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By: Matt at 8:50 pm on Sat 23rd May 09 in WeWatchOnTelevision

You see a TV show set in High School, and you’ll be forgiven to think that its core audience is people who are actually in high school. But what if the show is set in the early eighties, twenty years before the current generation? Could it actually be possible for a show to actually be aimed towards adults?

Well, with Freaks and Geeks, there might just be one. Its core focus is the struggles and life of the outcasts of social society in the early eighties with kids who actually feel like High School students. Now it might be a locality thing (since I’m from Ol’ Blighty) but there’s a certain limit of shows about teenagers with rich parents doing several things at once in which the latest new show ends up coming across as completely unoriginal. This is what happened with 90210 – where it feels like The OC and Gossip Girl has done it all before. Even the original Beverley Hills predated it. My So-Called Life apparently is slightly more realistic but I’ve yet to watch that yet. Freaks and Geeks seems to paint a more realistic picture of high school that I’ve only really seen briefly in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars before you deduct the genre quota of those shows. What’s interesting is that this was the 1999-2000 season before 90210 and its ilk, but running the same time as Dawson’s Creek and Popular. Though the former was a huge showcase of contrived bad acting and melodramatic unrealism the latter was a tongue-in-cheek jab at teen shows; watching this now after the modern wave just feels like a breath of fresh air.

There are no rich parents, no major dance or events the kids have to organise, no flights of fancy or anything of that ilk, it’s just kids and problems. There are no strong serialised stories that run through the series, mainly weak characters living through weekly A and B stories which focus on the brother/sister team of Lindsey and Sam Weir. Lindsey (Linda Cardellini, ER and Scooby Doo) is a 17-year old girl former Mathlete who decides to hang around with ‘freaks’ Daniel (James Franco, Spider-Man and Pineapple Express), Kim (Busy Phillips) and Nick (Jason Siegel, How I Met Your Mother). While 14-year old Sam (John Francis Daley, Waiting and Bones) has to deal with bullies and being picked last for sports with his friends Neil (Sam Levinne) and Bill Havershuck (Martin Starr). Other characters include the Weir parents and some teachers who do try and steal the screen time, and would succeed if it wasn’t for younger cast.

The two main characters end up central for the two plots that are linked thematically in each episode and sometimes converge, but never fully follow on to the next episode except for some occasions. The episodes don’t have any major messages or morals that run at the end, and there is a (thankful) lack of overblown melodrama and maturity in the story telling which further acts as evidence that it’s not fully aimed towards teenagers. But amongst all the realistic and down-to-earth characters that litter the show, it just feels easier to relate to what’s going on instead of ridiculous high-lifers.

In terms of episodes, there are no real stand-outs because they all stand out. There are no real clunkers of ideas (mainly because there are only eighteen episodes) and episodes all feel strong and relate to the characters. The geeks usually steal the episodes though, with some highlights being Sam and co’s struggles against showering after gym and being picked last for baseball. There’s usually always something brilliant in every episode.

No. The real stand out here which brings out the iconic status the show has is the characters. Sam has been noted in some American magazine as being the idea TV son, but the stand-out for the geeks is Bill. The lanky stereotypical geek is immediately lovable, gets sympathy instantly and as the series unfolds and you start to get to know him and it’s just easy to get involved with the characters. The episode where he finds his gym teacher is dating his mother is probably the highlight, managing to get a tragic yet funny character to life even more. Of the freaks Daniel’s rebel-without-a-path strikes out, mainly because you can tell that James Franco is just having fun with what he gets to do at times. Where it’s manipulating adults, attempting to be a rocker; his character is another iconic image you won’t get to shake.

By the time you get to the end of series – you realise that you’ve gotten to know these characters, and then it hits you that there’s nothing left. With many shows you get a tinge of sadness – but with characters as fleshed out and likable as this – you are suddenly losing several friends. Maybe the show is regarded the way it is over the pond because of its short run and the show never got a chance to get stale. But you can’t help but wonder to see how Lindsey and Sam and their friends would develop, and how they would finish high school. Then again, would the show have lost something if the freaks graduated and got jobs while Lindsey went to college? We would never know…

It’s fun to see some actors and actresses that have moved on to other things nearly nine/ten years ago though. Shia Labeouf appears as a mascot, Ben Stiller a secret service agent, Lizzy Caplan as a disco dancer, Samaire Armstrong as a Grateful Dead fan, Privileged’s Joanna Garcia as a cheerleader as well as the main cast. Daley is now in Bones; Cardellini in ER, Seth Rogan goes from being Seth Rogan to being Seth Rogan later on and Jason Siegel in How I Met Your Mother.

It hasn’t got a Region 2 release (yet) but it’s something that should be experienced. If you ever get the chance to watch this, do it. You’ll not be disappointed.

Also posted on: ArticlesBase.com – Why You Need To Watch “Freaks and Geeks”

Tags: comedy drama | drama | james franco | judd apatow | teen drama | tv | us drama | WeWatchOnTelevision