For anyone that watched Saved By The Bell and didn’t think that Zack Morris was a piece of human garbage it’s easy to misunderstand high school shenanigans for something else. In truth if you watch his behavior in this one clip, ONE clip of out of many keep in mind, Zack is about as charming as a dirty wet rag to the face. It starts when he joins up with a teen help line that the high school has decided to fund in order to help troubled teens by talking to them and giving them some type of counseling. In high school after all it’s sometimes necessary just to hear the words from someone else that you’re doing okay.
But of course Zack sees this as yet another opportunity to pick up on girls that might be emotionally unstable and can be coerced into just about anything. He starts this after eating someone’s breakfast and committing what would be seen today as sexual harassment towards a female student. And that’s just the start of the day.
When he speaks to his first caller, a young woman by the name of Melissa, his first inclination is to think that she’s really hot and would like to go out on a date. Of course she accepts, unfortunately for her, and they decide to go to the local hangout. Once there Zack still has no idea that Melissa is handicapped since he can’t see her chair right away. When he finally notices it you would think that he might be a bit shocked, but not act like a total jerk and start peppering her with questions that many people in wheelchairs usually don’t care for. There’s the all important question of how she got in the wheelchair that sparks his comment of “I’m really sorry.” You can almost get a feeling that he means this in a very good way, but he’s such a jerk that he can’t find an adequate way to make it sound like anything other than pity, which of course a lot of handicapped folks can’t stomach to say the least.
Then he proceeds to make her feel even more self-conscious by telling everyone that she’s handicapped and is okay with it. Why didn’t a writer add in a part about Zack getting smacked upside the head a few times? Anyway, from that point on he just gets worse since he uses her handicapped status to irritate everyone around them when they go on another date and outright humiliate her, in his moronic, just-trying-to-be-nice way. I doubt the actor playing the part was really like this off set, at least I hope he wasn’t, but even onscreen this is just too much. The character needs a good boot up the backside to straighten him out I think.
Back to the story. After being called out for acting like a jerk Zack apologizes and seems sincere enough that Melissa agrees to go out on another date with him. The strange thing is that she’s never seen on the show after that episode, which leaves a big question.
What happened to Melissa?
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