♪ Zack Morris is trash ♪
(bell rings)
- [Narrator] Zack Morris is calling the chess game.
- Touchdown! - [Narrator] Poorly.
And missing no opportunity to disparage smarter students.
Screech, Bayside's champ prepares for battle
with his lucky beret from his girlfriend, Violet.
Screech wins, he's heading to the finals against Valley.
Zack sees a green light to leech.
- Well, with the right promotion, he could be famous.
And I could be rich.
- [Narrator] Zack manhandles Screech mid-date
to sell tacky, overpriced shirts
with his unlicensed image.
Two Valley students who must've been held back a few years
see if Zack wants to put some action on the chess game.
Zack, a degenerate gambler,
jumps at any opportunity to lose.
Then takes a direct shot at Screech's confidence.
- You're gonna win, right?
- [Narrator] But Valley has a secret weapon,
Peter Breschnev, a Russian exchange student,
related to some of the greatest chess masters in history.
Screech is scared, but Zack gives him
a substance-less pep talk, solely motivated
by not wanting to lose cash.
He says nothing of Screech's abilities
and tells him the only deciding factor
will be his lucky beret.
Screech is training.
Zack forcefully intrudes to sell a photo
then harasses an uninterested woman.
She's Allison Fox, writing an article
for Chess Boy magazine.
Zack can't believe she's not there for him.
Zack shadows them to mope.
He can't drop it and whines loudly,
throwing a horny tantrum.
Allison wants to continue her interview over lunch,
except Allison is from Valley.
She's here to break up Screech and Violet
so he'll be too sad to compete.
Her plan is working, as her attention
makes Violet uneasy and because Screech has learned
from watching Zack disrespect women for years.
He lets Allison wear his hat
in front of the woman who gave it to him.
Violet is pissed.
Allison's leaving, when Zack snatches the hat
to loudly declare Screech needs it to win
and he should go put it in his locker.
Unable to read the massive signs, he hits on her
AGAIN.
Shut down again.
Zack reveals Allison is from Valley
and she stole the lucky hat.
Because Zack tied Screech's entire sense of self-worth
to a piece of red fabric, he is lost.
While Screech's real friends think of ways to help,
Zack tries to dig his way out of this hole
with another beret.
He lies and says they found his hat at Valley
then turns around to sell them
for his third parasitic black market enterprise
in two days.
Screech tries to patch things up with Violet,
who only gets angrier when she sees that he lost her gift
and is wearing a cheap knockoff.
Screech is, once again, hopeless at rock bottom.
Instead of consoling him, Zack just shrugs.
But Zack still feels good about the bet,
despite the fact that Screech is ready
to jump off a goddamn bridge.
He stops Peter to say it's an American custom
to get a pre-match picture
then shoves him in a close to beat him up,
steal his clothes,
and shave his head.
Zack, having assumed the identity
of the foreigner he kidnapped,
attempts to throw the game.
But he can't even do that right and declares surrender
right at as a humiliated Peter emerges from the door
Zack did not properly lock.
Guess Zack had a Peter wig lying around?
That's somehow worse than the head shaving.
Zack explains.
He only kidnapped this Russian to cheat at gambling.
Belding is less than satisfied with this explanation
and wants to shut this whole mess down.
Zack offers to call off the bet
if he'll let them compete, shirking his wager,
as all avenues to cheat have been exhausted.
But Screech still needs his beret
until Violet takes two seconds to boost his self-esteem,
a page missing from Zack's morally bankrupt playbook.
Screech wins!
Zack sees a new opportunity to sell more garbage.
And we never see a disgraced Peter ever again.
He probably fucking killed himself.
Let's review.
Zack Morris exploited his friend to sell T-shirts.
Then, after gambling on high school chess,
made Screech believe he owed all his success to a beret.
And, when Screech was clearly being set up,
didn't notice because he was too busy being a creep.
After Zack's loud mouth got the beret stolen,
Zack tried to make it all better
with lies and bootleg head wear.
Then, in a last-ditch effort to fix the match,
committed international kidnapping,
escalating tensions with Russia
in the final days of the Cold War
and failed there, too.
When all he had to do was be a human being for two seconds.
But that's impossible for Zack Morris.
Zack Morris is trash.
♪ Zack Morris is trash ♪
(bell rings)