Saved By The Bell "I'm So Excited" Scene

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About

Saved By The Bell "I'm So Excited" Scene refers to a famous clip from the 1990s sitcom Saved by the Bell in which the character Jessie Spano, played by Elizabeth Berkley, has a breakdown caused by her addiction to caffeine pills. She breaks into a rendition of The Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited," singing "I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so … scared!" as she bursts into tears. The scene has been widely talked about and parodied in the 30 years since it first aired and has become a source of '90s nostalgia.

Origin

In the Saved by the Bell episode "Jessie's Song," which aired on November 3rd, 1990,^[1] overachiever Jessie Spano is stressed by studying for tests to get into Stanford University and her friend's potential career as a singing group. To keep up with her busy schedule, she takes caffeine pills. On the night when she is due to perform with her friends for a record producer who could potentially give them a big break, Jessie is asleep, exhausted and confused from the pills. After her friend Zack Morris discovers that Jessie has been taking pills, he attempts to restrain her, causing her to exclaim "I have to sing!" and sing "I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so… scared!"

The earliest extant post of the clip on YouTube was posted on April 20th, 2006, by user Dan Komarinetz, gaining over 3.7 million views in nearly 18 years (shown below).

Spread

In the years since the clip aired, it became widely parodied and discussed. On August 4th, 2011, The Fine Brothers uploaded a clip of a parody Saved By The Bell video game featuring the scene. The clip gained over 170,000 views in 12 and a half years (shown below, left). In a November 6th, 2016 episode, Family Guy recreated the scene with Stewie as Jessie (shown below, right).

Berkely has parodied the scene multiple times on television. She recreated the scene as part of a dance number in her 2013 appearance on Dancing with the Stars (shown below, left). In a February 4th, 2015, episode of The Tonight Show, Berkely reprised the moment in a skit (shown below, right).

The scene has been the subject of several retrospective articles published online. In 2016, Vulture^[2] posted a history of the episode that revealed Jessie was supposed to be addicted to amphetamines in the original script, but NBC would not let production air the reference to hard drugs. They changed amphetamines to caffeine pills and didn't alter anything else about the script. The Ringer^[3] posted an oral history of the scene in 2020.