"Freak And Geeks" RIP 1999-2000

Directed by: Jake Kasdan/Judd Apatow/Bryan Gordon/Ken Kwapis/Lesli Linka Glatter
Written by: Paul Feig/Judd Apatow/Mike White/Jeff Judah/Bob Nickman/Gabe Sachs/J. Elvis Weinstein/Patty Lin
Created by: Paul Feig

I just finished watching one of the greatest TV series to ever be canceled by a bunch of stupid TV execs who wouldn’t know shit from Shinola if it came up and bit them on their asses. I think it’s every bit as good as “The Wonder Years”, and I think we all know how I feel about that show. Like “The Wonder Years”, it takes place in another time. A time that is foreign to many of its target audience. A time nearly 20 years before it was actually filmed, which makes me feel incredibly old. But, hey, I was just starting kindergarten when the show took place, so I don’t feel SO old.

It’s 1980 at McKinley High and things are just starting for a group of its students. Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini–Velma from the Scooby-Doo movies, and she looks about as un-Velma like as possible here. I think I love her.) is a Geek. She’s a Mathelete. She studies hard. She’s got geeky friends.

But things are about to change for her. She’s a little smitten with Daniel Desario (James Franco from the Spider-Man movies), the “leader” of the Freaks. So she changes the way she dresses and starts hanging out with them. Now, things aren’t quite that easy for her because some of them are a little resistant to this Geek infiltrating their world. Daniel seems to be ok with it because he thinks that Lindsay will help him cheat on tests. His girlfriend, Kim Kelly (Busy Phillips), hates her on sight and finds no end of fun in tormenting her. Ken Miller (Seth Rogen from Donnie Darko and “Undeclared”, another quickly canceled show from the makers of this one) is overly sarcastic to everyone, but especially Lindsay. Nick Andopolis (Jason Segel also from “Undeclared” and Slackers), however, instantly falls in love. He’s an aspiring drummer who sees something inside of Lindsay that the others don’t: himself. Just kidding. Nick is actually a really nice guy. He’s just a little…creepy…at times.

Soon enough Lindsay proves that she’s pretty much Freak material and is allowed to hang out with them for the rest of the series. But her old life keeps coming back to haunt her, usually in the form of Millie (Sarah Hagan from a short stint on “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”), her old best friend from the Matheletes. Millie’s a little Christian good girl who doesn’t understand what Lindsay is doing with her life, but she’s always there to help her old friend out of any trouble she might be getting into, even if she’s not actually getting into any trouble.

On the Geek’s side is Lindsay’s brother, Sam (John Daley from the mercifully canceled “Geena Davis Show”). He and his friends are Geeks through and through, but really he’s the least geeky one. He’s just really shy. And desperately in love with Cindy Sanders (Natasha Melnick from the short-lived “Do Over”), a freshman cheerleader who actually speaks to him. His best friends are Neal Schweiber (Samm Levine from Club Dread) and Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr who apparently steals Stealing Harvard with one line). Neal is a little guy who thinks he’s the coolest guy in the school. At least, that’s what he says. He really has all kinds of issues that I won’t get into right now. But he keeps coming up with new plans to become one of the cool kids. He’s also had a crush on Lindsay forever. Bill is so geeky as to look slightly retarded. His posture is horrible and his voice is cracky. But he’s hilarious. He’s been raised by his single mom who has to work all the time (for a while as a stripper) to make ends meet, but she keeps Bill happy. He looks like Leonard Nimoy without the grace and style.

Harris Trinsky (Stephen Lea Sheppard) starts off as kind of a Geek Guru who quotes Yoda to impart his wisdom upon the other Geeks. He ends up being one of the gang and the Dungeon Master of their D&D games. (Something that comes into play in the last episode, which has been called one of the most positive images of the game ever put on film.) He has something that all of the other Geeks can only aspire to have: a girlfriend.

