Riding low in my chair, she won't know that I'm there/If I can hand it in tomorrow, it'll be all right

Sometimes, someone out there writes something so full of awesome I can do nothing but slowly clap and provide a link.

Hence: Scenes from an Alternate Universe Where Saved by the Bell, Rather Than Law and Order, Became the Dominant Television Franchise for a Generation.

*slow clap*

What is it with our generation and our fixation on Saved by the Bell? Any theories? I was flipping through channels a couple of weeks ago and came across an episode on TBS. It was the episode in the mall -- not the Christmas episode, where Zack falls for the homeless girl; no, the one where they're trying to get U2 tickets and Lisa comes across the shopping bag full of money and hijinks ensue. Don't insult me by pretending you don't know what I'm talking about, either.

I used to wonder, even while I still watched the show regularly without irony, why its depiction of high school life was so blatantly inaccurate. I mean, could it not have been possible to tell some of the same stories without asking us to accept as plausible a southern California high school with about fourteen students, maybe four teachers, and a laughably incompetent principal?

I realized then that accuracy wasn't the point. Because, after all, the show wasn't for high school kids -- it was for kids much younger than that. They believed the Bayside fantasy, because they just didn't know any better.

Is that we're really nostalgic for? An age when we could believe a place like Bayside existed, an age before we realized high school was not a brightly-lit, responsibility-free spaces where we could indulge in elaborate pranks and schemes with our friends -- who would be in every single one of our classes with us -- and face, at most, a half-hearted talking to from Principal Goober?

I don't know. Maybe it is for me.

What's your favorite Saved by the Bell episode? I bet you can guess what mine is. It's probably yours, too.