In our
late January news showing off the cover art for
Saved By The Bell - Seasons 3 & 4 (due on 4/27 from Lions Gate), we brought up this issue that fans were asking about:
Several of you have written in, questioning the information that the online retailers are giving about this release. In particular, many of you are concerned that the new set is supposed to have more episodes than the previous release, but on fewer DVDs. We have our own inquiry in with Lions Gate about this, and about the details and specs in general.
Stay tuned, and we'll let you know what we find out.
To be very specific, the first
Saved By The Bell release had 33 episodes from the first two seasons on 5 DVDs, and the second release is announced to have only 4 DVDs. But with "Season 3 and 4" being including, sites like
TVTome.com, among others, show that 52 episodes would have to be squeezed onto those 4 discs! What's the deal?
Well, we asked Lions Gate about this, but our contacts there asked us to please wait until the press release was issued, and hopefully it would cover this topic. We're impatient fellows here, though, and while we've tried really hard to wait, we think we may have the answer already sitting in front of us.
We get a lot of help with our news from readers, insiders, and reporters/webmasters from other sites. We try to credit them all along the way. I'm not sure, though, that we've possibly given enough credit to Pavan Badal. Pavan is a contributer for ToonZone.net, ClassicTVHits.com, MortysTV.com, SitcomsOnline.com, and runs the Three's Company fansite called Jack's Bistro (http://jacksbistro.freeservers.com); wow, what a busy fellow! Pavan sends us a lot of info along the way, and we try to share back with him, too.
One of the things that Pavan shared with us earlier this week is this note, which seems to be the key to figuring out the difference:
Lions Gate sent me the episode list for Saved by the Bell Seasons 3 and 4. If you notice, they have season five on this release as well.
Season 3 --
The Famous Belding Boys
Breaking Up is Hard to Undo
The Glee Club
The Last Dance
Zack's Birthday Party
The Aftermath
The Game
Operation Zack
Fourth of July
Wicked Stepbrother Part 1
Wicked Stepbrother Part 2
Check Your Mate
My Boyfriend's Back
Fake IDs
Boss Lady
Pipe Dreams
The Last Weekend
Date Auction
All in the Mall
Season 4 --
S.A.T.'s
Palm Springs Weekend Part 1
Hold Me Tight
Palm Springs Weekend Part 2
No Hope With Dope
Rockumentary
Cut Day
Home For Christmas Part 1
Home For Christmas Part 2
Mystery Weekend
Season 5 --
Student Teacher Week
The Fight
Screech's Spaghetti Sauce
The New Girl
The Bayside Triangle
Teen Line
Day of Detention
Masquerade Ball
Wrestling With the Future
Drinking and Driving
Class Ring
Love Machine
Isn't It Romantic
The Will
The Teacher's Strike
Slater's Sister
The Video Yearbook
The Senior Prom
SnowWhite and the Dorks
The Best Summer of My Life
Earthquake
School Song
Graduation
Time Capsule
A quick scan of that shows that what other episode lists refer to as "Season 4" gets bumped to "Season 5" on the official Lions Gate list. And so what everyone else refers to as "Season 3", Lions Gate is splitting into "Seasons 3 and 4".
Which means that, per the Lions Gate list, the 4-DVD release for
Saved By The Bell - Seasons 3 & 4 will only have 29 episodes on it, not 52. The remaining episodes will surely be saved for a third DVD release on down the road. Hopefully to include the "Hawaiian Style" special on it, which aired between what Lions Gate refers to as Season 4 and Season 5.
Saved By The Bell is an odd duck, season-wise, and there are multitudes of episodes lists out there, most of them disagreeing with each other in small or large ways, because the official episode list by season doesn't seem to have ever been provided by the producers. Moreover, since the episodes were produced and aired in different orders, there's no clean-cut way to break them down. The list from Lions Gate can be considered the most "official" list ever seen, so we'll just have to trust them on this. It still raises the question of how the season break between 3 and 4 is made, considering that those episodes aired on consecutive weeks. But it at least explains about what we'll get on the second DVD release.
EXTRAS
Ah, yes...episodes won't be the ONLY thing we get on the next DVD release. According to the
ShopNBC website, which has this release listed for preorder, the "DVD features include special Commentaries by Executive Producer Peter Engel and original cast members". How nifty is that? And yes, we have Pavan to thank for tipping us off about that as well!
Our sincere thanks to Pavan for helping us so much on this release, and on others as well. Please keep in mind that all of this about the episode count is only a theory (but a pretty good one, we think). Stay tuned, and we'll let you know more when Lions Gate passes along official info that either confirms it, or else makes us look pretty stupid.
