By José
When the hit series Saved by the Bell ended its run in 1993, NBC executives wanted to keep a good thing going. But the successful show's cast was no longer fit for a high school. Mark-Paul Gosselar was 19 years old and Mario Lopez was a year older. While many other shows and movies utilized older actors to play teenagers, the gang had been at Bayside High since 1989 and had mined the low-hanging fruit of cliched teenage drama while also veering into infamously outlandish premises like Zack learning about his Native American ancestry and the teens fighting to keep an oil rig from being built on their school. The setting had to change if any more money could be wrung out of Saved by the Bell's success. And where do graduating high school students typically go? College.
If you missed the short-lived run of Saved by the Bell: The College Years, and most people did, you might have heard of its less than stellar reputation. Contemporary wisdom regards the show, which debuted in May 1993 and ended in February 1994, as the reheated leftovers of its brighter predecessor. While the other SBTB spin-off, The New Class, ran for a lengthy seven seasons until January 2000, The College Years wrapped up in less than twenty episodes. In 2008 Time called it one of the 10 Worst TV Spin-Offs, and critical reception during the show's lifetime echoed that sentiment.
Over 20 years later, I think it's worth taking a look at the series again. And in that look I think we can see some real potential that never had the chance to be realized. If college is where people go to find themselves, Saved by the Bell: The College Years sadly flunked out before it ever got the chance to blossom into something more than another failed sitcom spin-off.
The College Years picked up where the original Saved by the Bell left off, with Zack Morris and his friends leaving high school to enroll in the not-so-creatively named California University. Instead of the halls of Bayside High, we'd be following Zack and his friends in their dorm rooms and lecture halls of Cal U, no longer kings and queens of the school, but instead freshman stepping into the world of adulthood. Zack shared his dorm room with returning friends A.C. Slater, Screech Powers, and eventually Kelly Kapowski — all roles reprised by their SBTB actors Mark-Paul Gosselar, Mario Lopez, Dustin Diamond, and Tiffani Thiessen, respectively. Sadly, Lisa Turtle and Jessie Spano from the original cast would be going to school elsewhere. In their place were two new characters: Leslie Burke, initially an empty vessel meant to be the subject of romantic conquest played by Anne Tremko, and Alex Tabor, a high-strung drama student played by Kiersten Warren. And all of these students would live under the eye of hard-nosed Resident Adviser Mike Rogers, played by former NFL player-turned-actor Bob Golic.
It's difficult to talk about the potential of The College Years without first addressing some of its flaws, with one of its biggest being the horrible first impressions it made. The pilot for The College Years is probably best summarized by the closing joke of the episode: Zack making a quip about studying on weeknight, leading to a freeze frame, some polite laughter, the sound of one person starting to applaud, and then complete silence.
While that awkward ending might have been an editing mishap, what mattered far more was how the show was able to course correct abruptly afterwards. In the months between the airing of the pilot and the show's proper debut in the fall season, several changes were made to the series.
The pilot featured Essence Atkins playing Danielle Marks, a character tasked with the impossible task of filling iconic teen heartthrob Kelly Kapowski's absence. The debut dropped the character (and Atkins) in favor of bringing back Tiffani Thiessen as Kelly Kapowski, adding a much-needed additional familiar face. The change in cast forced another positive pivot: Leslie became something more interesting than a girl to be pursued, a role that pigeon-holed Kelly in the original series and often made her the blandest of the Bayside crew.
As the season progressed, Leslie was given more to do than role her eyes at Zack's clumsy attempts to impress her. She differentiated herself as a young lady from a wealthy family, introducing some fun class dynamics to the group.
Other course corrections included taking the RA Mike and making him less of a Principal Belding surrogate and instead a character capable of getting into trouble with some of the other characters. It broke down the dichotomy of "teens vs adults" that defined the original series, serving as a sign that these characters were ready to start being part of a much bigger world.
A change that didn't need to be made was Alex Tabor, the student who eventually starts dating Slater. While their relationship was a vague retread of the Slater-Jessie relationship in the original series, Alex had enough differentiating her from Jessie that it didn't feel stale. Alex Tabor felt unique among the newer faces in the cast in that she seemed complete from the beginning, demonstrating that the show at least had at least one piece in place from the jump.
Perhaps the best example of the The College Years' potential was how it repositioned Saved by the Bell's Kelly Kapowski, taking the bland cheerleader from the original show and having her explore what she wants her place in the wider world to be as an adult. What started off as her being charmed by one of her professors, a single father who had a family she thought she could complete, led to her eventually realizing that she would be better off making a life of her own while pursuing a career in medicine. A plotline that sadly had to be dropped when the show was cancelled, leading to a messy wedding in Las Vegas for her and Zack (which, of course, got its own TV movie).
