Chuck Klosterman On Film And Television (6 page)

Take a show like
M*A*S*H,
for instance.
M*A*S*H
consciously aspired to be “good television.” Its goal was to be intellectually provoking (particularly over its final four seasons), so almost every plot hinged on a twist: The North Korean POW was actually more ethical than the South Korean soldier, Colonel Potter’s visiting war buddy was actually corrupt, a much-decorated sergeant was actually killing off his black platoon members on purpose, etc., etc., etc. The first ten minutes of every
M*A*S*H
episode set strict conditions; the next twenty minutes would illustrate how life is not always as it seems.
³
This—in theory—is clever, and it’s supposed to teach us something we don’t know. Meanwhile,
Saved by the Bell
did the opposite. The first ten minutes of every episode put a character (usually Zack) in a position where he or she was tempted to do something that was obviously wrong, and their friends would warn them that this was a mistake. Then they would do it anyway, learn a lesson, and admit that everyone was right all along.
Saved by the Bell
wasn’t ironic in the contemporary sense (i.e., detached and sardonic), and it wasn’t even ironic in the literal sense (the intentions and themes of the story never contradicted what they stated ostensibly). You never learned anything, and you weren’t supposed to.

Take the episode from the gang’s senior year, where they went to a toga party hosted by a bloated jock nicknamed Ox. They all get drunk, but Zack claims to be able to drive Lisa’s car home.
⁴
Before they climb into the vehicle, they all note how this is dangerous, because Zack might wreck the car. And (of course) he does just that. Obviously, NBC would claim this was a “message” episode, and it was supposed to show teenagers that alcohol and the highway are a deadly combination. But there’s really no way anyone would
learn
anything from Zack’s booze cruising. There’s no kid in America who doesn’t know that drinking and driving is dangerous, and there’s no way that you could argue
Saved by the Bell
made this sentiment any more “in your face” than when Stevie Wonder sang “Don’t Drive Drunk.” It served no educational purpose, and it served no artistic purpose. But what it did was reestablish everyone’s moral reality. If
Saved by the Bell
was a clichéd, uncreative teen sitcom (and I think we would all agree that it was), it needed to deliver the clichéd, uncreative plot: If these kids drink and drive, they will have to have a bad accident—but no one will actually die, because we all deserve a second chance. As I watched that particular episode in college, I took satisfaction in knowing that American morality was still basically the same as it had been when I was thirteen years old. It proved I still understood how the mainstream, knee-jerk populace looked at life, even though my personal paradigm no longer fit those standards.

Saved by the Bell
was well-suited for conventional moralizing, because none of the characters had multifaceted ethics (or even situational ethics). Every decision they made was generated by whatever the audience would expect them to do; it was almost like the people watching the show wrote the dialogue. This was damaging to the
Saved by the Bell
actors, all of whom went to ridiculous lengths to avoid being typecast as their TV identities once the show ended. Berkley was the most adamant about her reinvention, taking the lead role in the soft-porn box-office failure
Showgirls,
which even her costars couldn’t fathom. “I wouldn’t see why you’d want to go so far afield to change your image that you’d take a role so demanding or drastic as that,” said a remarkably candid Screech in an 2002 interview with
The Onion A.V. Club
. “It pretty much was just the exploitation of a Saturdaymorning icon, I feel. I don’t think that the movie had any more substance than, ‘Hey, we should go check it out to see the girl from
Saved by the Bell
naked!’ That’s pretty much what everyone went to the theater to see.”

Yet Berkley was not alone; she was merely the only one who exposed her nipples. Thiessen elected to become the new Shannen Doherty on
Beverly Hills, 90210
and smoked pot in her very first episode. Lopez portrayed a homosexual as the star of
Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story
. Diamond started a prog rock band (!) who call themselves Salty the Pocket Knife. Gosselaar may have actually made the most disturbing transition, as he dyed his hair black and joined the cast of
NYPD Blue,
one of the most serious police dramas on TV; he essentially became an altogether different person. Only Lark Voorhies moved in a “logical” direction, taking a role on the soap opera
The Bold and the Beautiful
.