Gordon Crisp (Jerry Messing) is an unfortunate Geek who has a pretty bad condition that not only makes him fat, but makes him smell pretty bad, too. But, as Sam and the Geeks find out, he’s actually pretty cool. And has a lot of insight into women and what they want. Probably more than Harris. But I doubt that that’s saying very much, really.

The really good thing about this show is that all of the adults aren’t seen as either horribly idiotic OR total mentors. They are just as flawed and clueless as their younger counterparts. The teachers especially.

Coach Ben Fredricks (Tom Wilson–Biff from the Back To The Future Trilogy) is the phys. ed. teacher who seems to be just another dumb jock turned teacher. But, as he’s tormenting the Geeks, he turns around and helps them out at times in ways that no one else would. But when he starts to fall for Bill’s mom, he has no clue how to handle it. Frank Kowchevski (SNL and F&G writer Steve Bannos) is the math teacher who hounds Lindsay to get her to rejoin the Matheletes and Daniel for being an idiot. He’s probably the most one-note of all of the characters, but we all knew teachers like him: the burnt-out guy who realizes that he doesn’t get paid nearly enough to put up with the shit he has to put up with.

The best of the school administration is Jeff Rosso (Dave “Gruber” Allen (from the old Higgins Boys & Gruber comedy team that also included David Anthony Higgins (Craig from “Malcolm In The Middle”) and his brother Steve Higgins (who shows up in the last episode of F&G as the teacher who heads up the AV department)). There are more parentheses in that last sentence than I think I’ve ever put in one before. NO MATTER! Mr. Rosso is the guidance counselor and an old hippy who tries so hard to be “cool” to the kids. He’s actually a really nice guy and his heart’s in the right place, but he just kind of creeps the kids out sometimes. A lot of the kids go from respecting him to thinking he’s just too weird for words within the same conversation.

The Weirs are just about the only normal family in the whole show. There’s no side story with them where their family almost falls apart. Harold (the always awesome and under-appreciated Joe Flaherty–watch for the first season of SCTV coming soon to a DVD player near you!!) owns the local sporting goods store and makes a pretty good living with it. All of the other kids think that they’re rich, but they’re really just kind of upper-middle class. Jean (Becky Ann Baker from lots of small parts in big movies like A Simple Plan and Men In Black) is a pretty stereo-typical suburban mom. They’re a little over-protective, but they’re really no different from every other mom and dad on Earth. Just a lot funnier. The scene where they listen to “Squeeze Box” to decide whether or not Lindsay can go to a Who concert is priceless.

The other parents are a little more troubled. The Schweibers (Sam McMurray from all of Tracey Ullman’s shows and Amy Aquino from “ER” and “Picket Fences”) are possibly on the verge of a break-up that has been well hidden from the kids. Ms. Haverchuck (Claudia Christian from “Babylon 5″ and (heh heh) A Gnome Named Norm) is single and dating a teacher not understanding what that’s doing to her son. Nick’s dad (Kevin Tighe from Better Off Dead and Mumford) doesn’t understand why his son has to bang on the drums all night long and gets amazingly pissed off about it. Daniel’s dad is sick and his mom depends on him maybe a bit too much. And Kim’s mom (Ann Dowd) is completely insane, but not really without good reason.

Watch for some guest roles from Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Forrester and Crow from MST3K), Ben Stiller, Kevin Corrigan, Jason Schwartzman, Shia LaBeouf (before he became the poster boy for Project: Greenlight), Allen Covert, Leslie Mann, David Krumholtz and Mike White (who was a writer and producer on a lot of these shows along with the American Pie movies and School Of Rock).

