Hang Time

In the lines of the old-fashioned Saved By The Bell, Saved By The Bell; The Next Generation, Malibu CA, and more. The type of show you expect where there are new cast member changes every other season, and everything is alright at the end, this excels most of the average drivel with the humour it displays, the girls, in all honesty, who are all appealing, and the pure addictiveness of the bloody soundtrack. Every season is per Basketball Tournement and League, and every couple of episodes has a cameo by some famous Basketball player. Some classic Teenager characters, including Anthony Abraham (?) as Teddy, the son of a famous basketball player.

An easily enjoyable show on an early Saturday morning, easy to zone in and out of it, it's honestly unfairly picked on, and is worth a watch now and again.

A friend commented to me once that they were sad that there aren't any more cartoons on Saturday morning. This came as news to me since I don't usually crawl out of bed until at least noon on Saturdays. But after a Friday night term-paper session stretched out longer and longer until I noticed (as the paper was screeching it's way out of my old-fashioned printer) that it was Saturday morning, I decided to test the TV waters.

What I found was "Hang Time", which I pegged instantly as a clone of "Saved by the Bell". In this teen-oriented sit-com, we follow the daily hi-jinks of students at Deering High School involved in the basketball program. While it was good for a chuckle, I was initially unimpressed enough to change the channel when I noticed something...or someone to be exact.

Amber Barretto plays the cheerleader of the group, a stunning young lady with a mane of red curly hair the likes of which I've never seen before. Thankfully the writers of the show resisted the temptation to make her character a ditz just because of her cheerleader status. In fact, Miss Baretto (along with Megan Parlen) would make good candidates for a spin-off since they usually get the goofy subplots. They make a pretty good team.

And Daniella Deutscher (that's a hard name to spell) as Julie, the lone girl on the basketball team, is a nordic beauty who practically puts Natasha Hendstridge to shame with her lovely eyes.

No more sleeping in for me. This sure beats Ag Day.

Of all the american-high-school-coming-of-age-in-a-funny-way this is probably the best, or more correctly the least bad of them. The cast isn't picked by pure looks alone, but their talents (more basketball than acting though). Of course many of the jokes are identical to those of other Peter Angel productions, but still an enjoyable show.

During the first season of "Hang Time," it was a terrific show. Honest, well acted, and it didn't descend into a predictable formula like "Saved by the Bell: The New Class." Now, it's exactly like "Saved by the Bell: The New Class," only not as annoying.

I find it strange that Julie Conner and Mary Beth Pepperton are still in high school after 4 years despite the fact that they were sophomores when the show began. Even stranger: Whether Julie was a freshman or sophomre when the show began doesn't matter, either way, she ended up playing at the varsity level all through high school. New players (new cast members) go from JV to varsity, yet Julie never played at the JV level.

I still watch it though, mainly because Danielle Deutscher and Megan Parlen are so darn pretty :)

BK

This was better than the other TNBC shows as well as the highest rated. Although many of the plots were recycled by all of the TNBC shows, "Hang Time" was the best since the original "Saved By The Bell." Much of the credit belongs to Megan Parlen who played Mary Beth. Megan and Daniella Deutscher were the only people to appear in every episode. Megan, gifted with both comedic and dramatic talent managed to elevate the show to a higher standard. After Amber Barretto joined the cast, Megan had someone closer to her talent to work with. Megan and Amber made a good comedic team and provided the best laughs for the show. It would have been nice if the cast hadn't been changed so much, which is my only complaint. Just when you got to know a new character they would be replaced. It would be nice to see this show more often, it needs to go into syndication or be released on DVD.