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By
Published: 2005
Category: Comedy [4]
I never watched "Freaks and Geeks" when it aired in 1999-2000. For one thing, the title seemed too cutesy and self-aware. For another, I generally avoid a television series set in high school. Those shows seem contrived. The students have impossibly clever dialogue. And the casting! The "seniors" look about twenty-two, the "nerds" need only to take off their glasses and get a decent haircut to be GQ cover material, and the teachers are often so clueless you wonder how they ever got through college.
But a few days after the "Freaks and Geeks" series appeared on DVD last year, my girlfriend rushed out to buy the boxed set. I respect her taste and she'd been excited about its release, so I agreed to watch a few episodes and see what I thought.
Talk about "pleasantly surprised" --- the 18 episodes of "Freaks and Geeks" are, hands down, among the smartest, funniest and warmest television shows ever. The cast is impeccable (from the Jeff Bridges school of understatement and unselfconsciousness), the writing is honest, and the attention to detail (it's set in suburban Michigan, 1980-81) is evocative without seeming studied or purposefully ironic.
Rarely have I been so engaged by television --- and if you look at any of the customer reviews on Amazon or on the IMDB message boards, you'll see I'm far from alone in my feelings. Indeed, 35,000 viewers signed an Internet petition, begging for the DVD.
Here are some storylines you will not see on "Freaks and Geeks":
-- Will the sensitive jock play in the big game or act in the school musical?
-- Will one friend report the alcohol/drug abuse of another friend?
-- Will she keep the baby or have an abortion?
No, this series isn't about big, burning issues that happen in a high school at most once a generation. Its focus is on the small incidents and choices that --- when you're a teenager --- seem hugely dramatic. The series is no bigger than this: Lindsay Weir, a sometime brainiac, and her younger brother Sam try to get through high school. Happily, the writers are confident and talented enough to probe the emotions not of grand conflicts but of everyday interactions. One criticism: In the first few episodes, some of the supporting characters seemed a bit broad, but after that the show never hit a false note.
One of the great treats of the show was seeing how the relationships between the characters grew and changed. Another pleasure was in the way humor was rooted in honesty. In one of my favorite bits, a girl sits on the bed with her nice but somewhat dim semi-boyfriend. He starts rambling well-meaning philosophical nonsense about their "cosmic connection." Not quite sure how to respond, she says, "Uh... do you wanna make out or something?" But the line doesn't come at the expense of either character; it simply feels natural to the people and their situation.
Like few other shows that cater to a young audience, "Freaks and Geeks" knows in its bones that high school was not composed just of friends and enemies, but also of semi-friends, tenuous pacts of convenience and people who simply drift in and out of our awareness. Just like real life.
Confession: I actually teared up during the final episode. And not because anything impossibly sad or unexpectedly triumphant occurred, but because I felt I was saying goodbye to people I'd truly come to care about. I knew they were going off to other adventures and I wished them well, but I was going to miss them.
Posthumously "Freaks and Geeks" has been far more successful than it was when we had a chance to watch it every week. It won an Emmy for Best Writing. All of the scripts have been published in book form. There's been a soundtrack CD. And --- four years after the series was cancelled --- a fan-run website is still updated regularly.
Someone wrote about this show: "They cancelled it because it was too good." In any other business but TV, that would be a bitter irony. Not here, not now. There are six DVDs to watch: shows, supplemental material, interviews. Perfect solace for a long, dark winter.
To buy "Freaks and Geeks" from Amazon.com, click here. [5]
Copyright 2005, by Head Butler Inc.