile, shout, and shake it, because dancing and acrobatics aren’t involved in cheerleading at all! Naturally, Screech’s advice makes Nicky look like a complete fuckwit.
Rachel and Maria come in and find out that Eric stood them up again, while Mr. Belding comes in and exposits that the next game is against Westwood and he’s counting on them to win with an awesome player like Eric because what could go wrong!
Melvin comes in wearing an Eric t-shirt and he tells them that Eric’s autographing the t-shirts at The Max…
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…while Heather gives him a reach around I guess? Rachel and Maria tell Eric that he’s turned into a jackass since he got an episode revolving around him. Eric says not to worry about the project deadline because Mr. Dewey will let it slide because he’s Eric Little. Sorry, Eric, but you don’t have what it take to have the ego of Zack Morris.
Back in the gym, the cheerleaders show Nicky the cheerleader routine he needs to learn. Nicky suddenly realizes that Screech is a moron and fakes an injury to get out of being a cheerleader.
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In the locker room, before the Westwood game, Mr. Belding and the coach tell the players to not let a cliched plot device ruin their chances of winning a game.
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Naturally, Eric doesn’t listen. When he has the chance to score the winning touchdown, he stops at the two yard line and does his victory dance there instead, allowing two Westwood players the opportunity to tackle him. Since this is contrivance city, it’s the end of the game again and Bayside loses.
Wait, they filmed an outdoor scene for Eric’s fuck-up but not for his winning touchdown? I guess they’re limited to one outdoor scene a season. Damn it, The New Class, is making a decent television show just this hard for you?
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At Bayside, Eric sucks ass now. Nerds make fun of him, Heather doesn’t want anything to do with him, Ryan can’t give away Eric Little t-shirts, and Rachel and Maria think Eric is a horrible person because the project is due today and they don’t have time to film it. Oh, and Mother Teresa called to let Eric know she hates him.
Katie realizes Nicky faked the injury and gets mildly annoyed that Nicky can’t actually do something that common sense should have told her he can’t do.
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Mr. Belding and Screech find that Eric’s stuffed himself in his own locker, something Screech should have done long ago. Eric doesn’t want to go to class and face any more humiliation and, instead, asks if he can just exit the show unceremoniously like R.J. did, but Mr. Belding convinces Eric that this show has had enough cast changes over the last four years and can’t have another for another twenty episodes. Eric goes to class and Screech decides that maybe Eric should meet Screech’s long lost cousin and talk to him since he played a little football. And it just so happens Screech is meeting his cousin at The Max for lunch.
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Screech’s cousin is…Jim Harbaugh. Sorry, guys, I never got much into football so I haven’t the slightest clue who he is but I assumed he’s famous since the producers turned on the “audience, lose your shit” sign. I looked him up on Wikipedia and I guess he was a big player, playing for the Indianapolis Colts at the time this aired.
Jim Harbaugh gives Eric a nice motivational speech to give this an educational moral and says that you’re nothing without a team and that you usually mess up when you assume you’re more important and other such cliches. Eric says he fucked up for everyone, but convinces Jim Harbaugh to come to communications class and speak to them in lieu of a video project. Jim Harbaugh says he’s always willing to help out as long as Peter Engel gets him the check on time.
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Nicky comes in and does a horrible cheer to apologize to Katie. She says that humiliation is enough for forgiveness since we’re running short on time, and Jim Harbaugh wonders what universe he’s accidentally wandered into.
In communications class, no one believes Eric that he met Jim Harbaugh and Mr. Dewey breaks character again and gets pissed off at Eric for insinuating he met his hero since he’s from Indianapolis. Wait…does that mean Mr. Dewey moved to California with Zack Morris, Screech, Lisa, and Mr. Belding? So confused!
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Even more confusion ensues when Screech comes in dressed as a football player and pretending to be Jim Harbaugh. He whispers to Eric that Jim Harbaugh couldn’t make it so he’s filling in for him, which would normally full everyone given the nobody can recognize faces rule of the Saved by the Bell universe, but it’s convenient to the plot so no one falls for it.
vlcsnap-2015-07-13-15h14m19s121Mr. Belding brings in Jim Harbaugh, who gives a twenty second motivational speech to the class about being a hero being about who you are. In any rational world, this would get an F, but we need to end the episode with Mr. Dewey giving Rachel, Maria, and Eric an A and the girls making up with Eric.
Seriously, how hard was it to get a character right whose sole characteristic is saying everything in an uninterested monotone?
As a postscript, someone in the comments of a previous review asked me to be sure to mention the fact that this episode inspired someone to get a tattoo of Jim Harbaugh from this episode. Yes, some guy pledged that, if Jim Harbaugh was hired as head coach of Michigan, he would get an image of Harbaugh from this episode tattooed on his arm. I had never heard about this before, but you can read about it here. The biggest tragedy, naturally, is that someone has an image from this shitty show permanently etched into their skin.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:46:43 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 7: “Student Court”
We open in the hallway where Mr. Belding and Screech are wearing rain jackets because…there’s a rare rainy day in Los Angeles? No, that would make a whole lot more sense than what they’re actually doing. Instead, they’re dressed like this to announce the Rainy Day Indoor Sports Festival, because why the hell not. Why do they always just loudly announce shit in the middle of the hallway? Did the writers forget that, yes, schools have intercoms?
So apparently students are going to compete in indoor sports like Foosball and pool and shit, with the winner getting a trip to Catalina, because apparently Bayside has the money to send their students to Catalina for a weekend but not to buy fucking soccer uniforms. It’s nice to know their priorities are so in line with reality.
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Naturally, Ryan really wants to win the trip so he can hopefully bone Rachel and suggests that the gang team up to win it together…even though that wouldn’t make sense for a team of six to compete in this thing and Mr. Belding and Screech didn’t say a word about teams. The writers of this show must be due for their 9:00 am reality pill.
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Meanwhile, the writers also want us to believe that Eric, who’s become a football star as of last week, is being bullied by this guy, Bull, yet another person who’s obviously way too old to still be in high school but, hey, maybe we won’t notice because we’re just as clueless as the writers are. He’s only here because they needed an excuse for Eric to have a subplot this week. Yeah, when I was in high school, if you bullied anyone on the football team, the rest of the football team would have kicked your fucking ass. Just yet another bit of proof that the writers of The New Class have no idea what it’s like to be in high school.
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Screech returns sans raincoat to fulfill his other duty for the episode: that of hallway Nazi. He finds Eric has an overdue library book and, since Bayside now suddenly has a student court that its taken eight years to see, he issues Eric a summons to appear before the court because that’s obviously how overdue library books are handled and not just fucking charging his school account! My god, the stupid hurts.
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Maria has a crush on Scott Miller, a totally hot guy from her French class with a Dawson’s Creek haircut. She practically forces himself on her but, since the writers also don’t realize how teenage boys work, he doesn’t realize Maria exists and, instead, goes for that whore Natalie.
