This morning, the twelfth episode of Saved by the Bell aired, “The Mamas and the Papas.” Devotees will remember this as the episode where a “social science” class taught by Mr. Belding does a marriage project where boys and girls in the class are teamed up alphabetically as husband and wife and must deal with “real life” marriage issues. No steamy bedroom scenes are involved.
Now I realize that finding continuity issues in a Saved by the Bell episode is like finding a needle in a box of needles, but allow me to point out some of the glaring issues with this particular episode:
- The couples are matched up alphabetically. Somehow that puts together A.C. Slater and Jessie Spanno (OK, that I can believe), Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski (convenient!), and Screech Powers and Lisa Turtle. Those last two are stretching it considering how many other people are in the class.
- In the opening scene, the entire class is seated invidually, but our three “main” couples are standing, together, talking with Mr. Belding and they all have on “Husband” and “Wife” jerseys. It looks like, for some reason, those three couples are the only ones participating.
- Later in the episode, the three couples are featured again while the rest of the class looks on. However, this time, the rest of the class is clearly teamed up into pairs. However, they don’t get to wear jerseys.
- The class project ends with a fancy dinner at the Max (?!) with Mr. Belding as the host (doesn’t this guy do anything after school? Like go canoeing with Rod Belding?). Of course, only the three main couples are at this dinner.
The show remained surprisingly innocent (“Marriage is all about… kissing!”) aside from one “I’d rather skip to the honeymoon” joke. I just wish these serious continuity issues could be addressed. I mean, how are we supposed to take the show seriously otherwise?
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