The poor resolution aside, Kelly's arc–as uncomfortable as it is to see her lovesick over her professor–at least had her realizing her self-worth and doing more than simply being plugged into someone else's life.
Kelly wasn't the only Bayside alumni to see some character growth. Mario Lopez's AC Slater had what was my favourite episode of the series when he learned about his Latin American roots. As something the original series never really touched upon, The College Years gave us a story of Slater as a second generation immigrant, his heritage and surname of "Sanchez" hidden by a father trying to advance his own career in the military. It's a story very familiar to second and third-generation immigrants who are often raised as the product of two cultures.
More than a simple story about Slater embracing his roots, this episode highlights the pressure that's placed on immigrants to assimilate in their new home, a pressure that can be felt across generations. It's a story, even in 2026, you don't often get to see on television. And one that made Slater more than the all-star athlete with a dozen different hobbies that he was in the original series.
Another great addition to the Slater character was him getting a job at the campus cafeteria as a busboy, going in the opposite direction of Leslie to create a bit more class tension in the group, albeit one part of his character not explored as much as it could have been. Much like Slater's heritage only having a single episode to shine, it's another sign of the show's potential to develop characters never being given the space to grow.
The other two members of the original cast, Zack and Screech, didn't get quite as many opportunities to evolve. Though in both cases those are much tougher nuts to crack. With no Lisa to thirst after, Screech's nerdier side was leaned on more, and there was at least one interesting episode where Screech's intelligence made him a more attractive guy outside the less sophisticated world of high school. Although the series perhaps didn't do enough with that premise, it was the beginning of something that could have taken Screech to some fresh territory.
Zack showed some signs of becoming a more dedicated student, though his character never fully learning how to be a better person is what drives so much of the action in each episode. And that also underlined one of the major challenges the series-faced.
Moving from Saturday mornings to prime time on Monday forced Saved by the Bell into not just changing its setting, but also elevating its structure as a sitcom. The previous show could centre an entire episode around Zack hatching some kind of plot to get time off school or a date with his love interest of the moment, only for it to eventually blow up in his face and learn the error of his scheming ways. At least until the next chance to wheel and deal presented itself in the next episode.
In The College Years, Zack's wasted opportunities for growth carried with it a stiffer bit of judgment on his actions. He wasn't a 16-year-old boy anymore, but an adult who needed to be held to a higher standard. The show seemed to be more aware of this. Episode plots were less centred around Zack's schemes and started to give other characters space to develop into more complete people. Zack being a hold-out cast him in a different light compared to everyone else, one more in-line with the harsher re-evaluation his character has seen in light of the "Zack Morris is Trash" web series.
The College Years gave us episodes where Zack learned the importance of getting better grades and respecting women. Although much of that went out the window when, fearing he might lose Kelly later in the season, we see Zack at his most insecure. His fear of losing her motivates him to frantically beg Kelly not to spend a semester aboard a cruise ship that's tied to her premed program , I'm not sure how that would have helped Kelly with her new goal of becoming a doctor (the show elides critical details about the semester at sea), but Zack's actions reflected a desperation and insecurity in his relationship with Kelly that needed a lot more than a last minute epiphany to resolve. Yet said epiphany, one that led to Kelly abandoning her studies for their eventual Vegas wedding, is what we got.
It's hard to evaluate this muddled story and not see a show that had been cancelled, and subsequently given a few episodes to setup a contractually obligated movie. But it had the beginnings of Zack finally, after so many years of treating women poorly, learning what an actual relationship looked like. The importance of learning how to trust your significant other, and not putting your desire to be with her ahead of her journey of personal growth.
I don't know for a fact if the show was going to take Zack in this direction, but the rushed ending did not feel like a conclusion to Zack's character arc and I can't imagine the show-runners were hoping to only have their show run for a single season. There was potential to develop Zack the same way Slater and Kelly had developed throughout the series, and had the show had a second season, I think Kelly would have stayed on that boat and Zack would have had months to reflect on what it meant to let her go. Maybe he'd learn how to center someone else's needs rather than his own selfish desires. In other words, he'd learn how to be an adult instead of a teenage boy. But The College Years never had the chance to follow on the small glimmers of growth we saw in its better episodes.
The reason I've focused mostly on the potential of individual characters is that, unlike the original Saved by the Bell, The College Years told more character-driven stories. In the original series, once you understood the basics of each character, episodes more often than not would center around wacky schemes or special locales to drive the stories. The original series featured a sentient talking robot named Kevin, a plot where the gang tries to convince a federal agent that Screech is an alien, and an episode featuring a murder mystery dinner that spirals out of control when a seemingly real murder happens.