As Maria feels the burn of rejection, the bell rings, and, literally a second later, Screech appears and gives her a citation for student court, because it appears he’s still as big an idiot as last time he was a hallway monitor.
Also, Ryan’s still in the hallway and tries to give Screech a fake hall pass. Screech isn’t an idiot for once in his life because the plot demands it so he recognizes the forgery and gives Ryan a summons to student court. Interestingly enough, Ryan’s hall pass was supposed to be from Mr. Bennett, who you may remember, but probably don’t, as the chemistry teacher from way back in the original series’ season one episode, “Cream for a Day.” Geez, they’re really pulling out the old references this season. Where they hoping some of these actors might get excited by a mention and want to come guest star in an abomination of their character like Mr. Dewey?
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At student court which, in this universe, apparently has the ultimate authority to decide the fates of all students even beyond Mr. Belding’s authority and takes itself way too seriously, no mercy is shown for our three main characters. Eric gets give hours of library duty, Maria a day of detention, and Ryan gets a week of detention.
Ryan thinks it’s bull shit that they’re being punished but Mr. Belding says it’s better than if he punished them since he would bring out whips, slings, and chokers. They still don’t think it’s fair so Mr. Belding thinks it’s a good idea to take three people who don’t understand the importance of student court and have just actually expressed condescension towards it and place them in charge of said court. Yes, that’s right, Mr. Belding appoints Eric and Maria justices to the court and Ryan is made chief justice because Mr. Belding never learns his lesson on these things.
In the gym, the gang and other assorted background characters practice for the sports tournament. Ryan and Rachel are a team for doubles ping pong but are scared they won’t win against Scott and Natalie. Maria’s on darts, Eric on air hockey, Katie on poll, and Nicky on Foosball.
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Also, Bull continues bullying Eric because it was so believable the first time. Bull’s playing against Eric on air hockey and smashes a disk for no reason just to show how stupid he is.
The bell rings and Katie wishes she could stay behind and practice pool. Nicky suggests they can skip whatever they want since their teammates are on student court.
Speaking of which, in student court, Bull’s charged with chewing gum in class. Eric sentences him to scrape the gum off every desk in Bayside, which Screech says is harsh but Eric says will teach Bull a lesson about being in high school in his mid-twenties.
Scott’s charged with talking during study hall. Maria finds out he was talking to Natalie and sentences him to transfer to her study hall so she can keep an eye on him…
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…but not before giving him a seductive look she must have learned from Screech’s seduction of the pink ranger.
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A nerd brings Nicky and Katie in for cutting class and Nicky tells Ryan that Katie being good at pool is important for Ryan getting laid. Ryan sees the logic in this and sentences them to detention in the gym tomorrow during the same period. Of course, Screech doesn’t have any say over any of this crap because adults have no override authority over the student court in this universe. Also, Screech is a fucking moron, in case I don’t say it enough.
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In the hallway, Maria’s happy that Scott’s finally paying attention to her and her lady boner goes up. Ryan reminds her that, if Scott and Natalie beat Rachel and him at ping pong, they might go to Catalina alone. Maria sees Natalie walking in the hall and starts a rumor that Scott blames her completely for what happened in study hall, pissing her the fuck out all the way to a cut to The Max where she tells Scott she never wants to see him again. Maria cuts in to comfort Scott and hopefully get herself laid as well, causing the audience to lose their fucking mind.
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Meanwhile, Bull finishes scraping gum off the bottoms of the tables at The Max. Wait…his punishment was to scrape gum off the bottom of the desks at Bayside. Is this official confirmation that The Max is owned by Bayside? Well, no wonder Bayside is always so short on money if they’re always losing money because of the gang’s shennanigans here. In any case, Bull gets pissed off when Eric wants him to return each piece of gum to its original owner so Eric sentences him to miss the sports festival.
The gang’s delighted to hear that they’re going to be able to cheat their way into a trip to Catalina so Rachel gets Ryan to let her skip fifth period and go buy a bathing suit so he can oogle her breasts. Katie wants a new bathing suit too but she can’t afford one, which makes Nicky sad because he wants something to look at.
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That’s when these two guys come in and start talking sexist smack about Katie being a girl and girls not being able to shoot pool and shit. Nicky challenges them to play Katie now for five dollars a ball and, though Katie’s initially hesitant to play for money at school, Nicky’s boner reminds Katie that it’s an easy way for her to get the money for a bathing suit.
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Naturally, Katie completely pulverizes Goofus and Gallant and, as the idiot duo pay up, Screech comes in. Screech took his idiot pill today, though, and thinks the two were paying Katie for pool lessons, allowing them the time to get away.
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Unfortunately for them, Mr. Belding’s not as big an idiot as his assistant and, when he comes in, he quickly realizes what’s going on after Screech almost kills him with the cue ball. Mr. Belding takes them to Ryan, Maria, and Eric and tells them that Nicky and Katie will appear before the student court tomorrow for their offense. The usual punishment is one month suspension from all student activities, meaning they would miss the sports tournament. Since Mr. Belding doesn’t seem to have the authority any longer to punish students, he must depend on our three justices more corrupt than Clarence Thomas to dole out a fair punishment.
At The Max, Nicky tries to convince Ryan to give Katie and him a lighter sentence so they can still compete but Ryan suddenly has a change of heart and wonders if he should give them an appropriate sentence because nothing else in this episode makes sense at all so why start sixteen minutes in? Seriously, unlike “Student Teacher Week” or even last season’s “The Principal’s Principles,” there’s absolutely no reason for Ryan to be having a change of heart over his previous corrupt dealings so, really, why should he start now? The fuck if I know but this is what we’re going with.
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After Nicky leaves, Ryan has a dream sequence about what will happen if he lets Nicky and Katie off the hook. Naturally, he has sexy time in Catalina with Rachel.
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However, Nicky ends up in jail guarded by Screech because he never learned that the rules applied to him. Something tells me that lack of food isn’t the worst punishment doled out in this prison. Also, seriously, this one incident led him to a life of crime? Maybe the writers think it’s because he’s from New York.
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Ryan goes to see Mr. Belding for advice and tells him he’s hesitant to punish Nicky and Katie because he wants sexy time but Mr. Belding tells him that, if he breaks a rule for one person, it’s not fair to everyone else and he’s supposed to make a fair decision no matter what other people think despite the fact it was made pretty clear he was never going to be very fair in this job to begin with. Ryan sits in contemplation as the camera focuses on his forced dilemma.
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At court, Maria and Eric give Nicky and Katie a light sentence. Ryan overrules them, though, leading them to be briefly upset with him. He marches out saying he’s got to be fair to everyone since Bayside apparently doesn’t allow justice to recluse themselves when they have conflict of interest, like one of the justices being related to one of the defendants.
In the hallway, everyone agrees with Ryan because we’re running short on time, and Eric and Maria rush off to make the corrupt things they did against Bull, Scott, and Natalie right, because we apparently still give a damn about those three characters who really served no purpose whatsoever in this episode.
