Frustrated by the writers' strike? Hungry for scripted tv? One option is to rent a series you missed the first time around. I'm still regretting that "Freaks and Geeks" never found enough of an audience to last more than one season, but fortunately its small audience was enthusiastic enough that they made the whole 1999-2000 series available in one six DVD set.
Set in a Detroit suburb in about 1980, "Freaks and Geeks" follows two groups of high schoolers: the freaks (aka potheads, or "back-drivers" in my high school), through the experiences of Lindsay Weir, a former "mathlete" who wants to hang out with a rougher crowd, and the geeks, through her painfully vulnerable little brother Sam. The show not only captures the stomach-churning awkwardness that is high school, presumably in every era, it gets so many details from the time right, including such small things as tough-girl Kim's blue ski jacket . A few anachronisms show up from time to time -- Sam's one-piece "Parisian nights" jumpsuit, for example, seems a bit earlier than 1980 to me. Though, I suppose, it is timeless. F&G's creation is credited to Paul Feig and Judd Apatow, who've paired up on a number of tv shows and movies. It seems more Feig than Apatow, though, and lacks the crude guy-factor of "Knocked Up" and "The 40 Year Old Virgin."
As Salon put it at the time, there's no wise narration telling you what to make of it:
Look, voice-over worked great for "The Wonder Years" and "My So-Called Life," but it's become a cliché. The teens in "Freaks and Geeks" are not looking back, all wistful and wise, at their youth, or reading their most secret diary passages to us. The kids on "Freaks and Geeks" are living in the moment, numb from the trauma of being picked on by bullies, made fun of by the popular crowd and misunderstood by parents and teachers. They don't have the self-awareness to reflect deeply on their lives; they're putting one foot in front of the other, like prison inmates, crossing the days off until their sentence is up.
Yet when we watch it as adults, we get to look behind the curtain and see how ridiculous the people who tormented us were. After cringing as the sadistic gym teacher lets the geeks be tormented in gym class, we see him lounging on his couch watching "Diff'rent Strokes." He wasn't that bad a guy after all; he was just a doofus.
The last episode ends at a high school dance, and if you can watch it without tearing up, I don't even want to know you. (That scene even made me like Styx. A little.) And if the following scene doesn't at least make you smile, I give up.









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