LOLSlater

LOLSlater and Danger Guerrero’s Top Five Saved By The Bell Moments:

#5 - Anytime Slater Dances

LOLSlater: I’ll be honest; Slater dancing was the main inspiration for this blog. I was getting ready for work one morning, watching the episode where Slater apologizes to Jessie for some injustice by stripping off his breakaway Z. Cavariccis (PS – That is a million dollar idea; you’re welcome Z. Cavariccis) to reveal a full body spandex unitard and I thought, “Why did this happen to us? Not just once, but several times. Someone should talk about this.” I really enjoy thinking about a room full of grown men sitting down and writing a scene where a teenage boy ends up dancing in spandex because that happens ALL OF THE TIME and just makes perfect sense. I mean, they shoehorned that into a shockingly large number of episodes. Of course I would expect to see something like that zero times, so I consider any number higher than zero to be shockingly large. Anyway, there are few things in this show that provide me with greater joy than seeing Mario Lopez bust out some sick dance moves while dressed the maximum amount of spandex possible. Oh wait, I guess “Saved By the Bell” was just the original “Glee.” Never mind.

Anyway, I’m too lazy to go back and link to each instance of Slater dancing that was documented on this blog, but I would guess there is roughly 10GB of video of him prancing about in various states of undress. It is totally worth looking through 200 pages of blog for.

Mildly fun fact: Mario Lopez danced within the first 60 seconds of the very first episode of SBTB, and within the last 5 minutes of the final episode. The whole series was bookended by awkward Slater dances. A+ to the producers for that.

Danger Guerrero: Here’s my question: Do you think Slater was always supposed to be such a dancing maniac? Like, when they created the character? Because if that was the case, it would make him one of the more fascinating fictional creations of all-time. A multi-sport star athlete, military brat, and mechanic, who ALSO happens to be gifted at less typically masculine activities like modern dance and ballet? In the world of stereotypes that “Saved by the Bell” occupied, A.C. Slater was kind of groundbreaking in that way.

On the other hand — and this is way more likely — maybe Mario Lopez just loved to dance and was always pestering the producers about giving Slater more opportunities to show off his moves. I could totally see him doing this. I could also see the producers shoehorning in a gratuitous 30 second scene just to shut him up for a week or two. To be honest, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen today while he’s hosting “Extra.”

In conclusion, while we’re on the subject of dancing television characters, I just want to point out that Slater couldn’t hold a candle to my boy Turkleton. Not even close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81NpdkTcMAE