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Rachel, dressed in whatever the hell this is supposed to be, thinks it’s sexy Ryan was able to make such a tough decision and Ryan says that’s a good thing because our episode closes with Ryan saying that, since Rachel skipped class, he has to sentence her to a week of detention to be served naked in his bedroom before Nicky gets home from school.
God I hate this show.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:49:06 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 8: “Fall Formal”
Ah, yes, it’s time for yet another dance at Bayside. I swear, this school has more unnecessary dances. Until I was a junior, we were lucky if we had two or three dances. This school…
Well, naturally, this is THE event of the year, and Nicky hopes to take Katie to the dance because, despite them dating in the last two episodes, that apparently isn’t enough to convince Nicky’s low New York self-esteem that he’s good enough for Katie.
Ryan, though, says that it’s going to suck ass because of the musical guests.
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Yes, Mr. Belding now has a barbershop quartet and he’s abused his authority to get them on as the featured act at the fall formal. I’m surprised Screech isn’t in there somewhere to act as the ding bat of the group. Also, it saves on rights since they’ll undoubtedly only do songs in the public domain.
Eric says it’s whack that Mr. Belding’s abusing his authority to put his stupid little group in the formal because Eric and his brothers have been performing together and should get to do the formal instead because…being a musician means automatically the school should bow down to your every wish? Damned if I know what the justification here is but Eric really wants to perform.
Maria and Katie come along so Nicky takes about ten seconds out of the episode’s running time to ask Katie to the formal. She immediately says yes without any conflict or jokes or anything because this was a crucial scene to add in and not do off screen before the episode started. Thanks for using your running time so wisely, The New Class.
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Meanwhile, Rachel’s found a dress that gives her better sex than Ryan ever could, and is so excited by it she has what can only be described as “dress porn” in a picture album. Maria asks Katie what kind of dress she’s going to wear and she shows mild disinterest in the whole concept, which must mean she’s planning on wearing nothing to give Nicky a pleasant surprise.
Maria’s date to the dance comes up to warn her that his father is chaperoning the dance. Say bye to him because, though they don’t break off their date, he’s not seen at all in the rest of the episode including at the formal. Maria thinks this is horrible news because now she can’t get her booty laid but Ryan thinks it’s great because the father is Paul Wilson is a big music producer in the Saved by the Bell universe. Ryan pretty much forces Eric to let him be his manager and promises Eric that he will get a record deal for Eric and his brothers after he convinces Mr. Belding to let them perform.
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Right on cue, Mr. Belding and Screech come out of Mr. Belding’s office drenched in sweat. Yes, this week’s Mr. Belding-Screech subplot is that the air conditioning in Mr. Belding’s office isn’t working, which I would say shouldn’t matter in the fall but this is LA, so I guess it’s a rare instance of the writers getting something right. Mind you, it’s nice to know that minor everyday inconveniences now count as subplots on The New Class. Of course, Mr. Belding gives Screech the job of getting the air conditioner repaired, which means it will probably turn into a not-so-wacky fiasco in a few minutes!
Ryan tries to convince Mr. Belding to let Eric and his brothers perform as the opening act at the fall formal, but Mr. Belding says he has to make this plot just a little harder to resolve in order to create some semblance of tension for the viewers. Ryan gets a glimmer in his eye that says he’ll come up with some nefarious plan to keep the plot going.
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At Katie’s house, Katie’s bummed because money’s tight at her house despite her having that brand new Macintosh computer in the background so her mom can’t afford to get her a new dress for the formal. She takes one of Katie’s sister’s dresses out of Katie’s closet–god only knows why Katie has to store her sister’s clothes; maybe they can’t afford another closet–and suggests they modify it a little to give Katie a new to her look. Katie’s so happy she has a thoughtful mom that she doesn’t put any emotion into thanking her for this act.
Also, Katie’s mom likes Nicky despite the fact he’s from New York. Guess his one character trait isn’t working against him just yet.
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Back at Bayside, Ryan confronts the barbershop quartet…
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…and convinces them, via a professional looking printed poster, that Mr. Belding is hogging the spotlight of their group and taking credit for their talents. They must be new to this school because they instantly believe everything Ryan tells them and, when Mr. Belding comes around to take them to dress rehearsal, all three of them quit.
Mr. Belding can’t figure out why they quit despite practically running into Ryan’s fake poster several times during this scene. I’ll chalk it up to him not wearing his glasses. Told you we’d never see those things again. He has no idea what he’ll do for a musical act in their place, especially one that will work for free and not infringe copyright, and, luckily, Ryan has that figured out already.
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Eric and at least one of Anthony Harrell’s real life brothers comes out and performs a song that practically sucks Mr. Belding’s cock , it’s such a suck up song. Everyone loves it, though, and Mr. Belding makes them the new musical act for the formal while Screech continues singing the song hoping to get a chance to suck Mr. Belding’s cock himself.
Now, I have to say, this was actually a good choice. See, one of the things the original series did right was take some of the young actors’ real life interests and incorporate them into their characters so they wouldn’t have to act as much. The Harrell brothers are actually real life performers and continue to perform music together to this day, so this was a smart thing to do on the part of the producers. I can’t figure out who the other guy is, though. He has a different last ame and never appeared in anything other than this episode so I guess that’s a mystery that’s lost to time.
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Back at Katie’s house, she admires her dress when Rachel and Maria come in to show off their dresses. Rachel paid $300 for hers and Maria $250 so the look of confusion on Katie’s face must mean that Lindsey McKeon is trying to emote that she’s feeling insecure because she can’t afford a really expensive dress. So Katie’s inheriting Kelly’s ability to live in an upper class part of LA while still remaining poor. Gotcha.
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Back at Bayside, excitement is mounting as Mr. Belding’s air conditioner is still broken! Oh, but this time it’s making Mr. Belding’s office too cold! How wacky! What will be the resolution of this suspenseful subplot?
Ryan continues talking up the ability of Paul Wilson to make or break someone and Eric sys he suddenly doesn’t feel so well.
Rachel and Maria come back from shopping for dresses with Katie and don’t understand why Katie doesn’t just whip out her bags of money like everyone else in Pacific Palisades and buy it. Nicky comes down and brags about how much h spent on a tuxedo and Katie decides that the only way she can avoid being as much an outcast as Screech is to find a way to earn $250 so she can buy the dress.
Speaking of outcasts, Screech now has broken the air conditioner to the point it’s putting out so much air it’s creating a tornado in Mr. Belding’s office. How hilarious can one episode of this show get! He gets incredulous with someone on the phone when they offer to fix the air conditioner for $500 because apparently Bayside can afford to send students to Catalina but not to pay $500 to fix an air conditioner.
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Katie comes in and fixes the air conditioner with the magic “off” button. Screech is so amazed by her wizardry skills that, when she says she needs a part time job, he offers her the opportunity to fix the air conditioner. She accepts despite not knowing anything about air conditioners other than how to turn them off, like Screech would have as well had he not been a complete dumb ass.
