Homeless at Bayside

I get up pretty early nowadays, and one of the few true pleasures I have left in life is watching an episode of Saved by the Bell with a pot of coffee. Today, I saw an episode that I had never seen before: "A Bayside Christmas Carol."

Essentially, the gang all gets jobs working at a mall during the holiday season to raise a few bucks. On the way in, they see a homeless man. Instead of roundhousing him in his insolent, indigent face, they give him some change and feel sorry for him. Screech broke the serious moment by remarking that he also eats from the trash.

Later on, Zack meets a girl who looked way too good to be homeless in the mall and starts to lay down his patented Zack Morris mack. The twist turns out (unsurprisingly) to be that the homeless man is her father, and they live together in a car. Of course, they had a textbook "liberal" version of how they became homeless...a big computer company laid the father off, they moved out to California to start a new job and that company went bankrupt. So they fell behind on rent, and since there was no money to do laundry, he didn't look presentable enough to do well in an interview. I've used the same excuse myself during OCI.

Eventually, Zack asked his new woman's father what he wanted from life. This pissed me off. What kind of stupid ass question is that? However, what irritated me more, is that the father answered "a home and good life for my family," instead of the real answer that every homeless person is thinking" "motherfucking crack."

Eventually, Kelly let it slip to her boss that her coworker and Zack's girlfriend was homeless. The boss, who was supposed to be the Bayside version of Ebeneezer Scrooge replied "Well if I had known THAT, I wouldn't have hired her. Those people steal!" Score one for the good guys! Don't get me wrong...I love Saved by the Bell, but the stark lack of reality sometimes makes it unbearable to watch. In the real world, people make assumptions, others are less than altruistic, and most people are responsible, at least a little bit, for their own mistakes. The fact that Zack and his mother took in a couple of homeless people as their long-term guests after knowing them two days, had the air of a public service announcement that shuns me for not inviting the average crackhead on State Street to sleep in my spare bedroom. My message to you, Saved by the Bell, is that when I want a sermon, I will go to church.

On the other hand, I'll be watching tomorrow morning.