The Mac Tapes

The Mac Tapes is the second episode of Season 2 of Saved by the Bell (2020) and the twelfth episode of the series overall.

Synopsis
When Football is canceled, Aisha tries out for the wrestling team; Daisy has a crush on Gil, the new student council VP; Jessie struggles to tell Jamie she's getting a divorce.

Full Summary
Slater calls the team to him. He says if they work hard, they can definitely beat Valley. The team is silent for a moment before Aisha tells him Valley doesn't have a team anymore. Some kid got hurt, so they cancelled the season. They discuss the dangers of playing football, with Slater thinking the rules are too soft and the players thinking the sport is more dangerous. To prove his point, Slater asks Aisha to tackle him helmet-first. The play starts and Aisha's tackle flips Slater over and onto his back. From the ground, he weakly lifts up a cleat and says he's still got it.

Daisy nervously taps her pen on her desk until Aisha tells her to stop. Mason is freestyle rapping to her beat. Aisha assures Daisy that she's going to win. Daisy worries about what happens if she doesn't. Class president was more than what she did; it was who she was. She can't think of another defining personality trait. Aisha says it's great if she wins, but okay if she doesn't. There's more to her than one big thing she did last year. Toddman starts the announcements. Daisy has won the election. Vice president is Gil Vatooley, Treasurer is Nadia Coleman. Secretary is School Sucks. Toddman thinks that's a joke, but School said it's not a joke. School Sucks is a common name in Belarus. Then Toddman announces that due to Slater's accident, football is cancelled. As Aisha reacts, Daisy tells her there's a lot more to her than playing football, mirroring Aisha's words to her. Aisha says it was a lie to make her feel better.

Jessie goes into Toddman's office and tells him he can't cancel football. He reminds her that she hates football but she says she loves how it glorifies violence and objectifies women. She finally admits that she was planning to tell Jamie about the divorce, so nothing else bad can happen for the week. She's even been pretending his hermit crab is still alive. Toddman knows that must be tough. Jessie says that she and Rene talked about it and decided it would be best if she told Jamie. Toddman says he and Judy didn't have kids, so he never had to have that conversation. It was hard enough to tell their dog, who ended up testifying against him in court. Divorce is the worst. Jessie says it isn't if you have a plan. She's been working with her therapist to come up with the script for a perfect divorce conversation. She know what Jamie's going to say because he's her son. She knows exactly how to do it. Toddman is dubious. When Judy said she was leaving him, he threw his own clothes out the window. Jessie say she's a professional and she's pretty good at figuring out what people will say. She demonstrates this by predicting what he'll say.

Slater tells the team he's angry about the season being cancelled. Aisha is also upset. Lots of parents called Toddman. Aisha says if their parents caused it, they can fix it. They just need to stand up to their parents and demand to get to play. The other players are silent. Aisha's upset that they're afraid of their parents. Slater says to take the opportunity to try something new. There are other activities available, including wrestling. He thinks Aisha should try it. It's the closest she'll get to football. She asks if she can still crush her opponents' spirits. She agrees to try it.

Jamie asks Jessie if she heard about football. She did and tells him she found another team he could join. Jamie appreciates the effort, but he's kind of glad it's cancelled. He's realized he's not very good at football. Jessie had no idea he wanted to quit, which terrifies her. He's felt this way for ten months. That's when he first mentioned it to Craig. Jamie leaves to go to class. Jessie frantically calls 911 and asks who Craig is.

Daisy welcomes everyone to the first student council meeting of the year. Bayside is hosting the Southern California School Spirit competition. Everyone cheers, excited for the opportunity to beat Valley. Nate pledges his life to beating Valley, which Daisy says isn't necessary. They need 15,000 hours of community service in order to qualify for the competition. No one is excited about that. Daisy asks for ideas to fill it up. Spencer suggests something that Daisy says is a Ponzi scheme. Nadia suggests that she and DeVante can pick up litter near a waterfall. Daisy asks for serious suggestions and DeVante says he and Nadia can pick up litter with no plans of making out, but whatever happens happens. Daisy wants everyone to focus because she has a big agenda. Just then Gil Vatooley walks in, distracting Daisy. Daisy calls for a time out to ask the audience if she's the only one who finds him attractive. Gil introduces himself and proposes an idea, complete with an extensive plan to execute it. Daisy welcomes him and dives into the year's agenda. Instead of writing agenda on the board, she writes awooga. She erases it and blames autocorrect.

Lexi sits down at The Max with Lexi, Aisha, DeVante, Jamie, and Mac and tells them she has a crush on Gil. Mac asks who Gil is and Daisy says he's the new Student Council Vice President. Lexi says he did a speech about her Twitter mentions, but that's just what she was reading while he was talking. Daisy asks what she should do and Lexi says to flirt with him on social media. Aisha says Daisy doesn't have social media. The only thing her phone has is a 1-800 number that describes Instagram to the elderly. Daisy pulls out her brick phone to demonstrate. Just as she says she doesn't even know if he likes her back, Gil walks in. When she panics, Jamie tells her to calm down. He encourages her to invite Gil over. Daisy awkwardly waves at him and Gil walks out. Mac suggests making a mixed tape with subliminal messages. He plays one of his own. Daisy says that raises major consent issues and he's lucky she doesn't feel like lecturing him about it. On the tape, they hear Mac's voice telling Daisy not to lecture him. Aisha has to leave for wrestling try-outs, but tells Daisy to do the opposite of whatever Mac says. Daisy doesn't want to waste the whole year crushing on a boy who doesn't like her. Lexi understands. She was like that before Jamie liked her. She offers to help Daisy stop having a crush on Gil.