Katie recruits Nicky to help her repair the air conditioner and he accepts despite not knowing anything about the subject because he’s hoping to get some unemotional Katie poon at the formal.
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Meanwhile, Ryan has an idea to help Eric get over his fear of performing in front of Paul Wilson: by having Screech dress up as a snitch from Miami Vice and tell Eric he’s a music producer. Eric can’t take the pressure of performing in front of a complete dumb ass, though, and runs off, leaving Ryan to thank Screech for making things even worse than they were before, like usual.
Nicky finishes fixing the air conditioner just in time to sneak out of the office before Screech comes back in. The air conditioner finally seems to be fixed so could this be the resolution of this exciting subplot?
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No, of course not! We give Nicky asking Katie to the formal ten seconds, but the damned air conditioner is so important it has to be dragged out through the rest of the episode! Yes, the air conditioner explodes in smoke and Screech takes advantage of the situation to jump into Mr. Belding’s arms, who promptly orders him to go see the wizard and get a brain.
After Mr. Belding leaves, Katie confesses to Screech she doesn’t really know how to repair air conditioning and that she needed money to buy a dress. He sympathizes because he wishes he could buy a new dress too but she walks out and says that he doesn’t understand because he sucks at life.
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Outside Mr. Belding’s office, Katie has a dream sequence that just happens to be the exact set of the formal we’ll see in a few minutes. It’s a good thing Katie’s subconscious was on the decorations committee or she might not know what the formal was going to look like. Anyway, despite the fact we’ve already seen what her dress is going to look like and that it looks nothing like the Amelia Badelia look she’s sporting here, she imagines she’s going to be the most horribly dressed person at the formal.
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Naturally, Rachel and Maria are huge assholes to Katie and even wrap her in a tablecloth to make her look better. And thus ends the dream sequence. Jesus, the dream sequences this season are weird, even by Saved by the Bell standards…
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At The Max, Eric reveals he lost his voice and conveniently has a binder to let the gang know. Meanwhile, Katie comes in and pretends to be pissed off at Nicky over the air conditioner so she breaks their date to the formal because…god if I know at this point.
Back at Bayside, Ryan and Maria figured out that Eric’s faking losing his voice because anyone could have seen it a mile away. They pretend Paul Wilson’s not coming to the formal after all, which makes Eric instantly able to talk again. He says he and his brothers can perform at the formal now and rushes off to tell them as Ryan tells Maria he has to figure out a way to keep Paul Wilson away from Eric all night.
Nicky confronts Screech and tries to take responsibility for the air conditioner. Screech reveals that the whole thing is over a damned dress and Nicky suddenly realizes Katie’s actually poor though no one in this whole damned episode seemed to have picked up on it! God this show is so excruciatingly idiotic!
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Nicky shows up at Katie’s house anyway and breaks in to take her to the formal. He says he knows about the dress and that she can go naked for all he cares. He convinces her to go to the formal so he can get laid and she agrees but tells him that his perverted mind needs to go outside while she gets dressed.
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At the formal, Ryan’s method of keeping Paul Wilson away from Eric is to sic Screech on him. Unfortunately, that’s the absolute worst thing that Ryan could have done since Screech finds out that, before he was a music producer, Paul Wilson was in air conditioner repair! Oh, the plots all converge! It’s so exciting!
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It turns out that Rachel and Maria both hate their dresses because they’re so uncomfortable and envy Katie’s dress. They apologize for not realizing their friend was lower class than them and make up, declaring that they always have been and always will be best friends, no matter what that traitor Lindsay said last season!
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Eric and his brothers perform what’s actually a pretty good rendition of “In the Still of the Night,” which must have set back the show’s budget a nice little bit since they actually had to get the rights to use a real song. Apparently, too, being the musical guest means you only do one song at this formal, so they’re done after their performance. Wasn’t that rousing?
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Unfortunately, Paul Wilson misses the performance completely because he had to go to the emergency room after he broke his finger on the stupid air conditioner after the plots converged. Ryan wonders why he ever trusted with Screech. I have the answer: everyone on this show has selective memory and forget they’re dealing with a complete moron!
vlcsnap-2015-07-28-17h04m19s692And our episode ends with Katie kissing Nicky to thank him for loving her despite her lack of money. Now can we please leave behind dances for awhile? I’m so sick of dances on this show. I want more exciting things, like more air conditioner repair!
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:49:33 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 9: “Wrestling with Failure”
Ah, it’s been a while since we had an episode about wrestling (since Slater was on the show, actually), so The New Class has decided to shoehorn in a love of wrestling on characters who have never mentioned the sport before in their lives! How convenient!
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And our episode opens with Screech being a creepy fuck as usual. He’s hiding behind a trash can, waiting to pounce on his prey.
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And his prey is Mr. Belding, of course, because he can’t keep his hands off the Mr. Belding’s manly muscles. Screech says he’s practicing his wrestling moves since he’s the team nutritional consultant, which I’m sure involves lots of wrestling, and Mr. Belding basically tells him to cut the fuck out before he kicks him in the balls. vlcsnap-2015-07-29-19h08m44s161
Ryan and Rachel find Screech and tell him that Ryan wants to sign up for varsity tryouts…even though Screech just said he was only the nutritional consultant and not the bloody coach! God, not even two minutes in and this episode can’t keep track of what it’s already established! Can I stop reviewing yet?
Rachel says that Ryan was the star on the JV league last year even though it was never mentioned in twenty-six episodes that he was a wrestler so he’s a shoo in for varsity this year. I smell a retcon the size of Tommy D becoming a football star. Nicky also signs up for a lower weight class than Ryan because he’s from New York and shit.
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Meanwhile, Bayside’s going through one of its biweekly financial shortages caused by too many long distance field trips and sending students to Catalina, so Maria and Katie’s subplot this episode will involve figuring out a way to make up for administrate incompetence at Bayside. All their ideas suck ass, though, as they involve shit that won’t even help a little bit. Rachel suggests they do a jocks of Bayside calendar since that’s close enough to a plot from an original series episode to count as derivative and Maria and Katie decide it’s a great idea.
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At The Max, Maria holds sign-ups for the Boys of Bayside calendar while flirting with men obviously too old to be jocks at Bayside since, once again, the producers of this show seem to have no semblance of what a teenager looks like. Katie gets pissed off that Maria’s lady parts are going crazy over the guys but Maria’s all, “I’ve got to get a date somehow since the writers won’t let me have a steady boyfriend yet!”
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Screech comes in with some juice for Nicky to drink to bulk up. Though he claims it’s made of egg, wheat grass, and sea urchin, I don’t trust that’s really where Screech got the ingredients for that shit.
Ryan’s super-confident that he’s going to make the team at his weight class so he’s already planning a victory fucking with Rachel to celebrate. Of course, in the most cliched way possible, this can only mean that he’s not going to make the team.
