For many, the ’90s were an impressionable time. That’s the decade when most of us at the University were growing up, or at least into their adolescent age. The things you remember may be varied, but the older you get the more faded everything becomes. Some types of memories hang on tightly in your mind, especially the ones that are attached to the television shows you may have watched.
Of course, under scrutiny, the reality of such shows would be remarkably different. As a thought exercise let’s explore the context of three ’90s shows and then I will overlay a slightly more likely scenario.
Show number one: “Ghostwriter” @@http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108787/@@
A ghost is trapped in a book down in Samuel L. Jackson’s basement when it is accidentally let loose and joins a group of kid detectives as they solve mysteries in their neighborhood in New York City.
Who knows how long it has been trapped in that book awaiting his or her release? The book rested on a trunk that belonged to one of the character’s (Jamal’s) great-grandfather Ezra. We can deduce that perhaps it is the ghost of Ezra, and therefore of human intelligence. I doubt that anybody would retain any sort of sanity if their consciousness was trapped in a book for years.
Now, a crazed ghost follows this group of kids around spelling things out anywhere where the printed word can be read to indicate clues or insights from this madman. The kids collect these clues (frequently at the indication of this insane specter) to solve the mysteries that they’re presented with.
Why would a crazy ghost want anything to do with solving mysteries? What about his dead family? Or the terrible prison that he’s been condemned to by having consciousness but no physical form? Never to eat or drink or feel, but instead you’re wandering around with a bunch of 12-year-olds.@@Maybe he really likes 12-year-olds.@@
“What does this clue mean?” the kids would ask. And they’d always discover its meaning by painstakingly writing everything down they could find.
Anybody with half a brain would figure out the mystery halfway through the first episode of the week without any leap of deductive logic at all.
The perpetrator of that double murder is getting away!
Here’s a bloody knife! Write it down! Over there is a rambling riddle about his next victim! Let’s write it down!
C’mon, kids! That isn’t real police work! There are real-world procedures! Find some back-alley transient, beat a confession out of him and move on to the next bike thief/academic cheater/serial killer you can find in the inner city.
Show number two:  “Wishbone” @@http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112225/@@
In “Wishbone,” a Jack Russell Terrier has a remarkable imagination and imagines various tales from novels, usually with himself as one of the leads.
Honestly, I have some (grudging) respect for “Wishbone.” The show wouldn’t “bowdlerize” Shakespeare’s plays … “Bowdlerizing” is a term named after that ass-clown Thomas Bowdler who tried to remove the offensive aspects of Shakespeare’s works by rewriting them (rot in torment, you bastard). I don’t know how that would even work out! Hamlet’s father wasn’t “on vacation,” he was murdered by his uncle! @@http://fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=177&mode=one@@
However, stop to consider for a moment that the male lead in Wishbone’s flights of fancy was a dog, and the female lead was human. There was typically a love interest there. I don’t need to say anymore … but I will. That’s a romantic affair that is illegal in most states.  So, really, depending on which state “Wishbone” took place in, many people are guilty of at least Class B misdemeanors in Wishbone’s mind. @@http://www.animallaw.info/articles/ovuszoophilia.htm@@

Show number three: “Saved by the Bell” @@http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096694/@@
This wasn’t an educational show, and as such is a little bit of a departure from the other two.
Samuel “Screech” Powers is superhuman.
Out of the countless buildings he’s fallen out of, or doors he’s broken down, one thing is clear: he cannot be harmed by anything crafted by the hands of man and he is capable of feats of strength that would destroy the might of A.C. Slater.
He was once hit by lightning and was granted the gift of precognition. Instead of using his powers to fight crime or do some sort of good, he instead falls to Zack Morris’ petty get-back-at-Slater schemes. Not only is Screech a dumbass with powers that were not meant to be wielded by mere mortals, Zack Morris was a dumbass in that he didn’t just start using the power to get a bunch of loot like Biff Tannen did when he had the Sports Almanac in “Back to the Future Part 2.” @@http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0001836/@@
Screech was at least 30 years ahead of the curve in the field of artificial intelligence when he created a robot to help him with his magic show. Where was the government in all this? Do you think that they would let a robot just sit idly by that could think for itself without scooping it up to use for foreign wars? Do you think they’d let a genius like Screech go and teach high school at Bayside High instead of locking him up in some secure facility in the desert to make more governmental murder robots?
No.
Screech would die after he fell out of his first window. Bayside would mourn. And Zack Morris would become an alcoholic afterward, haunted by the fact that he caused the death of his best friend.