The College Years never drifted into high concept territory like that. While that might be in part because it never needed to stretch out a third or fourth season, it was perhaps also because there seemed to be a real attempt to give the cast problems that couldn't be solved by learning a basic after school special-style lesson.
For example, Kelly's relationship with Professor Lasky in The College Years was vastly different compared to her relationship with Jeff, manager at burger place The Max and Kelly's boss, in the original series. Both were spoilers keeping her from being with Zack, but their respective stories unfolded very differently.
Jeff was a handsome guy who seemed to be messing around with Kelly, letting her dump Zack when he never intended to date her exclusively himself. Ultimately Zack and Kelly breaking up is tragic, but the characters eventually find their way back to each other, and it was more like a story of hormones out of control.
Kelly's attraction to Lasky represented her seeing this ready-made family for her to fit into. More than a handsome guy, Lasky represented a future that Kelly liked the idea of, being a wife and mother. Her learning the mistake of chasing that illusion instead helps her realize she needs to focus on an academic career. It's a real moment of growth for the character where she learns her future is best decided in her own hands.
Even comparing Jeff and Lasky directly, Jeff just seems like a dirtbag while Lasky is more well-defined as a professor who makes the grave mistake of dating one of his students. While I'm sympathetic to the reading that the show is a little too generous to Lasky, seeming to go out of its way to make him a well-meaning guy, the contrast with Jeff is so stark you can't imagine the two of them existing on the same show. The College Years was trying to do more than present an easily detestable foil like Jeff.
Fans might hate Professor Lasky even more than Jeff, not because he's a worse guy, but because he feels more real. He could easily be a professor who doesn't understand the power dynamics that make a relationship with one of his students inherently predatory, even if he doesn't adopt the posture of what we might imagine a predator to be.
The College Years had a challenging route to success from its very beginnings. Being put up against the ratings giant of Full House in its first season was a tall order. While it's hard to hone in on just why that decision was made, some fans have hypothesized that it was the departure of Brandon Tartikoff, head of entertainment at NBC and the man who tasked Peter Engel with creating the series back in the 80's. But it's hard to imagine that the new administration, under Warren Littlefield, were hoping for the show's failure.
In his book, I Was Saved by the Bell: Stories of Life, Love, and Dreams That Do Come True, Peter Engel takes the opinion that Littlefield was overconfident in the series being a success in that difficult timeslot. In spite of Engel's efforts to get Littlefield to reschedule the show, it remained on Monday nights throughout its run, struggling to get more than mediocre ratings.
Another reason the show struggled was not bringing the entire Bayside crew to college. By far, the most explosive reaction from the studio audience in any of the episodes filmed for the series came when Lark Voorhies made a surprise appearance as Lisa Turtle in the series finale. While Voorhies might have been a potential recruit for the series, I suspect Elizabeth Berkley had her heart set on her career being in film, as she was already set to star in Showgirls as Saved by the Bell was coming to an end. She was obviously unaware of how that particular movie would be received.
Although it's harder to measure this, I suspect another reason the show failed to get a larger audience is that Saved by the Bell was only ever a hit with kids and teens. And you need more than those two demographics to succeed in prime time. Anyone old enough to be out of school likely didn't have the same affinity for any of the characters on the show, and maybe even a little antipathy for a series that had been previously marketed towards a younger audience. Expecting this new audience of adults to become invested in a group of characters they had no prior knowledge of might have been expecting too much. Especially since The College Years often operates under the assumption that Zack, Screech, Slater, and Kelly are familiar faces to the audience.
Ultimately, there are probably a combination of factors that sealed The College Years' fate as the underwhelming coda to a beloved sitcom. One lesson that can be learned from Saved by the Bell's other spin-off, The New Class, is that the magic of original series was very hard to duplicate. The cliche of lightning in a bottle fits the series very well. Coming along at just the right time, with just the right combination of actors and characters, to bring the live action sitcom to a whole new audience.
Wanting to bring that into prime time, to see if lightning might strike twice, made a lot of sense. But The College Years might have been better off being given the space to find itself instead of being thrown into the deep end. Peter Engel and his team had already proven they could make a hit using a lot of the same talent they had before, but even that hit required some time to cook. It's too often forgotten that the original Saved by the Bell began as the mediocre Good Morning, Miss Bliss. A show that had to be retooled twice before it became the Saved by the Bell millions loved and continue to love—first after a bad pilot and then after an improved, but still rough first season. It's a path that sounds very similar to The College Years, had the later series gotten more than that first season.
The College Years, in spite of the promise it showed, never got that time to transform itself. And sadly will only be remembered as a missed opportunity, a badly edited punchline nobody's laughing at.
José writes video essays on YouTube about classic TV shows and reactionary media. He started a YouTube channel almost ten years ago as a hobby, it got a little out of hand, and now that has somehow become his job.