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At the photo shoot, Maria insists our too old to be a high school student take his shirt off so the audience can lose their shit. She’s used three rolls of film on this guy and Katie’s getting extremely pissed off since she’s inheriting some of Jessie’s quasi-feminism as of this episode because this guy isn’t just a piece of meat. Shirtless or clothed, I think you’re exploiting him just a bit to get money to help the ever-deficit ridden Bayside.
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Meanwhile, Mr. Belding heard non-students are having their pictures taken for the calendar so he shows up to get a place himself. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take his shirt off so Maria’s not at all interested.
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As with Eric, who seems to have somehow found a way to get a toll free number in an era before they were cheap and readily available. Of course, as established last week, everyone on this show is posh and upper class except for Katie.
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Ryan shows up for his photo, still arrogant he’s going to be on the wrestling team, and I really am not sure what is up with t-shirts under singlets this episode. It shows up throughout a good deal of the episode despite the fact it looks fucking stupid. I’ve never known anyone on a wrestling team to do this. Maybe it happened and I just didn’t know about it but it seems to defeat the purpose of a singlet.
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So it’s time for the tryouts and Ryan’s up in the 142 pound weigh class, even though, according to Wikipedia, 142 pounds isn’t an actual weight class for high school varsity wrestling. Instead, it would be 145 pounds. But who cares about accuracy, because this guy totally takes Ryan down like he’s nothing because Ryan’s obviously never wrestled before. The coach tells Ryan he can only have one person per weight class, which I’m not sure is true at all but I can’t find anything confirming or denying it, and Ryan’s crushed that he won’t have a Letterman to give Rachel and get laid.
Also, why the hell is Screech the referee? Do the writers for this show not understand what the hell a nutritional consultant is?
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At The Max, Ryan’s still bummed he didn’t make the team because now Rachel won’t fuck him and tells Eric that, since, in a bit of contrivance, tryouts for all weight classes aren’t held on the same day, Ryan has two days to lose eight pounds and make the 134 pound weight class, which also isn’t a real weight class but who the hell cares? He tells this to Nicky, who reminds him that he’s trying out at 134 pounds but Ryan tells him it’s too bad because he’s going to make it and get rid of his cursed virginity.
Meanwhile, all the shirtless jocks don’t know whether they should have taken their shirts off for the pictures but Maria assures them they’ll make great fapping material for the calendar. Katie comes in and is all, “Feminismz! Equality! Shit like Jessie would say!” and quits the calendar.
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Ryan and Eric come jogging in with Ryan wearing…oh my god…that’s not seriously what I think it is! It’s a fucking Slim Suit! If you don’t remember these things, this was one of the biggest scams of the exercise industry!
Yes, these things claimed to help you lose weight while you sat around and did nothing, but worked best when you exercised in them, almost like it was the exercise doing it and not the stupid suit that looks like an alien costume from the original Star Trek. I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to buy one of these stupid things, but it seems like the props department for The New Class were just that stupid.
Ryan tells Screech to sign him up for the 134 pound weigh class tryouts, and Screech tells Ryan that losing so much weight can be hazardous to your health. So…this is going to be a very special episode on male eating disorders? If so, it’s actually quite progressive for 1996. If this is the direction they’re going with this episode, I’ll be impressed they tried to tackle this subject back then, even if they do completely fuck it up.
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Katie rallies the jocks to fight back at posing shirtless for a calendar, but they don’t seem to speak the English language and look at her, obviously confused and revealing why they’re still in high school well into their twenties.
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So Ryan continues exercising and skipping meals throughout the day, including doing push-ups in class, because, luckily, all of Bayside’s faculty will overlook shit as long as it progresses the plot.
The night before tryouts, Ryan’s down to 136 so Eric tells him to give it up, uttering nonsensical things about giving a Letterman jacket to Rachel and losing his virginity. When Ryan insists he can still make the weight, Eric tells him he’s not going to help him anymore since he’s talking crazy like about The New Class actually letting someone get laid.
After Eric leaves, Nicky finds Ryan barely able to stand up but still insisting he’ll make the weight. Nicky tries to tell Ryan that making the team isn’t worth risking his health over, but Ryan leaves to go jogging again.
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In the gym, Maria’s got a ton of orders for shirtless jock calendars. Katie brings in the jocks with conveniently rehearsed lines about not being mindless slabs of meat that they obviously don’t understand. They tear their photos off Maria’s display and say they’re quitting the calendar because stuff, and Maria gets pissed off, asking Katie what she’s supposed to do about getting a calendar out to the people who bought one.
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Meanwhile, Ryan makes weight and prepares for his match with Nicky. Eric tells Nicky that Ryan feels like a loser for not making the team and is afraid he will be a perpetual virgin.
Also, we randomly get Screech and Mr. Belding doing a bad homage to The Three Stooges…for some reason. I wish just once this show would make sense.
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Nicky throws the match and lets Ryan win. Ryan realizes right away what Nicky has done, but Nicky denies throwing the match, leaving Ryan to have a guilty look on his face about making the team.
In the hallway, Mr. Belding congratulates Ryan on a successful eating disorder and for making the team and reminds him that, conveniently, the match against Valley is tomorrow because who the hell cares about actually giving athletes a chance to practice and condition before the competition season starts.
Ryan confronts Nicky on throwing the match and Nicky tells Ryan that he did it because Ryan’s a whiny little bitch so now he gets to be on the team.
Katie tells Maria there’s still got to be a way to do a sports calendar and then opportunity falls stupidly on its ass.
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Yes, their brilliant idea is to do a calendar full of photos of Screech being sporty because it will supposedly appeal to the everyday person who isn’t much of an athlete…which makes sense in the mind of no one except the writer of this episode.
God, why me?
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So Screech shows up and almost immediately acts like a dumb ass, falling on his ass when he even tries to fake a shot. Oh god help me…vlcsnap-2015-07-29-19h25m23s247
So we get a montage of Screech having his picture taken in various athletic apparel. I wish he’d stick that fencing sword up his ass. At one point, Screech wears a basketball tank top for the “Panthers,” making me think the writers forgot what Bayside’s mascot is.
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And it all culminates in…OH DEAR GOD NO! SOMETHING I NEVER WANTED TO SEE! SCREECH IN NOTHING BUT A SPEEDO! WHY ME? WHY AM I BEING PUNISHED WITH IMAGES THAT WILL HAUNT MY DREAMS AND GIVE ME PTSD FLASHBACKS?!?! WHY ME?!?!? WHY!?!?!
Well, after having a bit of a meltdown there, I returned to writing this review, ensured that the resulting trauma will eventually be addressed using a cocktail of psychotropic drugs. I’m left with one question: who the hell will buy pictures of Screech in a Speedo? Luckily, Maria and Katie are able to produce the calendar overnight and sell it at the Valley match the next day, where people practically knock each other down to get pictures of Screech in a Speedo because…he makes them feel better about themselves. Well, this is true, but it’s not worth the nightmares and hallucinations. Trust me, I know.
