I’m so excited. I’m so scared.

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I follow Lifetime (the women’s channel with the cheesy movies) on Facebook. I would normally make such an admission with a modicum of shame, but I follow it so that I can lightweight harass them to start filming new episodes of Hoarders. It’s a thing I do.

Anyway…

About a month ago, I was simultaneously shocked, elated, and horrified when Lifetime made the announcement that they were shooting “The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story.”

I’m a child of the late 80s/90s, so I immediately started peeing my pants. An unauthorized movie about Saved by the Bell? How scandalous. What kind of juicy tidbits are they going to tell? Sex? Drugs? Eating disorders? Theft?

SBTB was the epitome of squeaky clean teen entertainment. Even when they were doing bad stuff, like going to a toga party where there was beer, there was an important lesson to be learned.

I idolized these characters when I was a kid. My friends and I thought that high school was totally going to be like Saved By The Bell. The idea that the cast could have possibly been ‘bad’ in real life is tantalizing.

I think that Lifetime is banking on long-held perceptions of the show/characters and the Millennial Generation’s penchant for nostalgia to make this movie a success.

I plan on watching it. I’m so excited….

…but I’m also pretty scared.

This is an ‘unauthorized story’ that’s been produced by Lifetime. It’s based on Dustin Diamond’s (Screech) tell-all book about the show, which was panned by Mark-Paul Gosselar (Zach) as falsehood.

This much is enough to give me pause. Screech has been butthurt about his career (or lack thereof) for a minute. He’s been a bit opportunistic in the past, though he has expressed regrets for his actions. There may be a grain of truth to some of his claims, but it’s hard to put much stock in them since he seems to reside in The Land of Butthurt (or he at least owns a summer home there). He didn’t even take part in the cast’s People Magazine reunion.

Besides having its roots in sketchy source material, the fact that it is a Lifetime Movie doesn’t make the movie’s prospects seem too promising.

Lifetime Movies are a coin toss. They’re either well put together or an overly dramatic train wreck. They suck you in. SUCK. YOU. ALL THE WAY. IN. It doesn’t matter how good or bad a movie actually is, you have to watch it to the end, and then they seamlessly suck you in to the next movie.

I have very low expectations so I figure that watching it will be a win/win situation. It will probably be really bad, and I’ll spend the entire time dragging it on Twitter with everyone else who’s watching. It could possibly be really good, and I’ll be shocked and awed. I am here for this movie either way. HERE. FOR. THIS.

The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story premieres Labor Day (September 1) at 9/8c on Lifetime.