Hi @ryanck: You CAN save an entire list to the database in one fell swoop… IF you are saving to a field that is itself a list field.
The caveat, of course, is that Things can only be created using Create New or Copy List of Things.
So while we can construct and manipulate all sorts of lists in the page, we cannot create a new Thing(s) and put them into a list without interacting with the database.
If you’ve not seen this one before, you might want to watch this video, which is very relevant to the question you’re asking:
Check it out and let me know if that helps you with this issue.