The gang wait for Ryan to come out for his match, but, then…
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Nicky comes out wearing the singlet instead, suddenly without a t-shirt for some reason. Ryan tells the gang he felt guilty because Nicky threw the match to let him on the team and he couldn’t let Nicky do that.
Wait, the moral of this episode isn’t about male eating disorders. It’s about being a god damned fucking good sport. They had the chance to do something progressive with this episode and they choose to ignore Ryan doing things that were clinically unhealthy. Not only that, but these are the exact same fucking things they condemned Lindsay for doing a couple years ago, but this time it’s a guy so it’s okay. And it’s all in favor of a good sportsmanship moral…
FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
I hate this show. I hate this show with all my guts. I want this show to die a slow agonizing death at the hands of the Olson twins and that Vicki robot from Small Wonder. Vengeance is mine. The New Class, your days are numbered…
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Naturally Nicky quickly wins the match because we’re running short on time and Screech is the referee which I’m sure is a conflict of interest and makes no sense but I don’t really care anymore because all hope I had for this episode is gone.
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And we still have one more scene I have to watch now that I’m really sad this episode vomited all over so much good potential, where basically Rachel tells Ryan she doesn’t give a fuck about wrestling and only liked it because it’s important to him and shit.
vlcsnap-2015-07-29-19h29m05s727And our episode ends with the audience losing their shit over Ryan and Rachel kissing at a private table for two in The Max, because we may not be able to have a progressive episode on this show, but at least the management of the god damned Max will always capitulate to the whims of our main characters.
Between seeing so much potential for this episode flushed down the toilet and witnessing the horror of Screech in a Speedo, I think I’m off to alternately drown my sorrows down with whiskey while vomiting, all the while crying that this is what my life has become.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:50:19 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 10: “To Tell the Truth”
For once in its run, the time frame of an episode from this show actually makes sense as we open to discover it’s time for mid-terms at Bayside. Given that we’re nearly halfway through the season and that includes two episodes that took place over two weekends at the mall. That means this episode takes place at roughly the right time in the school year. I’m a bit blown away they got something like this right…
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Naturally we open with Eric being horrible at being over-dramatic over being finished with a midterm the previous period. Considering Anthony Harrell might now be the worst actor of the bunch, he’s not doing a very good job and really just comes off as a bad Screech impersonation.
The girls are bummed because they have to study for a hard history exam but the boys say they’re finished studying. All they have to take is a home ec final and everyone knows home ec is super simple and you never need to study for it because home ec is stupid girls’ stuff no one cares about.
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Enter the home ec teacher, who’s no longer the maid from Diff’rent Strokes but is now Mrs. Wellington, a cheap look-a-like who didn’t do much else in her brief Hollywood career. Naturally anyone who teaches home ec has to be plus sized. They also apparently need to be incompetent as she admits that, though she hasn’t allowed her students to cook all semester, instead insisting that they just watch her, and now she expects them to bake a lemon meringue pie as their midterm. They’re naturally panicked by this and rush off to study how to cook, however you do that.
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Meanwhile, Screech begs Mr. Belding to hold a dance for the students following midterms. For once in his career, Mr. Belding doesn’t want to have a dance. Given the excuses Bayside has used in the past to hold dances, Mr. Belding naturally doesn’t want to do anything that will raise morale and release tension following a stressful time like finals. That’s just crazy talk. He finally relents to get Screech to leave him the hell alone and rushes off.
After he’s gone, Screech needs someone to monologue to since he can’t break the fourth wall like Zack Morris unless he’s recapping two parters, so he tells the girls that the party is really a surprise party to honor Mr. Belding’s tenth anniversary as Bayside’s principal. Nothing better to celebrate a man with no professional boundaries than a party that all his students will be at!
Now this naturally presents a problem with the timeline of the franchise since that means Mr. Belding couldn’t have been in Indianapolis to be principal of JFK Junior High during Good Morning, Miss Bliss, but I suspect they said fuck all to that show long ago.
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After Screech is gone, Maria conveniently gets up and turns her back in such a way that she won’t see Sean, a guy who’s now the hottest guy at Bayside, come up behind her. She mumbles about how he’s the hottest guy in school and, when Rachel and Katie let her know he’s standing behind her, she plays it off as if he doesn’t have ears like most of the rest Bayside’s student body. Sean asks Maria to The Max for lunch, and she accepts, despite the fact that this means she’s blowing off Rachel and Katie for studying. This naturally upsets Rachel since she’s trying to form a tight psychological grasp on her friends but Maria won’t be budged: she wants some hot Sean meat.
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At The Max, the boys study for their home ec midterm…by reading cookbooks. Not the brightest bulbs in the bunch since even the biggest simpletons know that cooking is a practical art that requires experience you can’t get just by reading a book.
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Katie eyes Maria and Sean creepily, offering running commentary on everything they do as Rachel tries to study. Meanwhile, Sean sucks ass at speaking Spanish so he figured that, since Maria’s the current Latina character, maybe she could help him study for his Spanish midterm. Maria says that she has to study for her own midterm but Sean insinuates he’ll get some other girl to help him study. Seeing her chance at getting laid slipping away, she agrees to help him study after school. She rushes over to tell Rachel and Katie, which doesn’t please Rachel’s controlling ways, but Katie’s all, “Let her get a guy. She’s the only girl without one after all!”
The boys are finding studying hopeless but, when the waiter comes over to offer them desert, which, by contrivance, just happens to be lemon meringue pie, they see an opportunity and order a whole pie to go. Also, if you pay attention to the background, Rachel and Katie are now magicians who have teleported themselves across the room to another table so the producers wouldn’t have to pay extras to sit at that table. It’s magic!
At the home ec midterm, the boys have somehow snuck in the pie while pretending to bake one and fooled Mrs. Wellington, who loves their pie and gives them an A. Screech comes in and tastes the pie, agreeing that it’s great. In fact, it’s so great that he wants the boys to bake a cake for Mr. Belding’s party. They try to refuse, saying they don’t deserve the honor. Also, if Screech wasn’t so incompetent himself he might realize that skill coking one thing doesn’t equal expertise with something else.
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The boys’ refusal to be Screech’s slave elicits the logical reaction from Screech: doing an impersonation of the Pillsbury dough boy on Ryan’s abs. I wish I was joking but that really just happened. The boys stop resisting Screech’s advances lest he give a bad touch to Nicky or Eric, too, and they begin to panic that they now begin to panic that they have to bake something else.
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In Katie’s room, Rachel doesn’t understand why Maria would want to spend so much time with Sean so Katie explains that Maria hasn’t fully accepted herself as a lesbian yet and wants to spend time with a boy who might have sex with her. She walks in late, explaining that Sean’s so bad at Spanish he can barely order off a Taco Bell menu, which is disturbing considering Taco Bell isn’t real food. She can’t stop talking about him, distracting Rachel and Katie from studying. This culminates in Sean calling Katie’s phone since everyone at Bayside knows everyone else’s number, and Maria says she has to go help him study some more. She needs to help him study bad.
