when she tried to "fake seduce"/scare straight Zack in the "From Nurse to Worse" episode? I mean if you think about it too much, it just opens up too many unfortunate implications (an attractive young school employee coming on to a student even if the intent/ulterior motive was to pay him back) if this occurred in real life or something closer to our present (as opposed to 1990 era television).
shareIt was a thin line. Being that everyone now is so sue happy if the situation were reversed and the nurse was a man who "came on to" a female student you can almost guarantee he would be drawn up and quartered in the town square. Fortunately Zack probably didn't think she did anything wrong enough to "tell on her" and get her in trouble.
shareand the nurse was a man
I understand and agree with what you said. I was just thinking of these situations when they are reversed and what happens. I had a female biology teacher in 10th grade that was a pretty young teacher, and she visibly favored all the guys in the class. "Oh look, Chad got an A on the test!" The girls would be like "Uh, we did too!" I never heard of her doing anything inappropriate with the guys but she definitely enjoyed the attention. So I know it goes both ways. My daughter has a career goal to be a history professor, and the first thing my father in law's wife said is "Oh my, she could be accused of sexual misconduct!" Okay! It happens, I know. And it's sad, because some people are just being nice and not going overboard to try and make something happen. But this Jennifer nurse, she really went for it to try to teach Zack a lesson and I think in today's world she would probably get in trouble for it.
shareThe funny thing is that Saved by the Bell kind of did a gender reversal (i.e. the girls falling for an attractive young, new teacher) in the episode "The Substitute" from the first season. They even had a whole "lets use the seduction technique to teach somebody a lesson/scare them" trick w/ the boys hiring Vicki the Actress to inadvertently seduce Mr. Belding.
shareI think because of the world that Saved by the Bell set up for itself (kind of a colorful, kitschy, late '80s-early '90s, possibly less politically correct representation of high-school), you can give something like that a little bit of leeway. I guess, my point is that SBTB hardly ever presented itself as a down-to-earth, "realistic" high school show like say, Degrassi.
Granted, if something like this was done today (at least within the context of a sitcom for kids/tweens/teens like SBTB), then it would have to be done in a completely ironic sense (or, there has to be some sort of sly social commentary). You simply can't be so innocent (simply because of the darker implications in light of stuff like Mary Kay Letoureau or the harsh double standard of a man being in Nurse Jennifer's position) w/ the notion of a hot school nurse acting like she's strongly attracted to a student who was previously infatuated with her.
The funny thing is that growing up, I thought that the scene in which Nurse Jennifer "came on to" Zack was quite possibly, the sexiest thing that I had ever come across on TV or on film. The image of Jennifer letting down her hair and flipping it (while letting out a large sigh) kills me ever time.
It's too bad that Nancy Valen, who played Nurse Jennifer, didn't really have a better acting career (Baywatch several years later, was more or less her "peak"). She was kind of pigeonholed as being the "hot instructor/teacher" on late '80s-early '90s TV shows (Charles in Charge, Hull High and later Full House and Boy Meets World). She kind of reminds me of a slightly more exotic variant of Kristin Davis.