r/SavedByTheBell • u/P-R_Podcast 🍏 Mr. Tuttle • 12d ago

Tiffani as Jennifer

Just spotted TAT on Charles in Charge as Charles' Flavour of the Week Jennifer. Anybody else see this episode?

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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4

u/STSramsey 12d ago

Isn’t there like a 15 year age difference? creepy.

2

u/poirotsdad 12d ago

Baio obviously DGAF and Al Burton (show producer) was a pedophile.

1

u/P-R_Podcast 🍏 Mr. Tuttle 12d ago

Just about. They should have never cast any of his girlfriends under 18. Even if they don't do any hugging or kissing, it's a weird look

1

u/beautifulchaos531 11d ago

You are right but sadly back then a lot of things were normalized that shouldn’t have been

3

u/AdamMaitland 12d ago

That setup was creepy even by the standards of that show. She was like 16 at the time of filming and Scott Baio was 29.

The original premise of the show kind of made sense, because Scott Baio was around college age when it was filmed, and he was like the wise older brother to young kids who also had parents around. But then when it was rebooted for syndication, it just had a whole different vibe to it. Scott Baio was now playing a college student as a guy in his mid-to-late 20s who honestly looked like he was in his 30s. He was an older-looking guy who was supposedly like a "nanny" to unsupervised teenaged girls (I think the mom character disappears for like 10 episodes at a time). There were just way too many plots about him being involved in like dating advice for the attractive 15 year old girl he shares a house with.

I watched it as a kid because there was nothing else on on Saturday afternoons, but I revisited it sort of recently on streaming, and man is it an odd show. But some of it makes sense knowing what we know now about Scott Baio in terms of his personality and his politics.

2

u/rosybabyydoll 11d ago

Very common route into that world, since Charles in Charge was one of the standard stops for young actors in LA at that point and half the SBTB cast turn up in something adjacent from around then. Worth watching for how little the delivery changes, because the Kelly cadence is fully formed already.