When she leaves, Rachel and Katie agree that Sean’s using Maria for cheap studying and that he’s a stupid doo doo head for it. Actually, if Sean is the villain of this episode, he’s yet to do anything worse than Zack Morris which means, four years after the original series ended, they’re still making Zack Morris look like a total sociopath.
Back at Bayside, the boys try to convince the girls to chip in money so they can buy him a cake, but they think a cake is a stupid idea and would rather buy him a tie.
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Before they can object too strongly, the Sweedish Dumb Ass Chef escorts the boys off to bake a cake because what they need to help them is a guy who was once mistaken as an alien.
Maria and Sean find the girls and Maria decides to chip in with the rest of the gang. Sean says that he knows a great place to get a designer tie so Maria yanks the gang’s money out of Rachel’s hand and gives it to Sean to go buy a tie. The implication here, naturally, is that we’re supposed to believe Sean is also a thief since he’s using Maria to study, which doesn’t follow and makes every previous contrivance of this franchise look plausible by comparison, but the writers decided they really wanted to hammer home that Sean is a scumbag so why the hell not.
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In the kitchen, the boys don’t know shit about baking, literally beating their butter and throwing the eggs in shell and all, but, since Screech is even more incompetent than them, he doesn’t know the difference. He leaves them to cook three cakes, with the plan being to secretly have Mr. Belding taste all three and see which is the best.
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This, of course, leads to disaster as all three cakes are potential health hazards and actually lead to Mr. Belding’s health being threatened.
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Maria brings in the tie Sean bought and Rachel doesn’t believe it actually cost $150 because it looks like crap. I’m going to give Rachel the benefit of the doubt since she’s supposed to be the fashion expert and say that she can tel the material sucks ass. At least I hope this is the explanation since I’ve seen ties that look a lot worse cost a lot.
Rachel and Katie decide they have to tell Maria that Sean is as big of a bastard as Zack Morris, knowing that she’s going to react badly.
Back at Bayside, the boys confess that they cheated on their midterm and Screech is mildly disappointed they let him down despite the fact they never claimed to be able to bake cakes and it was just Screech’s idiocy that put them there.
Studying paid off for Rachel and Katie as they think they did good on the history midterm. Maria, on the other hand, isn’t so optimistic.
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Rachel and Katie sit Maria down and tell Maria that Sean sucks ass in a contrived sort of way. We’ve still got seven minutes left in the episode so Maria doesn’t believe them yet and accuses them of being pissed off that she likes someone outside the core six. Rachel and Katie tell her that, while hiring a recurring character would put the show over budget, they’re just hating Sean for the reasons they’re supposed to this episode. She rushes off, telling them if they can’t like her man, she’ll just drop out of the cast.
At The Max, Rachel and Katie update the boys on the Maria subplot while Eric says Screech won’t talk to them, which one would think is a blessing but they’re upset that the most incompetent man on Saturday morning television doesn’t like them anymore.
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Rachel and Katie try to make up with Maria, saying that she can just date Sean off screen like Screech and Alison, but this isn’t good enough for her and she tells them to fuck off before Sean gets there.
Rachel and Katie return to their table and show Sean’s tie to the boys. Eric recognizes it as a tie he saw on sale at the mall for $10. Rachel convinces the boys it’s time to cross subplots so that the boys can get in on the pissing off Maria action.
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Maria got a D on the midterm and begins to have doubts when Sean doesn’t care about her problems and just keeps bragging about getting an A.
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After he leaves, the boys come in wearing the cheap tie. She needs a more dramatic reveal that Sean’s a horrible person, though, so she storms off, unsure of who to believe and certain the writers wouldn’t really let the only guy to touch her in ages be a douche.
Screech is upset that he has to return his present to Mr. Belding in order to buy a cake, but the boys promise that they’ll stay up all night and have the most convoluted plot off screen as possible if that’s what it takes to bake a good cake for Mr. Belding.
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The next day, Mr. Belding’s tenth anniversary party gets off to a roaring success with Screech nearly killing him as he turns out the lights and leaves a conveniently placed chair in the middle of the floor.
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The boys reveal their horrible lop-sided cake which, fortunately, tastes better than it looks. Screech says that this totally makes up for their cheating so he’ll force Mrs. Wellington to give them an A or else he’ll make her watch his porno. Thus ends the thrilling “the boys suck at baking and cheat” subplot.
Maria realizes that Sean has a new cell phone and he confesses that he bought a cheap ass tie and used the rest to buy a new cell phone. I hate to tell them this but $140 wouldn’t have bought very many cell phones in 1996 but whatever. Maria tells him to fuck off and steals his phone, telling him that she’s going to give it to Mr. Belding because you totally don’t have to worry about cell phone billing or anything silly like that.
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Maria makes up with Rachel and Katie once again because she hasn’t realized they can do no wrong. They say it’s a shame they don’t have a good present for Mr. Belding. Maria gives him the phone. It turns out that Screech’s present was also a cell phone but Screech tells Mr. Belding not to worry and calls him.
vlcsnap-2015-08-17-18h43m22s042And our episode ends with Screech informing Mr. Belding that now they’ll never be apart since they have matching cell phones which is, quite possibly, the most terrifying thing one could be told during a celebratory party. It ranks up there with finding out you have cancer or that your partner has been cheating on you.
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Post by sbtbfanatic on Dec 13, 2015 0:51:25 GMT
The New Class Season 4, Episode 11: “Renaissance Faire”
We open in the hallway where Ryan and Rachel are now engaged in the stage of their relationship where they are vomit inducingly lovey dovey with each other. Eric’s already sick of this crap and tells them to cut it the fuck out before he throws up, especially since Ryan does this for all the girls he’s attracted to.
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In the spirit of yelling random announcements in the hallway rather than using the intercom, Mr. Belding and Screech announce the upcoming Renaissance Faire. While Screech does a bunch of idiotic shit that I’m sure the producers of this show thought would be funny but even the students of Bayside don’t find funny, Mr. Belding says anyone interested in running it should skip class next period and go to his office. Has this school never heard of after school activities?
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Nicky says he’d look stupid wearing tights but Maria think they’re hot. Wait…since when is Maria into talking about how hot Nicky is, especially with Katie right there? That’s…uncomfortable…
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At the meeting, Maria signs Katie and her up for a puppet show. She apparently forgot to include Katie in on this idea as she’s unsure she’ll actually like a puppet show. Maria says to trust her and Katie says that the last time she trusted Maria, she lost her boyfriend.
Wait…SAY WHAT? Nicky…is dating Maria now? Well, that just came the fuck out of nowhere. As I see it, there are two possible explanations for this: either he started dating Maria off-screen or the episodes are horribly out of order again. Either possibility is equally likely on this show so I reserve judgment until I’ve seen more episodes. In any case…wow, how awkward.