I’m not sure what all that signifies, really. I suppose it just proves how trapped these people must have felt, although some of that is clearly their own fault; Zack, Slater, Screech, and Kelly all appeared in the lone season of
Saved by the Bell: The College Years,
and Screech played a faculty member for most of the seven-season run of
Saved by the Bell: The New Class
. Those latter two shows—neither of which I watched consistently—made for a comfortable transition of loss: I saw the
Saved by the Bell
characters constantly, then periodically, and then not at all. It was actually a lot like my relationship with the friends from college who used to watch the show with me; I once saw guys like Joel constantly, then periodically, and then never. Which brings me to the aforementioned “Tori Paradox,” a desperate move by the
Saved by the Bell
producers that accidentally became the program’s most realistic avenue (and probably the clearest example of how there’s nothing more true than a cliché).

The Tori Paradox is a little like the season of
Dukes of Hazzard
when Bo and Luke were momentarily replaced by their cousins Coy and Vance, two guys who were exactly like them (so much so that the blond guy still preferred to drive). Here’s the crux of the incongruity: For half of the “senior year” at Bayside, Jessie (Berkley) and Kelly (Thiessen) are completely part of the action, just as they’d been for the last three seasons. However, they’re suddenly absent for twelve consecutive episodes, having been replaced by “Tori,” an attractive, brassy brunette in a black leather jacket who displays elements of both their personalities. Within moments of her arrival, Tori is completely absorbed into the Bayside gang; she’s romantically pursued by Zack and Slater and generally behaves as if she has always been one of their closest friends. This lasts until the graduation episode (aired in prime time), when Kelly and Jessie suddenly reappear as if nothing ever happened. Meanwhile, Tori does not appear at graduation and is not even mentioned.

The motivation for these moves were purely practical; Berkley and Thiessen wanted to leave the cast, but NBC wanted to squeeze out a dozen more episodes of a show that was now quite popular (and being rerun four times a day on other networks). NBC essentially shot the graduation special (and another prime-time movie,
Saved by the Bell Hawaiian Style
), embargoed them for later use, and queued up the Tori era. It was the easiest way to extend the series. However, this rudimentary solution created a seemingly unfathomable scenario: Since both the “Tori episodes” and the “Kelly/Jessie episodes” were shown concurrently—sometimes on the same day—we were evidently supposed to conclude that these adventures were happening at the same time. Whenever we were watching Zack’s attempts to scam on Tori, we were asked to assume that Kelly and Jessie were in the lunch room or at the mall or sick, and it was just a coincidence that nobody ever mentioned them (or introduced them to Tori, or even recognized their existence).

On paper, this seems idiotic, borderline insulting, and—above all—
unreal
. But the more I think back on my life, the more I’ve come to realize that the Tori Paradox might be the only element of
Saved by the Bell
that actually happened to me. Whenever I try to remember friends from high school, friends from college, or even just friends from five years ago, my memory always creates the illusion that we were together constantly, just like those kids on
Saved by the Bell
. However, this was almost never the case. Whenever I seriously piece together my past, I inevitably uncover long stretches where somebody who (retrospectively) seemed among my closest companions simply wasn’t around. I knew a girl in college who partied with me and my posse constantly, except for one semester in 1993—she had a waitressing job at Applebee’s during that stretch and could never make it to any parties. And even though we all loved her, I can’t recall anyone mentioning her absence until she came back. And sometimes
I
was the person cut out of life’s script: That very same semester, all my coworkers at our college newspaper temporarily decided I was a jerk and briefly froze me out of their lives; we later reunited, but now— whenever they tell nostalgic stories from that period—I’m always confused about why I can’t remember what they’re talking about… until I remember that I wasn’t included in those specific memories. A few years later I started hanging out with a girl who liked to do drugs, so the two of us spent a year smoking pot in my poorly lit apartment while everyone else we knew continued to go out in public; when I eventually rejoined all my old acquaintances at the local tavern, I could kind of relate to how Kelly Kapowski must have felt after Tori evaporated. Coming and going is more normal than it should be.

