Prior to Saved by the Bell becoming the '90s hit that it was, it started in 1987 as Good Morning, Miss Bliss, starring Hayley Mills as a teacher who taught American History to the students of John F. Kennedy Junior High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. One of those students was Bayside's own Zack Morris, except that he wouldn't become the golden California boy until the show changed settings.
Fans looking to stream Saved by the Bell will find that Season 1 actually starts with the entire first season of Good Morning, Miss Bliss, establishing many of the same characters who would later appear on the series when it was turned into Saved by the Bell. The producers found out that fans wanted to see less of the teachers' lives, and more of the students' shenanigans, which would become the focal point of Season 2. Saved by the Bell is as popular now as it's ever been thanks to its 2020 reboot, but even diehard fans likely forget the details of its very first episode, "Summer Love".
10 Miss Bliss
Hayley Mills' dulcet tones open the episode as Miss Carrie Bliss, and the situations contained within are often framed through her perspective. She teaches charming but cheeky Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), nerdy Screech Powers (Dustin Diamond), and wealthy fashionista Lisa (Lark Voorhies) while preventing meddling by her boss, Principal Belding (Dennis Haskins).
Structurally, the episode is divided into Miss Bliss' adult problems and the students' teen problems, and their A and B plots end up uniting in the final chapter, often containing parallel themes. This format would later be dropped as the series transitioned away from Good Morning, Miss Bliss and turned into Saved by the Bell.
9 Zack Has A Different Group Of Friends
Rather than cavorting with the same old Bayside crew, Zack has a new group of friends. While Screech continues to be a nuisance, Zack spends a good amount of his time with Mikey, who is delayed from starting the school year because his parents dragged him to a "sausage convention".
Lisa chimes in with some of her usual pithy advice, and Zack has an outspoken and spunky female friend name Nikki, whose role is somewhat of an amalgamation of Kelly and Jessie, who would both enter Saved by the Bell in Season 2.
8 The Teachers Have Their Own Subplots
Since the series was based on Good Morning, Miss Bliss, Hayley Mills (of The Parent Trap fame) is a central figure, as is actress Joan Ryan. They have several scenes together independent of teaching classes, which allows them to be developed as characters who aren't solely focused on the children in their lives.
Ryan plays the arts teacher Miss Paladrino, whose neurotic personality extends to fretting over Principal Belding being upset over her production of "Rambo and Juliet," and Miss Bliss exudes charm and dry humor while fending off requests from Belding to cover tasks he doesn't want to do, such as lead the PTA board meeting.
7 The Faculty Is Bigger And More Diverse
The later seasons of Saved by the Bell explore the teachers of Bayside High more, though none of them receive as much attention as Principal Belding when compared to the student characters. By contrast in the first episode of the series, fans meet several faculty members, and their personalities and backgrounds are explored.
Aside from Miss Bliss and Miss Paladrino, fans meet Mylo Williams (T.K. Carter), who unfortunately disappeared by the time Season 2 aired. Given his sense of humor and hilarious turns of phrase interacting with Miss Bliss, Saved by the Bell truly missed out by not having him continue in the series.
6 The Adults' Homes And Personal Lives Are Shown
Far from being perceived as some mewling spinster, Miss Bliss declares very early in the episode that she has a date, and there's nothing Mr. Belding can do about it. Chided by Miss Paladrino, she nevertheless commits to her own plans without worrying what the rest of the school will be gossiping about.
Her date is Brian (Barry Jenner), a charming doctor who woos her with promises of Cajun dinner. They seem to be hitting it off well when class clown Zack Morris decides to crash their romantic evening. It was rare for later seasons of Saved by the Bell to show such intimate moments between the adults, given how much it focused on the teenagers' lives.
5 Zach Falls Hard For The New Girl
In typical Zack Morris fashion, he falls for the new girl, only she isn't very new. Over the summer at Camp Wanabee, he met Karen, a fifteen-year-old in the ninth grade who captured his heart. He's thrilled that she ends up going to his school, until he remembers that he told her he was in ninth grade, and she's bound to find out that he's only in the eighth.
Even worse, he's the eighth-grade class representative who has to appear at the school assembly in front of the entire student body. His deplorable behavior knows no bounds, and he even recruits Screech and Mikey to help him keep up his deceit.
4 Zack Creates Another Elaborate Scheme
Zack has to create yet another elaborate scheme to prevent Karen from finding out he's really in eighth grade. First, he tells her that he has his driver's license, but it's an "experimental" one given to fifteen-year-olds. Second, he tells her that he goes to an "experimental" ninth grade class that meets "off-campus," so she'll never find him in an eighth-grade class.
He forces Mike and Screech to go along with his charade whenever they're around Karen together, and miraculously she buys their lie. Zack even goes so far as to say that he's a ninth-grader helping out in Miss Bliss's homeroom, rather than a student in it. The entire farce proves that Zack Morris never matures out of causing chaos.
3 Miss Bliss Doesn't Practice What She Preaches
Miss Bliss is busy encouraging Zack to come clean about his scheme to Karen, but she doesn't exactly follow her own advice. When Zack comes over to her house while she's in the middle of her date, she doesn't tell Brian who's in her house. She spends the latter half of her romantic evening shuttling between the kitchen — where Zack loudly eats pie — and the dining room, juggling both guests.
Miss Bliss actively conveys to a young, impressionable teenager a notable life lesson: doing the right thing is never easy. She realizes why it was so hard for Zack to come clean — she can't do it even when she has the opportunity to set a good example.
2 Zack Is The Exact Same
Despite Zack being the youngest fans have ever seen him, he still channels all the same qualities of later seasons in Saved by the Bell. He's confident, entitled, and dubious. He avoids taking responsibility for his actions and thinks he can coast by repercussions for his antics because of his charm.
He makes his friends participate in whatever nefarious scheme he's concocted, advocates physical violence to Screech, and violates boundaries of personal space with the adults around him (Miss Bliss and Mr. Belding specifically).
1 There's A Life Lesson At The End
Devastated by his breakup with Karen, Zack asks Miss Bliss if it gets any easier getting over heartbreak as an adult. She responds woefully that actually, "it's harder". She explains that three years prior, she thought her world ended when her husband died, but she managed to pick up the pieces of her life and soldier on given enough time.
Saved by the Bell always taught its viewers life lessons, and the first episode had a big one: heartache is a natural part of loving anyone, and the loss of a loved one isn't something someone ever really gets over. But if they can learn from it, it can be a valuable tool instead of a horrifying scar.
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