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Rachel wants to decorate the gym with random shit from the Renaissance period but Mr. Belding says that, with all the random shit Bayside spends its money on, there’s no money left in the budget for decorations so they’ll need to fund raise. Tim, the guy to Rachel’s right in the screenshot, suggests they ask local business owners to sponsor the faire because if there’s anything businesses love spending their money on, it’s random nonsensical shit like Renaissance faires. Mr. Belding thinks it’s a great idea, though, and says he’ll call some of his friends at the Palisades Chamber of Commerce about sponsoring the event. Furthermore, since Tim and Rachel were the first two people to not speak about puppet shows, Mr. Belding suggests they be made chairs of the committee. Everyone agrees since they don’t want to do that shit themselves except for Ryan because he’s, of course, being set up for a jealousy plot.
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At The Max, Maria decides that she and Katie should do a Punch and Judy show, which Katie doesn’t even know what it is since she’s not all sophisticated and shit like Maria. Maria just tells her to get with the program, let Maria hit her puppet, and memorize a bunch of lines she prepared for Katie without consulting her. Maria’s just determined to control Katie’s entire life.
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Meanwhile, Nicky and Eric dress as musketeers so they can sing random plot points throughout the episode. Yeah, from here out that’s pretty much all they do so look forward to really bad singing from our idiotic duo here.
Ryan volunteers to work on trash collection since he wants to impress Rachel and show her he can do shit too. He also wants to go on a date with Rachel but she has to work on the faire with Tim tonight. Even though Rachel’s shown no inclination towards Tim, Ryan’s instantly jealous they’re going to be alone in Rachel’s room since he still remembers what happened last time one of his girlfriends worked with a hot guy.
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At Rachel’s house, Rachel and Tim rehearse Romeo and Juliet, because I know when I think of Renaissance faires, I think of Shakespeare. Much like high school, I’m beginning to suspect the writers don’t know what a Renaissance faire actually is.
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Ryan barges into the rehearsing to ask questions about trash cans, which leads Rachel to say she thinks he may be jealous. He’s all, “Of course I’m not jealous! I just like talking about trash!” Ryan admits that he doesn’t like his property spending time with another man and Rachel says he just has to trust that she’s not going to randomly fall for other men like Lindsay. As she goes back in her room, Ryan mutters that it’s Tim he doesn’t trust, which seems like it’s pretty much the same thing but whatever.
Back at Bayside, Katie doesn’t like the Punch and Judy script because Punch is so violent towards Judy, hence the fact it’s a Punch and Judy show. Katie asks why Punch can’t be a nice guy and Maria’s all, “Because you’re an idiot.” And, in case you didn’t catch that scene, Nicky and Eric are on hand to sing it for you.
Rachel’s still cancelling shit with Ryan, making him further jealous and making him decide it’s time to go into Asshole Ryan mode.
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Meanwhile, Mr. Belding’s decided to wear a suit of armor, which has nothing to do with the rest of the episode but they decided that Mr. Belding and Screech needed something to do.
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Despite the fact that we clearly saw Screech easily put the armor on, Mr. Belding is now stuck in the armor because we needed a contrived joke just before the meeting with the business owners.
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And the subplot involving the stupid puppets heats up as Katie talks to Maria through Judy, telling Maria she’s a mean and bossy bitch.
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Ryan locks Tim in the janitor’s closet just before the presentation because that’s a great way to win Rachel over if she was cheating on him. He has Nicky and Eric stand in front of the closet and sing and play non-conspicuously about how there’s no one locked in the janitor’s closet. Ryan writes the scene from Romeo and Juliet on his palm so he can take Tim’s place in the presentation.
Jesus this is stupid.
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The sponsors have gathered and Mr. Belding and Tim are both missing.
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Mr. Belding comes in, still dressed in the armor. Screech props his helmet open with an eraser as the writers drag out this gag that was never really funny for all it’s worth.
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The Punch and Judy show ends in disaster as Maria and Katie get in a fight, Katie telling Maria she’s a stupid whore for stealing her boyfriend off screen.
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Ryan shows up, telling Rachel to go with it. Screech, as usual, sucks at life and erases Ryan’s palm with grease he used trying to get Mr. Belding out of the armor. Ryan says a bunch of random shit that’s not even trying to emulate Romeo and Juliet accurately and they crash and burn.
Nicky and Eric come in with Tim, who I assume has kicked his way out of the janitor’s closet as Slater once did Mr. Belding’s door.
The sponsors have had enough of this idiocy and march out, declaring that people don’t sponsor stupid Renaissance faires. Tim tells Rachel that Ryan locked him in the janitor’s closet, leading Rachel to call him a stupid doo doo head and storm off.
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The male cast stares disdainfully at Ryan for ruining everything with jealousy mode, even Nicky and Eric, who participated in locking Tim in the closet. But this is a lesson for Ryan to learn so who the hell cares?
After a commercial break, Maria and Katie make up since the writers want to focus on the main plot. They agree to stop fighting over stupid shit like stealing each others’ boyfriends off camera and go to write a new puppet show together.
Ryan tries to offer a non-apology to Rachel, asking her how she’d feel if her last girlfriend was a fucking cheater and Rachel tells him to fuck off. After all, she’s dated a sexual assaulter, an illiterate man, and a fake Swiss man.
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Mr. Belding says it’s time for a special moment between the two of them. Mr. Belding say jealousy and possessiveness drove away the people he cares about as well as the sponsors and walks away without any further punishment. Wow. Way to be there for no other reason than to voice the moral in order to cram it down the audience’s throat. Screech comes up with the armor, saying they can’t afford it any longer, and Ryan says he’ll get the sponsors back through one finals Ryan plan.
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This involves tricking three grown business owner into eating lunch at The Max because they conveniently don’t talk about how they all think the lunch spot was the others’ idea until they get there.
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Nicky and Eric come in and show how they can sing product placements for the owners.
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And Screech pretends that one of them, who owns a medical center, cured a hunchback. Oh, Screech doesn’t have a hunchback that needs cured. He has a lack of brain that needs cured. In any case, the business owners are apparently even more easily impressed than this show’s audience because they decide they’re going to back the faire because why the hell not.
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At the faire, the revised Punch and Judy Show involves Punch and Judy…making out I guess? I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a stupid subplot that I’m glad is over.
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And, as jousters, Mr. Belding…
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And Sir Fucking Moron. They come at each other on skate and, unfortunately, only use Nerf swords because I’d like to see Mr. Belding “accidentally” stab Screech in the fucking eye.
In any case, getting the sponsors back apparently completely atones for Ryan’s psychopathic, potentially abusive behavior and all is completely forgiven so let’s never speak of any of this again.
vlcsnap-2015-08-24-12h34m58s597And our episode ends with our characters looking self-satisfied that there’s yet another thing in the world they’ve managed to pull off that they’ll never mention again.
Firsts: Maria and Nicky dating…I guess?
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