Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series (1999-2000)

(Suburban Michigan; 1980-81)

The Judd Apatow produced series ‘Freaks and Geeks’ is the best show about high school of which I am aware. It is the best show about high school because it recognizes the cliché’s that clutter many of the depictions there of and avoids them. First off the show is not about the ‘beautiful people’ so few of us actually where from 9th to 12th grades, (a point made quite clear in a clever little intro at the start of the pilot), rather the show is about the underdogs, who but a rare person doesn’t identify with, especially in regards to those few years in our lives.

The program which has a well deserved cult following, had its life unduly cut short by NBC. In fact only 12 of the series episodes actually ran on the network, which had at first built the show up considerably during pre-season promotio. An additional three episodes where shown during an apparently brief syndication run, and the remaining three produced are available for the first time on the DVD set. That ’Freaks and Geeks’ even made it to DVD is a testament to both its quality, and the tenacity of its fans, who gathered names on an online petition to get the series box release.

The program centers on the two high school aged children of the Weir family of suburban Michigan, Sophomore Lindsey (Linda Cardellini) and Freshman Sam (John Francis Daley) and their groups of friends, respectively the ’Freaks’ and the ’Greeks”. Lindsay is a bright over achieving young women whose sense of equilibrium is knocked off base after she witnesses her grandmother die in a hospital. In their last conversation, with her parents and brother having gone out of the room to get something from the cafeteria, Lindsay’s asks her grandmother if she saw a light, she replied that she saw nothing and then died. This incident had a profound impact on Lindsey, leading her to identify herself as an athiest, and beging a prolonged period of questioning and reassessment. As part of this ’exploring’ Lindsy starts to hang out with a group of ’burnouts’ or ‘freaks‘, troubled underachievers with whom she now feels some existential bond of lost direction.

The changes in their daughter trouble Lindsey’s mother and father, ably played by
Becky Ann Baker and Joe Flaherty. These are good parents (though not without there quarks), a welcome departure from televisions stereotyped lazy fat husband, and enabling wife. They watch with some sense of bewilderment and try to guide their daughter, mostly successfully, through many troubles/life experiences that come about on account of her friends, namely relationships, dances, drugs, rock concerts, car accidents, attempted cheating, hitchhiking and even a school visit from Vice President George Bush (that episodes features a great and unexpected cameo by Ben Stiller as a Secret Service agent).

The ‘Geeks’ on the other hand provide comic counterpoint (not that hysterically funny stuff doesn’t happen with the ‘Freaks‘) to the goings on with Lindsey’s crowd. Sam is a tiny kid at 14 and still bridging that pubescent gap. He pines for beautiful cheerleader Cindy Sanders (Natasha Melnick) who contrary to genera convention is a real nice girl, and is harassed by bully Gordon Crisp, who again in an unusually twist, we find really like Sam and his gang, but is still hurting from a perceived slight on their part back in elementary school. Speaking of Sam’s gang they are an interesting bunch, vaudeville want to be Neal Schwiber (Samm Levine), is a Jewish kid with a borsch belt sense of humor, who looks like a little Oscar Levant and erroneously thinks of himself as a ladies man. Bill Havechuck, played by the insipidly dorky Martin Starr, is the series breakout character and a performance perhaps unequaled in the realm of television geeks. Interestingly both these characters get surprisingly poignant mini-arcs.

This is a perfectly realized series, deeply satisfying and funnier then most anything that’s been on television in the past ten years. Some of the performers have gone on to increased recognition such as Cardellini (whose face acting is outstanding), James Franco and Seth Rogen. Those who haven’t yet made a splash deserves to, and hopefully Judd Apatow's casting loyalty to many of these players will pay off in the future. You should see ’Freaks and Geeks’ it is worthy of your time.