Mark-Paul Gosselaar wants to be very clear he does not “condone” any of the behavior of Zack Morris!
The Saved by the Bell star has been doing a podcast called Zack to the Future in which he rewatches the classic high school show. And he’s found that even for a character meant to be a bad example who had to learn lessons about not being such a sleaze, Zack does some stuff that NO ONE would put on TV today!
During this week’s episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, the former child star reflected with the cast of Boy Meets World on what he believes to be the most problematic episodes of the ’90s TV show he’s seen since beginning his rewatch journey. The first? Season 1’s The Lisa Card:
“In terms of story lines, there was one where I was basically whoring out Lisa Turtle [played by Lark Voorhies] to charge people to kiss her without her consent. That was a tough one, which we had to preface the episode by saying, ‘We do not condone this. We’re here just to discuss it but this is in the past.’”
If you don’t remember the ep, basically, Lisa goes over on her dad’s credit card limit, and Zack tries to help her raise the money to pay it back. But unbeknownst to her, one of his schemes is charging boys $1 to “lose their Lisa cards” — aka get a kiss from her. Yes, he became Lisa’s pimp.
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Uhhh, yeah, that definitely wouldn’t fly today. But that’s not all! Mark-Paul remembered another episode from Season 3 called Running Zack, in which his character pretends to be Native American for a class assignment — inappropriate headdress and all:
“Seeing Zack Morris in a full headdress, that was one we had to be sensitive on. There’s just things you just would not film nowadays … and rightfully so, it’s inappropriate. We’ve evolved as human beings.”
Oof. NOT good! Even when the character is meant to be in the wrong, no one would risk offending folks with a stunt like that these days.
Mark-Paul, though, admits those two episodes weren’t even the extent of the inappropriate moments, though. He admitted:
“[There] are things in every single episode that we could pick out. And you find yourself at that point, you’re trying not to be negative. It’s a watch party. People want you to celebrate the product. It’s fragile but overall you’re trying to be positive about the work, saying, ‘It was a different time. And we don’t condone that now but this is what it was. Enjoy!’”
Did YOU watch SBTB? What’s the most problematic thing YOU remember Zack doing?? Let us know in the comments down below!
The post The 2 Most Problematic Episodes Of <i>Saved By The Bell</i>, According To Zack Morris appeared first on Perez Hilton.