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Dustin Diamond (Screech in Saved By The Bell) has died.

90's US high school sitcom star loses battle with cancer aged 44. (February 2021)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Interceptor posted:
Clarissa Explains It All had a similar treatment, except in that case the music remained the same but the visuals were changed to match those from later series. It always seemed weird that the child actors looked quite a bit older on the titles than on the programmes.


For comparison:




Interestingly if you look at the original air dates for Clarissa from Season 2 onwards it seems Nickelodeon tried to make it look as if it's on longer than it was (and seemingly on all year) by padding the dates out, and Wiki suggests it wasn't entirely obvious where one season ended and the next one began at the time, as it just carried on.
JA
james-2001
One thing I always remember about Clarissa is the end credits had the opening titles running in reverse, which was an interesting idea.
FL
Flux
Soupnzi posted:
rdd posted:
Saved by the Bell has an interesting history of course, as a retool of the Hayley Mills vehicle Good Morning, Miss Bliss which - despite Saved by the Bell itself being repeated about 1,000
times on TCC and other stations in the 1990s - I don’t think ever aired on this side of the Atlantic (but it would be good to hear otherwise), and which had an altogether different theme song and titles when it aired first.

Also interestingly I'm sure I watched some of these in syndication the late 90s in the States, by which point they were reversioned as eps of Saved by the Bell with a slightly older Zac doing a Rene from Allo Allo-style intro at the start, before we flashed-back to the past


That’s right. Good Morning Miss Bliss was repackaged as Saved By The Bell: The Junior High Years with new intros from Zack and new title sequences which looked just like the main show. As the shows were originally very different entities it ends up making very little sense if you try to square Junior High with the continuity of the main show. For one thing, the whole school moves to a different state.


Neil Jones posted:
Interceptor posted:
Clarissa Explains It All had a similar treatment, except in that case the music remained the same but the visuals were changed to match those from later series. It always seemed weird that the child actors looked quite a bit older on the titles than on the programmes.


For comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC0Aoa_Si3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqAmG9A7TBc

Interestingly if you look at the original air dates for Clarissa from Season 2 onwards it seems Nickelodeon tried to make it look as if it's on longer than it was (and seemingly on all year) by padding the dates out, and Wiki suggests it wasn't entirely obvious where one season ended and the next one began at the time, as it just carried on.


The only reason the Clarissa opening was reshot in the first place was apparently to differentiate it from Blossom which used the same concept of the main character trying on different outfits in its opener.

As another aside, there was also a failed pilot for a spinoff called Clarissa, Now which followed Clarissa moving to New York and which is sometimes packaged as an extra episode of the original run in syndication but has a whole different opening sequence (just a white logo on black background with a newly recorded theme tune)
JA
james-2001
Flux posted:
As the shows were originally very different entities it ends up making very little sense if you try to square Junior High with the continuity of the main show. For one thing, the whole school moves to a different state.


We had that over here with Grange Hill and Waterloo Road upping sticks to Liverpool and Scotland respectively Razz
JA
JAS84
The Waterloo Road one was especially ridiculous, because they actually moved in the storyline, and continued to refer to GCSEs, which you don't have in Scotland.

Grange Hill had the school destroyed in an explosion and rebuilt, explaining why it looked different when production moved to Liverpool, but it was still meant to be in London.
Last edited by JAS84 on 7 February 2021 2:35pm
JO
Jon
JAS84 posted:
The Waterloo Road one was especially ridiculous, because they actually moved in the storyline, and continued to refer to GCSEs, which you don't have in Scotland.

Yes, they either should have started a completely new show set in Scotland, or filmed it in Scotland but kept the setting the same. That’s if they really needed to move the show at all. It’s the equivalent of when they moved the town of Springfield in The Simpsons, only the latter was a 30 second joke in a comedy.

With Grange Hill it probably didn’t matter so much as your audience turn around is going to be much quicker.
JA
james-2001
JAS84 posted:
Grange Hill had the school destroyed in an explosion and rebuilt, explaining why it looked different when production moved to Liverpool, but it was still meant to be in London.


Just happened most of the students happened to be scousers from that point on.
London Lite and Brekkie gave kudos
BR
Brekkie
Saved by the Bell itself was relocated from Indianapolis to LA when it was retooled from Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
MS
Mr-Stabby
Did they ever try and get around that when they repackaged it as 'Saved by the Bell - The Junior High Years' ? It's one thing the kids moving to California, but for Belding to move too is quite a stretch!
SO
Soupnzi
Mr-Stabby posted:
Did they ever try and get around that when they repackaged it as 'Saved by the Bell - The Junior High Years' ? It's one thing the kids moving to California, but for Belding to move too is quite a stretch!

I think Zack sort of implies in some of the intros it was a different school or something, but yes it doesn’t flow at all. The retooled titles also add to the inconsistency as I think we see a Bayside sign reflected in there somewhere

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