although some of that is clearly their own fault; Zack, Slater, Screech, and Kelly all appeared in the lone season of Saved by the Bell: The College Years, and Screech played a faculty member for most of the seven-season run of Saved by the Bell: The New Class. Those latter two shows— neither of which I watched consistently—made for a comfortable transition of loss: I saw the Saved by the Bell characters constantly, then periodically, and then not at all. It was actually a lot like my relationship with the friends from college who used to watch the show with me; I once saw guys like Joel constantly, then periodically, and then never. Which brings me to the aforementioned “Tori Paradox,” a desperate move by the Saved by the Bell producers that accidentally became the program’s most realistic avenue (and probably the clearest example of how there’s nothing more true than a cliche).
The Tori Paradox is a little like the season of Dukes of Hazzard when Bo and Luke were momentarily replaced by their cousins Coy and Vance, two guys who were exactly like them (so much so that the blond guy still preferred to drive). Here’s the crux of the incongruity: For half of the “senior year” at Bayside, Jessie (Berkley) and Kelly (Thiessen) are completely part of the action, just as they’d been for the last three seasons. However, they’re suddenly absent for twelve consecutive episodes, having been replaced by “Tori,” an attractive, brassy brunette in a black leather jacket who displays elements of both their personalities. Within moments of her arrival, Tori is completely absorbed into the Bayside gang; she’s romantically pursued by Zack and Slater and generally behaves as if she has always been one of their closest friends. This lasts until the graduation episode (aired in prime time), when Kelly and Jessie suddenly reappear as if nothing ever happened. Meanwhile, Tori does not appear at graduation and is not even mentioned.
The motivation for these moves were purely practical; Berkley and Thiessen wanted to leave the cast, but NBC wanted to squeeze out a dozen more episodes of a show that was now quite popular (and being rerun four times a day on other networks). NBC essentially shot the graduation special (and another prime-time movie, Saved by the Bell Hawaiian Style), embargoed them for later use, and queued up the Tori era. It was the easiest way to extend the series. However, this rudimentary solution created a seemingly unfathomable scenario: Since both the “Tori episodes” and the “Kelly/Jessie episodes” were shown concurrently— sometimes on the same day—we were evidently supposed to conclude that these adventures were happening at the same time. Whenever we were watching Zack’s attempts to scam on Tori, we were asked to assume that Kelly and Jessie were in the lunch room or at the mall or sick, and it was just a coincidence that nobody ever mentioned them (or introduced them to Tori, or even recognized their existence).
On paper, this seems idiotic, borderline insulting, and—above all—unreal. But the more I think back on my life, the more I’ve come to realize that the Tori Paradox might be the only element of Saved by the Bell that actually happened to me. Whenever I try to remember friends from high school, friends from college, or even just friends from five years ago, my memory always creates the illusion that we were together constantly, just like those kids on Saved by the Bell. However, this was almost never the case. Whenever I seriously piece together my past, I inevitably uncover long stretches where somebody who (retrospectively) seemed among my closest companions simply wasn’t around. I knew a girl in college who partied with me and my posse constantly, except for one semester in 1993—she had a waitressing job at Applebee’s during that stretch and could never make it to any parties. And even though we all loved her, I can’t recall anyone mentioning her absence until she came back. And sometimes I was the person cut out of life’s script: That very same semester, all my coworkers at our college newspaper temporarily decided I was a jerk and briefly froze me out of their lives; we later reunited, but now—whenever they tell nostalgic stories from that period—I’m always confused about why I can’t remember what they’re talking about… until I remember that I wasn’t included in those specific memories. A few years later I started hanging out with a girl who liked to do drugs, so the two of us spent a year smoking pot in my poorly lit apartment while everyone else we knew continued to go out in public; when I eventually rejoined all my old acquaintances at the local tavern, I could kind of relate to how Kelly Kapowski must have felt after Tori evaporated. Coming and going is more normal than it should be.
So what does that mean? Maybe nothing. But maybe this: Conscious attempts at reality don’t work. The character of Angela on ABC’s short-lived drama My So-Called Life was byzantine and unpredictable and emotionally complex, and all that well-crafted nuance made her seem like an individual. But Angela was so much an individual that she wasn’t like anyone but herself; she didn’t reflect any archetypes. She was real enough to be interesting, but too real to be important. Kelly Kapowski was never real, so she ended up being a little like everybody (or at least like someone everybody used to know). The Tori Paradox was a lazy way for NBC to avoid thinking, but nobody watching at home blinked; it was openly ridiculous, but latently plausible. That’s why the Tori Paradox made sense, and why it illustrated a greater paradox that matters even more: Saved by the Bell wasn’t real, but neither is most of reality.
Life is chock-full of lies, but the biggest lie is math. That’s particularly clear in the discipline of probability, a field of study that’s completely and wholly fake. When push comes to shove—when you truly get down to the core essence of existence—there is only one mathematical possibility: Everything is 50-50. Either something will happen, or something will not.
When you flip a coin, what are the odds of it coming up heads? 50-50. Either it will be heads, or it will not. When you roll a six-sided die, what are the odds that you’ll roll a three? 50-50. You’ll either get a three, or you won’t. That’s reality. Don’t fall into the childish “it’s one-in six” logic trap. That is precisely what all your adolescent authority figures want you to believe. That’s how they enslave you. That’s how they stole your conviction, and that’s why you will never be happy. Either you will roll a three, or you will not; there are no other alternatives. The future has no memory. Certain things can be impossible, and certain things can be guaranteed—but there is no sliding scale for maybe. Maybe something will happen, or maybe it won’t. That’s all there is. What are the chances that your sister will die from ovarian cancer next summer? 50-50 (either she’ll die from ovarian cancer or she won’t). What are the chances that your sister will become America’s most respected underwater welding specialist? 50-50. It will happen, or it won’t. There are two possibilities, and both are plausible and unknown. The odds are 2:1. These facts are irrefutable.
Quasi-intellectuals like to claim that math is spiritual. They are lying. Math is not religion. Math is the antireligion, because it splinters the gravity of life’s only imperative equation: Either something is true, or it isn’t. Do or do not; there is no try.
12 Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth 1:41
It’s become cool to like Star Wars, which actually means it’s totally uncool to like Star Wars. I think you know what I mean by this: There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interestin g” to be a Star Wars fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day, or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized; I don’t recall anyone talking about Star Wars in 1990, except for that select class of uber geeks who consciously embraced their sublime nerdiness four years before the advent of Weezer (you may recall that these were also the first people who told you about the Internet). But that era has passed; suddenly it seems like everyone born between 1963 and 1975 will gleefully tell you how mind- blowingly important the Star Wars trilogy was to their youth, and it’s slowly become acceptable to make Wookie jokes without the fear of alienation. This is probably Kevin Smith’s fault.
What’s interesting about this evolution is that the value of a movie like Star Wars was vastly underrated at the time of its release and is now vastly overrated in retrospect. In 1977, few people realized this film would completely change the culture of filmmaking, inasmuch as this was the genesis of all those blockbuster movies that everyone gets tricked into seeing summer after summer after summer. Star
