RIP Dustin Diamond
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Earlier today I was outside with my daughter while she rode her wheel cart and RD texted me, "pour one out for Screech".
I was surprised, to say the least. I knew he was sick. I knew a few weeks back they had rushed him to the hospital and it was kind of a secret as to what was going on. Then it was released that he had stage 4 lung, or maybe throat, cancer. But by all accounts, as of less than two weeks ago, he seemed to be in recovery. Everyone around him said he was doing chemo, and they had hoped it was working.
Apparently it did not. I guess, from what I have read since receiving that text, was that the cancer was very dangerous and that it spread very quickly throughout his whole body. His reps said that the only good thing to come from this was that he died fast and wasn't in a "pool of pain". That sounds brutal to me.
Now that I have had a couple of hours to sit on this info, and I even talked to my wife about it, it feels pretty goddamn weird to be writing, basically, a "tribute" to Dustin Diamond. He was an actor, as a child, that I adored. I watched "Saved by the Bell" pretty religiously as a kid. I didn't get up to watch on Saturday's when it first aired, but syndication was my jam. I would watch it for two hours some days, if I was lucky enough to catch the TNT and TBS blocks. I devoured the show in my tweens, and even into my teens and early 20's. I know every episode from the four high school seasons, I can quote most of them, and Screech was probably my favorite character, at least as a kid. He made me laugh, he was goofy, he dressed wild and he was smart. I even thought he was kind of cool, and I loved his pursuit of Lisa. As I got older, and still watched the show, maybe even more so when RD and I lived together, I saw it with different eyes, but Screech was still the funniest. Only this time around I laughed at him, and then realized that I had been laughing at him even when I was a kid. He was the main character that got dumped on by everyone on the show. He was the butt of the jokes. Even when he would get the girl, or do something helpful, it was always backhanded, or made out as a joke. Screech wasn't this funny, smart kid I looked up to on the show as a child. He was the nerd, the doofus, the one everyone made fun of. I still stuck with him, even going so far as to wear Zubaz pants when RD and I had a day we dedicated to Screech. But as I look back on it now, Screech wasn't cool, he was the dork, point blank. I very sparingly watched the "College Years", and I think I only saw maybe a handful of "The New Class", but it was more of the same with Screech. He never really evolved on the show.
After “Saved By the Bell” his personal life became more of the thing, and he did not seem like the best person in the world. He released a sex tape, which he later said he used a "double" for the sex. Okay, whatever. Then he wrote a tell all book, which he then confessed was written by a ghost writer, and half, if not more, of the stories were false. That's kind of pathetic. Then he went the reality show route, and he was always cast, or trying to be, the villain. It didn't work, and he couldn't pull it off. Anytime he got into it with someone, I would always say, "Screech is about to get his ass kicked". This is partly him, for being an asshole, but me also, for typecasting him in my head as Screech. He never changed from the character I watched growing up, so that was who he always was to me, and a lot of other people. The nail in the coffin was when he was in a bar fight that involved a stabbing, and he was arrested and put in jail for, I believe, three years. That wiped any, of which there may have been none, respect that I had left for Dustin Diamond. It all went out the window, and it seemed that way with his former castmates, and even some friends he had made. I know he did a tell all thing with Oprah Winfrey in 2013 where he tried to clean things up, and did a similar thing with Mario Lopes three years later, but the damage had been done, and he was, quite frankly, a dirtbag in my opinion.
Yet it is a bummer when someone dies so young. He didn't get COVID or anything like that either. This wasn't because he was being careless. He unfortunately got a very serious form of cancer that cut his life way, way too short. I know I have been dumping on him this whole blog, but that is a crummy way for a person to go out. Yes he wasn't a good person, but he wasn't some kind of monster that did awful things to people. All of his harm was self inflicted. So while I do not feel about him like I did with Kobe Bryant, or someone I truly adore like MF Doom, it is still a shock and a bummer when someone I watched growing up dies so young. He was only six years older than me. That is crazy.
RIP Dustin Diamond. You lived a wild and crazy life, but Screech will live on forever, and I guess you made the most of your time here.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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