Jessie’s Song

OK, this is sort of a confession.  I loved, and still kind of love, ‘Saved By The Bell’.  Not the really early ones or the later fakery of ‘the new class’, etc (although I did like ‘Saved By The Bell Goes To College’ or whatever it was called, plus the feature-length spin-offs like the one in Las Vegas), but that golden mid-period of Zach and Kelly and Slater and Jessie and Lisa and Screech at The Max.

It was one of those really rubbish things that always seemed to be shown on Channel 4 in the mornings during school holidays (waaaay before it was T4 or anything so glamorous).  Everyone grew up on it – this is why my boyfriend still knows all the words to ‘Pugwall’s Summer’.

But it was the school holidays, which made it exciting, and SBTB was my, and my sister’s, favourite.  This was actually rather great, because it was one of the quite-few things at the time that, given the three-and-a-bit year age gap, we both loved equally.  And, oh, we did.

The best episode of all time, universally agreed, is the classic ‘Jessie’s Song’.  Jessie – being an over-achieving, supposed-to-be-feminist, later-a-Showgirl – was my absolute favourite character.  She was loads better than drippy old Kelly Kapowski.  The episode where they start a band (called Hot Sunday!) and Jessie gets ‘dangerously’ hooked on caffeine, is a work of genius.  At the time because we actually thought it was good, in retrospect (Neil has the DVDs) because it is absolutely effing hilarious.

My sister and I can still quote it word-perfect, I think.  And that is why this diagram is The Best Thing Ever.