Saved by the Bell Season 1, Episode 5 recap: Aisha tries to fix the football team

In Saved by the Bell Episode 5, Jessie takes Daisy under her wing.

The fifth episode of Peacock TV’s hilarious Saved by the Bell reboot, titled “Rent-A-Mom,” begins with a fun callback to the original sitcom’s infamous episode, “Jessie’s Song,” in which Jessie got addicted to caffeine pills. Mac tries to help Daisy out by offering her pills to balance her overachiever lifestyle between a mountain of schoolwork and assisting her mom regularly.

Jessie notices the pill bottle and immediately knocks them out of his hand. “At first, it’s exciting, then it gets even more exciting, but after that, it gets so scary. And in the end, you ruin your girl group shot at a recording contract.” She uses a fire extinguisher on the pile of pills strewn across the floor for good measure.

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It’s a good start to an episode that prominently features a budding relationship between Jessie and Daisy. The guidance counselor decides to take Daisy under her wing after the pill debacle, realizing how stressed Daisy is to help her narrow her focus. Jessie recommends Daisy apply for a prestigious all-expenses-paid leadership fellowship. The only problem is, the fellowship takes place during an entire summer in New York.

Daisy tells Jessie that she wouldn’t be able to do it because her mom counts on her to help out at home, mainly by babysitting her little brother Hector. Jessie encourages Daisy to try talking to her mom. She thinks her mother would want what’s best for her daughter. Daisy agrees to try, but when she gets home finds her mom, Ana (Selenis Leyva), cooking in the kitchen while working remotely. Ana comments that she’s so grateful to have Daisy around. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Daisy chickens out but then forges her mother’s signature on the permission slip.

Panicked because Jessie left a voicemail for her mom to discuss the fellowship, Daisy turns to Mac and Lexi for advice on how to trick Jessie into thinking she’s talking to Daisy’s mom, so she doesn’t find out about the fellowship yet. After vetoing several of their classic schemes like Three Finger Sally, they decide to go with the Giraffe Gambit, which includes hiring an actress to play Daisy’s mother.

It mostly works, allowing Daisy to sneak into Jessie’s office and calls her mother to discuss the voicemail. Before Daisy can escape, Jessie returns, and Daisy is forced to hide beneath her desk. There, she overhears Jessie talking to her husband Rene, who is away on an extensive writer’s retreat, and mentions that he plans to extend it by a few more months. Jessie is obviously disappointed but pretends she’s okay with it.

Jessie retreats to her couch after closing her office door, and Daisy mistakenly thinks she’s left the office and slips out from beneath the desk. Jessie spots her and realizes the entire thing was part of the Giraffe’s Gambit. “Wait, how do you  know about the Giraffe’s Gambit?” “I did my fair share of schemes back in the day. Who do you think was the original giraffe?”

They share a heart-to-heart as Jessie tells Daisy that it might be hard, but she should talk to her mom. She also admits she’s been hypocritical and decides she should tell Rene the truth about how she feels regarding his retreat, too. Daisy does confront her mother, and Ana tells her that she’ll have to figure things out, but is ultimately supportive of her daughter.

She tells Daisy that she works so hard so that Daisy can have all the opportunities she didn’t while growing up. As for Jessie, she also tells Rene the truth about her feelings via voicemail.

Saved by the Bell Episode 5 recap: Aisha & Slater try to toughen up the football team.

All is not well on the Bayside football team, where team captain Jamie puts feelings and being nice over actively trying to win the games. Aisha has grown increasingly frustrated with his pep talks, which are all about trying to befriend the teammates rather than actually attempting to pull off a victory. She confronts Slater about her feelings, and he agrees with her, but he already feels bad enough about making Jamie back-up QB. He doesn’t want to take away his pep talks too.

Aisha’s plan to fix things includes confronting Jamie about his pep talks and basically telling them they suck. For the first time, he actually gets upset and throws his slurpee across the hallway in a perfect toss — it hits Toddman and drenches his shirt. Aisha is impressed and realizes this could work to their advantage. She tells Slater her new plan: They need to make the team angry before the next game.

Slater and Aisha sabotage the locker rooms with graffiti and blame it on the opposing team. “I overheard their offensive line talking about how you guys don’t even know the freeway dance from La La Land.” “But we do! We’ve been practicing it all year instead of football!”

Their plan works and results in Jamie giving the team a decent pep talk for once. The team actually tries to win, and even though they still lose, it’s only by seven points instead of their usual crazy 0-100+ losses. Jamie even admits to Aisha that she was right, and he genuinely likes getting all revved up and trying to win. But Aisha still isn’t happy. Even when Jamie tries to ask her out to pizza with the team to celebrate, she turns him down and slips out of the locker room.

Slater finds her tossing footballs on the field alone later. She says that she was always told “pizza is for winners,” and they’re still not winners. But Slater points out that she’s being too hard on herself, and the team could be getting pizza to celebrate their improvement. He thinks she should cut herself some slack and have some pizza. He even brought an entire pie to the field for her! “Oh, I thought you meant that I should go get pizza with like, Jamie and the guys, but I can –,” No, no, no, no, that’s totally what I meant. Be with the team. This was just a visual aid for reference.”

It works out, though, since Jessie isn’t doing great in the aftermath of her voicemail to Rene, and sitting in her office eating pizza with Slater is exactly what she needs.

The C-plot of this episode focuses on Principal Toddman’s adoration of Devante’s stylish shirt. He likes it so much he purchases it for $1,200 online, only to learn Devante bought it for $40 on Amazon. It doesn’t matter much anyway since it gets ruined by Jamie’s slurpee. But Devante kindly offers him his shirt, mainly because since Toddman started wearing it, it’s no longer cool.

Unfortunately, even that shirt gets ruined. Toddman tries to get Jessie and Slater to go clubbing when he notices them eating pizza in Jessie’s office. But he gets too close to a lit candle on Jessie’s desk and lights his new shirt on fire. Not that it can stop him from trying to retain his cool factor. “So, you guys wanna call the Lyft, or should I?”

What did you think about the rebooted Saved by the Bell Episode 5? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

All ten episodes of the rebooted Saved by the Bell Season 1 are now streaming on Peacock TV.