Saved by the Bell: The College Years:

The History of The College Years:

Last updated: December 1, 1997.

As was stated in the Saved by the Bell FAQ, pt. 1, Saved by the Bell the original series (SbtB for short), was in need of new direction after the end of the "Kelly & Jessie" Grade 12 Season. By this time, the show was very popular, and Peter Engel didn't want to let a winning formula escape. And as was stated previously, another problem was that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (Kelly) and Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie) decided that they wanted to leave the show.

So SbtB producer Peter Engel seems to have come up with two solutions. He decided to produce a "short" season of 11 more episodes of SbtB proper in Grade 12 at Bayside, using the new character of Tori in the place of Kelly and Jessie. In turn, this would buy time, and allow the producers to develop two new series for production: a sequel to SbtB called Saved by the Bell-The College Years (SbtB-tCY or CY for short), which would be the continuation of the adventures of Zack and Screech (and Slater), and a spin-off called Saved by the Bell-The New Class, which would be the continuation of the adventures of Mr. Belding and the students of Bayside High.

So what was the background on Saved by the Bell-The College Years? At the end of Saved by the Bell proper, it looked like the gang would all end up at different colleges. As we saw in the second episode of the (Kelly & Jessie) 12th Grade season, Lisa got into "the Fashion Institute of Technology" (FIT) in New York City. In the third episode of that season, we found out that Jessie was accepted to Columbia in NYC (the only school she gets in to) so presumably that's where Jessie ended up. Also in this episode, Screech was accepted to every school he applied to (except an all girls college) though in the Graduation Special he mentions that he is going to "Berkeley". Slater received a wrestling scholarship to University of Iowa where he says he will go, Kelly said she can't afford anything but community college, and Zack said that he got into Yale and that's where he would go.

But that's not how it ended up. In the pilot of SbtB-tCY, we saw that not only did Screech end up going to "Berkeley", but so did Zack and Slater. So all three of the boys ended up going to "California University" in the San Francisco Bay Area (presumably at Berkeley). They were joined by three female suitemates (the boys and the girls shared a common room), Leslie Burke (Anne Tremko) from San Francisco, Alex Taber (Kiersten Warren) from Oregon and Danielle Marks (Essence Atkins) from Washington, D.C.

After the filming of the pilot, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (Kelly) decided to rejoin the cast. So Atkins was dropped (it is said she "tranferred" out of C.U.), and in the first real episode of SbtB-tCY, we find out that Kelly had been wait-listed, and later accepted to C.U. So in the first episode of CY, Kelly joined Leslie and Alex as the boys' suitemates. Their Floor Master was ex-pro football player Mike Rogers (Bob Golic, former NFL player), their Anthropology Professor was Jeremiah Laskey (Patrick Fabian), and Zack's new arch-nemesis in later episodes of The College Years was Dean McMann (played by Holland Taylor, formerly of the TV show "Bosom Buddies" and various other TV and movie roles).

SbtB-tCY ran 18 episodes before NBC cancelled it due to low ratings (see below). The last show was a 1-hour finale, and it was shown on February 8, 1994. In the finale, Zack and Kelly were preparing to get married. So ended the run of the Zack-centered "Saved by the Bell" after 5 years on the air, and more than 100 episodes.

However, due to its abrupt and awkward ending, Peter Engel seems to have convinced NBC to let him to a 2 hour TV movie to allow him tie up the loose ends left in the 1-hour series finale. In the movie, "Wedding in Las Vegas", the old SbtB gang (sans Jessie) travel to Las Vegas to witness the marriage of Zack and Kelly. But several of them run into difficulties on the way. This movie aired on Friday, October 7, 1994 on NBC.