SBTB 01.02 - The Lisa Card

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I didn't get the name of this episode until the very end. It's a play on the Visa card. The joke is delivered by Zack in an incredibly campy way. In fact, his character has ended up extremely lame in these first two episodes. He isn't the super-suave kid we saw back in "Good Morning, Miss Bliss," he's kind of a doof. Case in point:

What!?! Are you telling me that Zack walks around with a black shirt with a yellow Z on it under his button up shirts all day just in case someone needs a hero-like act? And he has the name Zackman picked out for the moment that he rips open his shirt? And people haven't beat him up for this yet?

When Zack isn't being a doof he's being a pimp. That's right, Zackman's master plan for "saving" Lisa is pimping out her cheeks to nerds for dollars. She feels cheapened. He assures her that it's okay. It's not.

Let's move on to our guest stars. The first is Henry Brown, who played Lisa's father.

His resume is standard bit character stuff. The one that sticks out, though, is the movie Excessive Force II: Force on Force. I love the irony in this title. First, "Excessive Force II." So, there was already an "Excessive Force," but there needed to be more force because the first round of excessive force ("Excessive": More than is necessary) wasn't excessive enough. Okay, the title is redundantly mysterious. But then you add "Force on Force." What? So the second "Excessive Force" isn't already enough to convey that more force is involved, but now we have it literally being excessive. It's excessive force, but the second time around. And it's FORCE ON FORCE!!!!!!!!!! I need to check that movie out.

The other guest star actually has a few appearances in the series.

Carol Lawrence plays Miss Wentworth and she is absolutely hilarious as a teacher tackling the subject of animal reproduction. Despite how raunchy this segment could have been, the jokes are actually fairly non-offensive. Ms. Lawrence has done her fair share of Hollywooding, but her true claim to fame is her portrayal of Maria in the Broadway musical "West Side Story." She is an accomplished stage performer. Here, she brings a bit of class to the subject of, as she calls it, "monkey business in the jungle." As campy as it could have been, she plays it off as her character, it never once feeling like a bit. That's difficult to do when this is one of your jobs onscreen:

Just a few things to wrap up this pretty entertaining episode:

1. Slater's military bratness has not only moved him around quite a bit domestically, but also to many exotic countries. This episode's: Bolivia.
2. Mr. Belding went to prom with his sister, had his first girlfriend in Vietnam as a soldier with a Viet Cong girl, and only met his wife because he almost drowned in college.
3. Geico totally ripped off Slater for one of their commercials. He is the one who came up with vampires in blood banks, not the gecko company who has a Dracula in love with a man who just ate Lebanese food.
4. Max helps Zack and the gang sabotage his own customers so that Lisa can get some unearned tips. (This scene was just stupid.)

Feel free to share what stood out to you in the comments below.