Freaks and Geeks recently marked the 20th birthday of its far-too-brief and incredibly brilliant network TV run from 1999 to 2000.
The show was set in the fictional Detroit suburb of Chippewa during the 1980-'81 school year, and offered funny and sometimes heartbreaking stories about a small group of high school freaks (Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps), high school geeks (John Francis Daley, Martin Starr, Samm Levine), and the girl who bridges the social gulf between them (Linda Cardellini).
Consider, for a moment, all of that acting talent in a single TV series.
Now consider the behind-the-scenes talent on that same TV show: Judd Apatow, executive producer, writer, and director; Paul Feig, series creator, and producer, writer, and director; Mike White, producer and writer; and Jake Kasdan, producer and director.
And then consider that only 18 episodes of Freaks and Geeks were produced. Even worse? Only 15 of the episodes were actually broadcast during the show's original run on NBC, three of which, including the finale, aired months after it had been canceled.
Now two decades later it’s clear that Freaks and Geeks is among that first wave of hallowed and transcendent shows in our ongoing television renaissance, a group that includes acclaimed fellow NBC drama The West Wing and HBO's groundbreaking The Sopranos and The Wire.
It’s also obvious that the short-lived series helped change the way popular culture treats geeks and freaks: as humans and not teenage stereotypes.
High school is much like the Labyrinth from Greek mythology, only without the Minotaur: One wrong move in this maze of cliques and social standing can lead to shame and ridicule from the teenagers lying in perilous wait. Such easy drama is also easy fodder for plots, particularly those of sitcoms.
Freaks and Geeks used that conventional thought as a starting point; the show's title even seemed to promise viewers the usual cadre of stereotyped high-schoolers, only with a conjunction between the opposing groups and not a “versus.” But then it reminded us that stereotypes do not exist in our complex real lives — and they shouldn't exist on TV, either.
The members of these two distinct social classes, freaks and geeks, appeared to have nothing in common, yet each had troubles at home, troubles within their own group, and even troubles within themselves.
John Hughes explored similar terrain with his teen-centric '80s films (Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink): that high school is not only an academic process and social adventure, it’s also a life journey — one that remains with you, hopefully more for the better than for the worse, but doesn’t necessarily define you.
In less than a full season’s worth of episodes, Freaks and Geeks did something extraordinary for TV: It transformed stereotypes into people, with a finale that provided closure for fans, along with character arcs of impermanence and possibility.
Burnout Daniel Desario (Franco) hung out with the geeks for a Dungeons and Dragons game night, joining their role-playing escapades as the character “Carlos the Dwarf.” Freak Nick Andopolis (Segel) took to disco for a new girl, and Lindsey (Cardellini), the mathlete-turned-Deadhead, secretly skipped out on a two-week academic summit at the University of Michigan to join friend Kim Kelly (Philipps) in a Volkswagen Bus road trip with friends to see Jerry Garcia and the band.
The show offered no definitive future for Lindsey — or for anyone else — before the screen turned to black and the credits appeared. There was only an open road of choices, opportunities, and chance as the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” played on:
“There is a road, no simple highway/Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow/That path is for your steps alone.”
First Published October 4, 2019, 11:00 a.m.
