The Tragic Genius of Dustin “Screech” Diamond
The most intense and realistically human scene in Saved by the Bell came in season 4, episode 20, “Snow White and the Seven Dorks.” It’s where Zack and Lisa discover feelings or raw horniness for each other and kiss. Screech, who has loved Lisa since the days of Good Morning, Miss Bliss, finds out about it and with understandable anger, calls Zack out for it, rips his preppy clothes, and challenges him to fisticuffs. Here, the most put-upon best friend in television history is finally taking a stand putting his megalomanic of a best pal on blast for his egregious betrayal. Zack was never to be trusted. But Screech did trust Zack. He was loyal to a to his own detriment. But not this time.
It’s heavy television. It’s a heavier moment than when the gang confronts drug use at the party in season 3, episode 21, “No Hope with Dope” and initially in season 2, episode 9, “Jessie’s Song”—the one where Jessie gets so excited. Heavier than when the duck dies following the oil spil when crude is found under the Bayside football field in season 3, episode 11, “Pipe Dreams.” And it’s more emotional than Zack and Kelly’s wedding in the 1994 TV movie, Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas.
That was the power of Samuel “Screech” Powers, played lovingly and long by Dustin Diamond who died on Monday following a short battle with cancer. He was forty-four.
✶
I always wanted to be Zack Morris. I envisioned myself as Zack Morris—confident, handsome, clever. My friends even called me Preppy for a time. But let’s be honest; I was always Screech. Skinny, a little odd looking, goofy, and full of love that was often unrequited. More than that, Screech was not just a gag character or a McGuffin for Zack’s shenanigans. Screech was a progressive television character before we knew what that was supposed to be.
Screech and Lisa’s relationship, though never consummated romantically, was an interracial one. And not once did any of us think it was weird for a white guy to pine for a Black girl. The show never really acknowledged Lisa’s race, though, maybe it should have considering she was one of like, two Black characters on the show: Lisa and Ollie the Nerd. Still, we were all rooting for Screech and Lisa to finally get together and win Prom King and Queen, proving that love is not bound by racial divisiveness. A bigger television couples’ win than even Ross and Rachel. Lisa and Screech never happened, of course, which is part of what made Zack’s betrayal so intense. Bros before Lisas, Morris.
And then there was that Lisa Frank folder Screech carried around. The one with the illustration of a woman tilting her sun glasses down to get a better view at the hunk we see in her glasses’ reflection. A conversation bubble says, “Check him out!” I knew that folder in real life. A handful of girls in my junior high school had it. It was a girls’ folder. Or, it was a folder for those who thought that guy was hot. So, did Screech like guys? Was Screech gay? Bisexual, perhaps. Bi-curious at the least?
We knew he loved Lisa. Then he had a healthy relationship with Violet Anne Bickerstaff. But that folder. It was an odd choice. But Screech was odd. So perhaps that’s why props and wardrobe gave it to him. Maybe it was some meta attempt to show Screech’s level of obsession with all things Lisa.
Or, perhaps, they were telling us more about this intelligent, complicated, and interesting character.
Either way, I dug it. Screech always had me thinking… That wasn’t the character’s intended purpose—Screech was no Jessie Pinkman or Skylar White—but that’s what he did for me. And that onus was all on Dustin Diamond.
His post Saved by the Bell years aside—the sex tape, rumors of him being an insufferable prick, stabbing that guy, etc.—Diamond spent thirteen years as Screech Powers. Screech was the clown, but Diamond gave the clown heart, humanity. We never laughed at Screech, we laughed with him. We rooted for him. And when he was shoved in a locker or was attacked by ants while wearing a mascot costume or when he had his heart broken by his best friend, we ached with him.
Screech was always the good guy. His exploits at the behest of his buddy Zack were not of malice or selfishness or greed. He fell in line as a way to bring joy to his friends. Loyalty, laughter, and love. That was Screech. Heh… Screech’s character description belongs written in a script font on faux distressed wood and sold at Target.
We all wanted to be Zack and Kelly. Maybe some of us wanted to be Slater or even Jessie. But we should have wanted to be Screech. Screech was the best of them all. They best of all of us. And that is solely because of Dustin Diamond.
He died too young. Too soon. A comeback may have been in the future. An opportunity for him to do more of what he loved doing—acting. And maybe not as Screech, but as another character that would no doubt be bursting at the seams with compassion, hilarity, and a humanity. Dustin Diamond was due a third act. Or, at the very least, an encore.
