While recently covering Saved by the Bell for our very serious podcast, I was forced to dust off the Zackronomicon, a tome of detailed information about the show stored somewhere deep within the recesses of my child brain. I also have fun things like the 1994 Seattle Mariners roster and the guitar solo from “Geek U.S.A.” rattling around in there, but I had to skip straight to the bad stuff for my art. The Boob Tube Boys suffer for their art.
Once I had zoomed through all of my surface knowledge of the show, the sort of stuff any older millennial with a few free Saturday mornings in their youth might know, I was confronted with all sorts of stray, confusing details I needed to clear up with context. Why did Zack and Lisa kiss again? Exactly how old was that adult man waiter Jeff at The Max who was, more than likely, fingering Kelly? Should he be serving a prison sentence? These are all great questions, but they weren’t the ones I got stuck on.
Nope, it’s Kevin. Fucking Kevin. Kevin isn’t even a real character, he’s a crude robot Screech made to keep prisoner in his room, an eerie predictor of a grocery store sin. He has a Lite Brite smile and presumably Stockholm syndrome. I began thinking about Kevin specifically while thinking about sexism in sitcoms of the late ’80s and early ’90s, as Big Kev once aided Screech in judging a beauty competition. Wait, was that right? Using this hazy knowledge from my distant, tiny past, I took to Google and found out that, yes, Kevin did assist Screech during the Miss Bayside pageant, but Screech was a contestant. Kevin had a lot of one-liners, too. He was big on saying the sort of shit Screech wishes he had the presence of mind to say, or perhaps the courage.
Aside from the time he helped Screech look hot for the beauty pageant, what other occasions necessitated Kevin? Kevin’s first appearance was in Saved by the Bell’s very first season when Screech apparently created the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence to help Kelly with her homework. Kevin’s appearance here lines up neatly with his usage in the beauty pageant, as he seems to be needed to boost Screech’s confidence level, especially when it comes to possible boner moments.
Kevin’s third and final appearance, the last in the beep-boop trilogy, comes in season four when he pulls double duty as both assistant hall monitor to Screech and Screech’s only friend when the rest of the gang forgets his birthday. Again, Kevin gets pulled out in times of extreme need. We have to assume that when Screech met Principal Belding’s niece Penny at the mall in the episode we covered for the podcast, Screech never felt Kevin’s services were needed. He was comfortable in Zack cosplay, running from the true essence of what makes a Screech a Screech. Screech.
Is it possible that Kevin represented a repressed portion of Screech’s brain? Was Kevin manifested by Screech in order for Screech to gain self confidence in times of need? To be completely sure, I would need to re-watch every Kevin appearance and take detailed notes, but I would rather eat nails. I am left with no choice but to accept my own hypothesis and assume that Screech was a very troubled young man looking not only for a way into Lisa’s pants, but a way to widespread acceptance in a world that would not have him. If only he had realized his last name was Powers all along, a strength dyed in the wool from his nerdy birth.
