The reboot of Saved By The Bell has confirmed that Zack Morris, in his heart of hearts, is a total jerk. While the original Saved By The Bell series suggested that Zack had a heart of gold underneath all the sleazy scams, the new Peacock series has revealed his true colors.
A teenage Zack was the central character of the original Saved By The Bell, which focused on his efforts to make money and win the heart of his dream girl, cheerleader Kelly Kapowski. Wacky hijinks ensued, Zack made amends for his trickery, and usually learned an important lesson as a result of his scheming. However, this lesson would almost always be forgotten within the span of an episode. This amorality, coupled with Zack's forgetting about Kelly to romance a number of new girls (who promptly disappeared from Bayside High after a single appearance) have culminated in a number of jokes about Zack being a Patrick Bateman style serial killer. It also resulted in the publication of several books analyzing Zack's behavior, including So Excited, So Scared by Stuart Millard and Zack Morris Lied 329 Times by Matt Pais, as well as web series such as Zack Morris Is Trash.
Zack is a minor character in the new Saved By The Bell, but it is his actions that establish the world of the reboot and the fact that Zack Morris has not changed in the 27 years since he graduated from high school. As the series opens, Zack is now the Governor of California, but it is revealed that he got into politics purely as part of a scheme to avoid paying a traffic ticket. Ever the preppy, Zack is as snobby and selfish as an adult as he was as a teenager, and it is his slashing the state budget for education that leads to teens from poor neighborhoods whose schools were shut down being bussed into the more affluent Bayside High.
Unintended consequences and dirty double-dealings were par for the course for Zack Morris' scams. It's hard to single out one of Zack's many misdeeds from the original series as the worst thing he ever did, but his actions in the Season 2 episode "Model Students" probably contain the perfect storm of immorality and illegality that defined the typical Zack Morris scheme. The Saved By The Bell episode opened with Zack fast-talking his way into being appointed manager of the school store, at which point he decided to lure in new customers with a "Girls of Bayside" swimsuit calendar with candid pictures of the girl's swim team.
The team (which included Kelly and Zack's friends Jessie and Lisa) were not happy about Zack doing this without permission, until the calendar came to the attention of a professional photographer, who wanted them to model for him. When this resulted in Kelly being offered a chance to work as a model in Paris, Zack immediately began trying to guilt Kelly into turning down the opportunity, for fear that she'd forget about him if she became famous. While Zack would change his mind and support Kelly later, this didn't equate to any long-lasting character development, proven by the fact his adult self is just as capable of these problematic behaviors years down the line.
The new Saved By The Bell series can be said to have perfectly captured the spirit of Zack Morris in the original show. Like Loki in Norse mythology, Zack Morris is a trickster whose selfish actions often bring about unintended benefits. The fact that he may mean well and tries to make amends for his wrong-doing does not negate the fact that he a spiteful and greedy person, who looks out for himself above everyone else; even the people he professes to love.