Saved By The Bell, No Hope With Dope Ramble

There are two moments from this episode burned into my head. The first is Zack and Slater in the Bayside High men’s bathroom freaking out because they smell pot. How do suburban kids this sanitized even know what pot smells like? In reality, these suburban kids walk away from bonfires like “my gosh I’m smelling like that dank.”

The best part is them cornering some goon in a leather jacket and saying “are you fucking smoking marijuana?!?” He’s like “of course not, I was smoking cigarettes!” Zack and Slater exhale a sigh of relief and say “well I think cigarettes are kinda bad too.”

I think cigarettes are responsible for 500,000 deaths a year. We’re still waiting on the first marijuana death. Also, pot never gave anybody the Peter Frampton, “Do You Feel Like We Do”, voice box.

 

The second moment that tickles me silly is a group discussion about drugs that takes place in this episode. There’s a girl talking about her brother being paralyzed after driving high to the beach like Lana Del Rey, which I doubt had anything to do with the weed. The dumb bastard was probably a shitty driver to begin with.

Immediately after telling that horrific story, Jesse puts herself in the Dumb Bitch Hall of Fame by saying “yeah I also know how terrible drug and alcohol abuse can be, I was addicted to caffeine pills.”

Could you imagine an AA meeting going like this? Like someone describing events in their life reminiscent of Trainspotting and right after some fuckwad’s like “you think THAT’S bad? I spent an entire summer addicted to Mountain Dew Game Fuel and World of Warcraft. After having the jitters for almost an hour, I said ‘this has to stop.'” That’s pretty much what Jesse did.

There should’ve been a scene where that girl just fucking leveled her with a telenovela slap. I still can’t believe it. “Yes I was totally listening to what you were saying and not obsessing about how I can get around to hearing my own voice. Anyways, your brother losing the use of his legs and an eyeball because he gripped the steering wheel too tight, ripped it and Fulcied himself reminds me of the time I had a crippling addiction to pills that equate to two medium cups of Folgers Coffee.”

Now that I think about it, I don’t think anybody did more for legalizing weed than D.A.R.E., Nancy Reagan and Saved By The Bell. Their alarming stupidity more than anything and the way we reflect on it decades later is what resulted in weed dispensaries becoming more of a casual sight. If you smoke weed, grab a Ouija board and thank those elderly men who were writing on this Saturday morning kids show.