Remember growing up and wondering what high school would really be like? It was portrayed in such a light-hearted way on ’90s TV shows like Saved By The Bell and Beverly Hills: 90210 that it almost forced you to slack off and just focus on the SAT’s so you could get into college. Besides just learning how to be too cool for school, we learned a little thing or two about values from shows like Full House and Family Matters. If it wasn’t that a geek needed to transform himself to fit in with everyone else, it was that living with two of your best friends in San Francisco well into your 30’s was completely normal. We can legit say that we learned more from shows like that than we ever did in our own experiences. That may be really pathetic to admit, but when you go in with the mindset that every chick looks and acts like Kelly Kapowski, that’s kind of what you’d expect. With every channel basically copying each other on what works these days, a lot of the things we loved and learned are gone. Sure, there’s still hot chicks still doing their thing, but we’re pretty sure there’s little to learn from reality stars–not that you’d want to anyway. But from these classic hits, we were able to take away some valuable things.
6. Drugs Are Bad
There was always the generic drug episode. Didn’t matter that once you actually got to high school or college that you were smoking or drunk more than half the time, but damnit the networks tried to warn you about the dangers of sipping too much brew. Guess this one didn’t live up to the lessons the others did, huh? But at least they tried their hardest to teach us a thing or two.
5. Always Be in a Band
Whether or not you’re at all interested in music, you have to start your own band. The hardships of getting famous and trying to survive on the road were nonexistent on every TV show. Jesse and the Rippers were a complete joke, yet they still ended up having sold out shows every time they played.
4. Dorkiness Rules
It was great trying to emulate Zack Morris, but bottom line is his best friend was Screech, so what’s that really say about him? Was he really as hip as we all made him out to be? If there’s one thing that ’90s shows taught us, it was that stiffs like Danny Tanner, Steve Urkel, and Balki were still able to hold their own amongst hot ladies and total bros.
3. Dating
This is the most obvious one of them all! It taught you to be persistent in going after the hottest girl, and never taking no for an answer. It definitely helped to be BMOC, but even the band geek somehow ended up getting some. We must say we still find the whole TV relationship valuable today–even if it does end up with a slap across the face sometimes.
2. Fashion
Just take a look at this picture and tell us that you didn’t try to duplicate it. As with most TV characters, anything someone cool was wearing, we were wearing. Doesn’t matter if we looked like a complete moron when walking around in the real world, but at the time, it seemed pretty damn cool.
1. No Consequences
What was it about the ’90s that made rules disappear? We’re not sure if it was the Bill Clinton as President effect or not, but it seemed like anytime there was trouble, all you had to do was act witty and try to talk your way out of it. More than ever, we used this skill through the ages of six to about, well, now we guess?
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