Things I Talk About At Work : Scream By The Bell

So a friend of mine at work today came in wearing a Kelly Kapowski t shirt.  He and I are of the same age-ish.  I'm 32.  I think he is too, or at least close enough to it where being in the same area together was a bad idea.  At first it started off with a riveting rendition of 'I'm so excited!  I'm so excited!  I'm so.....scared!' Then it moved onto a spirited debate between who do you pick, Kelly Kapowski and Stacey Carosi.  Which then led me to the topic of this blog.  Saved By The Bell debuted on TV in 1989.  The movie Scream came out in 1996, a mere two years after Saved By The Bell had ended.  If things were thought through slightly better, Scream could have been the big screen series finale for Saved By The Bell.

At first glance, you would think I am totally out of my mind.  Ask my co-workers and they would most likely agree.  But hear me out.  The characters we followed in Saved By The Bell would flawlessly transition right over into the Scream movie.  Jessie can be the first victim in the movie.  You don't know anything about the character, just that her character and her boyfriend gets killed.  So Slater dies in the beginning too?  No!  That douche bag emo-hippy Graham, that Jessie broke up with Slater for on Senior Skip Day is the one that gets killed.

Kelly would be the heroine of the movie.  From what we learned in the TV show, he dad was laid off from working at the weapons manufacturing plant, whatever job he took after that is unknown.  It is entirely plausible that whatever job he has, keeps him away from home.  In the movie, her mother was murdered a year ago, which is again entirely plausible to pull off because you never SEE Kelly's mom in the TV show. Lisa becomes the best friend because Jessie is dead.  All ready this is much better then the first Scream movie, as there was no black person in the movie originally.  IMPROVEMENT!  Lisa is the friend who gets killed by trying to fit through the doggy door in the garage door.

So now with the help of a little retcon, Stacy Carosi shows up as the reporter covering the story.  Stacy was in college for an undetermined amount of time when the gang met her at the beach club.  Seeing as she was older, and they were still in high school, it is entirely plausible that she would be a hot up and coming reporter looking for her big break.  The retcon comes in changing her major in college from business to journalism. Going back to our friend the retcon, Jeff is the deputy sheriff investigating the case.  Like with Stacy, Jeff was in college for an undetermined amount of time before he met the gang.  Without really knowing what his major was in college, it is entirely plausible that he sought a degree in law, and wanted to go into law enforcement.

Screech obviously is the nerdy guy from Scream who spouts off the horror movie rules.  Besides bugs, Lisa, and supposedly building Kevin the robot, you don't know anything about Screech's interests at all. Considering at the time, the show and the movie was after the hay day of Dungeons and Dragons, and before any big MMO's like World of Warcraft, any big player vs player games at home, like Call of Duty, and there is never, not even during the episodes at the mall, a hint of an arcade, you have to believe his interests would fall to the other nerdy thing to be into, which is horror movies.  You know he's smart, he's socially awkward, but somehow he hangs out with the cool kids.  Screech is almost an exact clone of Randy from Scream, so fits that part nicely.

Mr. Belding is still the principal that is just dumb enough to be outsmarted by the killer to be killed and then hung from the goalpost.

That leaves us with the big reveal that has yet to be mentioned.

...

Zach and Slater are the killers.  How can that be? In the show, you never see Zach's mom and Zach's dad together.  Why?  They are obviously divorced.  Zach's dad works for some computer company and is always leaving town on business, which is why Zach lives with his mom.  Zach's parent's divorced after his mom found out about the affair he was having with Kelly's mom.  Enraged that his family life is ruined, Zach convinces Slater to help him kill Kelly's mom.  In the original movie, you never quite get the real motivation from the other guy as to why he was helping kill people.  This is easily fixed by stating that Slater's dad was way over bearing, and Slater just snapped from the pressure.  It was Slater that killed Jessie and Graham, because she dumped him for Graham.

This stuff literally wrote itself!  Instead of doing the follow up show of The College Years, they should have just ended the series with a movie.  That movie being Scream.  It would have been given all the critical acclaim Scream was given in terms of being clever and interesting for a horror movie, and it wraps up the Saved By The Bell story beautifully.  You wouldn't get that crazy wedding in Las Vegas movie, you wouldn't get the atrocious Saved By The Bell : The New Class, or the College Years.  Everyone is dead except Jeff, Stacy, Kelly, and Screech.  Isn't that a much better ending for a beloved TV show then the ending we got when Seinfeld, Lost, and The Sopranos ended?  Obviously it is!