So what does that mean? Maybe nothing. But maybe this: Conscious attempts at reality don’t work. The character of Angela on ABC’s short-lived drama
My So-Called Life
was byzantine and unpredictable and emotionally complex, and all that well-crafted nuance made her seem like an individual. But Angela was so much an individual that she wasn’t like anyone but herself; she didn’t reflect any archetypes. She was real enough to be interesting, but too real to be important. Kelly Kapowski was never real, so she ended up being a little like everybody (or at least like someone everybody used to know). The Tori Paradox was a lazy way for NBC to avoid thinking, but nobody watching at home blinked; it was openly ridiculous, but latently plausible. That’s why the Tori Paradox made sense, and why it illustrated a greater paradox that matters even more:
Saved by the Bell
wasn’t real, but neither is most of reality.

1
. Until now, I suppose.

2
. This is less true now, since unpopular kids are more willing to wear trench coats to school and kill everybody for no good reason.

3
. In fact,
M*A*S*H
followed this template so consistently that these twists ultimately became completely predictable; whenever I watch
M*A*S*H
reruns, I immediately assume every guest star is a flawed hypocrite who fails to understand the horror of televised war. It should also be noted that there is one
Saved by the Bell
script that borrows this formula: When beloved pop singer Jonny Dakota comes to Bayside High to film an antidrug video, we quickly learn that he is actually a drug addict, although that realization is foreshadowed by the fact that Jonny is vaguely rude.

4
. It’s been several years since I’ve seen this episode, but what I particularly remember about it is that—while intoxicated—all the kids sing a song in the car… and in my memory, the song they sing is Sweet’s “Fox on the Run.” However, that just can’t be. It was probably something like “Help Me Rhonda.”

It’s become cool to like
Star Wars,
which actually means it’s totally uncool to like
Star Wars
. I think you know what I mean by this: There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interestin
g”
to be a
Star Wars
fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day, or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants.
Star Wars
was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized; I don’t recall anyone talking about
Star Wars
in 1990, except for that select class of
über
geeks who consciously embraced their sublime nerdiness four years before the advent of Weezer (you may recall that these were also the first people who told you about the Internet). But that era has passed; suddenly it seems like everyone born between 1963 and 1975 will gleefully tell you how mind-blowingly important the
Star Wars
trilogy was to their youth, and it’s slowly become acceptable to make Wookie jokes without the fear of alienation. This is probably Kevin Smith’s fault.

What’s interesting about this evolution is that the value of a movie like
Star Wars
was vastly underrated at the time of its release and is now vastly overrated in retrospect. In 1977, few people realized this film would completely change the culture of filmmaking, inasmuch as this was the genesis of all those blockbuster movies that everyone gets tricked into seeing summer after summer after summer.
Star Wars
changed the social perception of what a movie was supposed to be; George Lucas, along with Steven Spielberg, managed to kill the best era of American filmmaking in less than five years. Yet—over time—
Star Wars
has become one of the most overrated films of all time, inasmuch as it’s pretty fucking terrible when you actually try to watch it.
Star Wars
’s greatest asset is that it’s inevitably compared to 1983’s
Return of the Jedi,
quite possibly the leastwatchable major film of the last twenty-five years. I once knew a girl who claimed to have a recurring dream about a polar bear that mauled Ewoks; it made me love her.

However, the middle film in the
Star Wars
trilogy,
The Empire Strikes Back,
remains a legitimately great picture—but not for any cinematic reason. It’s great for thematic, social reasons. It’s now completely obvious that
The Empire Strikes Back
was the seminal foundation for what became “Generation X.”
¹
In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam. While movies like
Easy Rider
and
Saturday Night Fever
painted living portraits for generations they represented in the present tense,
The Empire Strikes Back
might be the only example of a movie that set the social aesthetic for a generation coming in the future. The narrative extension to
The Empire Strikes Back
was not the Endor-saturated stupidity of
Return of the Jedi
; it was
Reality Bites
.