Mark-Paul Gosselaar clarifies quote about ‘Saved By the Bell’ not being great, finally

Saved by the Bell (File photo) Earlier this week, Yahoo! TV released an interview that rocked the nation — nay — the world: Mark-Paul Gosselaar said “Saved By the Bell is “not a great show.”

“The writing is kind of hokey… it’s very much a piece of that time,” Gosselaar, who played Zack “Preppy” Morris on the late ‘80s/early ‘90s TV show, as well as a “College Years” spinoff.

Obviously, a quote of this magnitude made waves, broke hearts and prompted passionate defenses of “SBTB.”

But wait, what’s this? Mark-Paul Gosselaar is on Twitter and said something about this interview on Tuesday?

Let’s turn to the tweet: “Interviews+out of context=sucks! I was referring to the writing of SBTB ‘not being great.’ Nothing but respect for SBTB. Fallon is proof.”

(Indeed, one time the actor pretended to be Zack Morris during a “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” interview and it was awesome.)

But I guess a lot of people don’t read his Twitter (sorry!) because more outlets (ahem) continued to write stories about the Yahoo! interview. So Gosselaar did what anyone would: He went to TMZ to clear the whole thing up.

He told the site, “I wasn’t saying it was a bad show, just that the writing reflected [‘80s cheesiness.].” Gosselaar also said he is “bummed” that his quote was taken out of context.

Now don’t you all feel terrible? You bummed out Mark-Paul Gosselaar!