Aisha walks into wrestling try-outs full of confidence. Slater likes her entrance and lets her skip the line. She get to the mat to find out she's wrestling "The Fish." The coach explains the rules and they start. The Fish, despite being smaller than Aisha, immediately pins her. He then does it again right away. After a third one, Aisha confronts Slater, who says The Fish is the only person in her weight class. He says she'll get there. She says she won't because she quits.

Aisha goes to Mac and asks for one of his brainwashing tapes. She needs one to make the football players brave enough to stand up to their parents. He shows her his tape selection and pulls out one called bravery, which he plays for her.

Lexi welcomes Daisy into her office. Lexi talked to some people and found out some things about Gil that will make her stop liking him immediately. She tells Daisy that Gil has a rescue dog. Daisy likes that. Gil's also a huge dork. He likes a nerdy book series, which Daisy also reads. Daisy grabs the list of items from Lexi and they're all things that apply to Daisy as well. She loves him even more now. Lexi promises to find something about him that sucks.

Jessie comes to Toddman. She feels foolish because she doesn't know everything about Jamie after all. She can't predict everything he's going to do. Toddman thought that, but he hates conflicts. Jessie says there's no way for one script to cover every possible scenario. So she stayed up all night writing 1000 scripts, for each contingency. Toddman says there are some things she just can't control, things she just has to go through. In the moment, she'll know the right things to say. She wonders what happens if she doesn't. Her parents telling her they were getting divorced went about as badly as it could have. Her mom was a wreck. Toddman thinks maybe her mom was doing her best. That's all anyone can do. Jessie thanks him and says he's a great listener.

Aisha tries to encourage the other football players to stand up to their parents. Aisha plays the song for them. Suddenly, they all feel brave enough to stand up to what scares them. It's Aisha. They asked their parents to cancel football because it's dangerous. They were just scared to tell Aisha. They've all moved on. Aisha tries to get Slater on her side, but he's also scared. He doesn't want any of them to get hurt like he did. He asks Aisha if she really hated wrestling that much. She walks out without saying anything. While they're brave, two players admit to having sex with each other's girlfriends and hug it out.

Toddman pages Daisy to Lexi's office then wonders why Lexi has an office.

Daisy goes to Lexi and finds Lexi dressed as a dork named Emily, which she used to steal Gil's phone to get dirt on him. He texted Daisy, but she never got it because of her ancient phone. Daisy reads the text, in which he invites her to get a burger at The Max. Two days later, he sent a followup apologizing for being weird and promising not to bother her again. Daisy realizes he liked her and was acting weird because he thought she didn't like him. It's what Daisy herself was doing.

Jessie and Jamie walk in a park where he played as a child, where he broke multiple bones. They sit down on a bench. Jessie starts to tell Jamie about the divorce, but he already knows. He figured it out. She knows it's hard for him and never wanted him to go through this like she did. He asks what happens now. Jessie admits that she doesn't have a plan. She starts crying, which she didn't plan to do. She offers him some pudding, but it's long expired. It's okay because he knows she's doing her best. She says he's much kinder than she was at his age. She offers to get him popcorn chicken at the gas station. She also wants to call Nana on the way because she owes her an apology.

Daisy tells Aisha that Gil is perfect and likes him back. Daisy realizes she's been using her phone as an excuse not to flirt with boys. Aisha says she's flirted with boys before. She had a sexy vibe with Ryan in middle school. Daisy says Ryan is her cousin. Daisy says it doesn't matter if Gil likes her or not because she knows she'll be bad at it. She wishes she were more like Aisha. Aisha's never scared of anything. Aisha admits that she's terrified of The Fish and she quit wrestling before she gave it a chance because she hated being bad at it. She's scared of feeling like a loser. Daisy wonders if they should just give up for once. It's always an option and they never do it. Or they can each do their scary things. She thinks being next to her best friend is making her brave. After the walk out, Mac stops the tape he was playing, the "Do the Thing That Scares you" tape. He replaces it with the "Mac Isn't Watching You, Keep Doing Streches" tape.

Aisha wrestles The Fish again.

Slater takes off his neck brace and starts doing a split.

Jessie and Jamie share popcorn chicken in the car.

A group of girls corners Mac as he cowers.

Daisy goes to Gil and tapes him on the shoulder.

Main Cast

 * Haskiri Velazquez as Daisy Jiménez
 * Mitchell Hoog as Mac Morris
 * Josie Totah as Lexi Haddad-DeFabrizio
 * Alycia Pascual-Peña as Aisha Garcia
 * Belmont Cameli as Jamie Spano
 * Dexter Darden as DeVante Young
 * John Michael Higgins as Ronald Toddman
 * Elizabeth Berkley Lauren as Jessie Spano
 * Mario Lopez as A.C. Slater

Guest Starring

 * Matthew Sato as Gil Vatooley
 * Mariah Iman Wilson as Nadia Coleman
 * Abraham Rodriguez as Spencer Buckley
 * DeShawn Cavanaugh as Colt Cassidy

Co-Starring

 * Christian Weissmann as Nate
 * Corey Bangi as Mason
 * Kellen Joseph as The Fish
 * Dino Petrera as School Sucks
 * Marcus Cheyney as Football Player #1
 * Marcus Bradley as Football Player #2
 * Mark Clayman as Assistant Wrestling Coach

Notes and Trivia

 * This episode title is a parody to The Zack Tapes from the original series.