Judd Apatow and Paul Feig (who plays the guitarist in the band in the episode where Nick auditions to be a professional drummer) created a great show that hits all of the universal points of being young in any age. It could be pulled out of 1980 and put into the current times and would probably not lose very much. But the time period adds to the humor and the story. The writing and acting work together so well that it’s sometimes hard to remember that these are just actors. (And believe me, they are very good actors. There are behind the scenes clips of John Daley. He was a complete spazz back then. Nothing like his character. It’s surprising that they could actually keep him in line long enough to film anything.) There was a lot of ad-libbing going on during the filming, but it never shows. These kids just acted like kids discovering themselves through their conversations. These are conversations that I had with my friends and they’re hilarious now. (Check out the one where Bill says that their new female friend is the kind of girl you can fart in front of.) There are a lot of moments where people just talk. It’s not really about the plot, but it’s important all the same just to learn about these kids. That’s what makes this show so awesome: those little moments. That’s why the fans fell in love with all of the characters.

While I see myself mostly in Sam and Lindsay (yeah, I was a Geek, but I really wanted to get out of that and possibly become a Freak), I think we can all see ourselves in all of the characters. Even the bullies. These kids love each other, but they’re horribly cruel to their friends when they don’t mean to be. None of them stay good through the entire series. Even Millie is affected at some point.

It’s too bad that NBC didn’t allow this show to blossom the way they let shows like “According To Jim” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” stink up the airwaves. (Sorry, Jim. I like you a lot, but your show sucks. Ray…I could care less. Be less mediocre.) I would love to have spent more time getting to know everyone on this show. But I feel like I already knew them before I even started watching it. Neal reminds me of one of my best friends from high school. (He even kind of looks like him in a way.) There were a lot of Bills and some of them were my friends, too. I know they can’t start the show up again because a lot of the actors have grown up (some of them were grown up already–Linda was already 24), but if they started to write books about the kids’ later adventures in high school, I would be right there in line to read them. (Yeah, I’m a Geek.)

And, of course, there’s the music. It’s the whole reason why it took so long to get the DVDs in the first place. There are a LOT of music cues in this series and without even one of them it probably would have collapsed on itself. (Ok, there’s one that they didn’t get, but they didn’t get it for the original broadcast, either. Neil Young would only let them use “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” for the showing at the Museum Of Television And Radio Festival. They had to change it to Dean Martin’s “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You.” It doesn’t work NEARLY as well.) The music is pretty amazing. Only the disco in the last episode is bad, but that’s because DISCO SUCKS!! And there’s lots and lots of Who songs, not just the ones in the episode with the Who concert. (Even the original music for this episode sounds like Who songs…brilliant!)

I could really go on and on about the great things about this show. (Too late!) But there were some shaky things, mostly cosmetic, really. Like the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Weir were probably young when The Who were popular in the 60s, so they probably would have been fans and probably would have been ok with Lindsay going to the concert. I’m also not sure that all of the language is exactly indicative of the 80s. (Did they call each other “dorks” in 1980? Help me out here.) And would The Jerk have been playing still in a small town that probably only had one or two one screen theatres a year after its release? Doubters.

And speaking of the 80s there are a LOT of references to the times. And I mean a LOT. It’s almost like Reality Bites. While it’s not necessarily a bad thing it can be a little bit distracting. These kids are pretty pop culture savvy for 1980 teens. Again, I wasn’t that age back then, so I don’t know just how savvy they were, but I never really figured that people started talking like this until a little later.

But other than those little possible problems, it’s a great show. It’s not overly sentimental or too over the top for its own good.

If you never saw this show in its initial run (I never did, unfortunately), check it out. Some mom & pop stores probably carry it. Possibly Cockbuster, but they may not see the rental potential of it. Request it now! It’s worth it.

If you did see it originally, buy the DVD set now. Show NBC that they were fucking morons for canceling a show that had a strong fan base. I’m trying to decide if I have enough money to buy the Special Year Book Edition with two extra discs of special features. But even the regular version is great. There are a LOT of commentaries (one or two from parents of cast members, some from fans and every single cast member is on them somewhere–the ones on the deleted scenes with Judd, John and Martin aren’t very informative, but they’re funny as hell), out-takes, blooper reels (it makes these girls so much more attractive to see them make silly faces and call people “Fucker”) and audition tapes.

Either way, watch this show. If you were ever shoved into a locker, high during class or just thought about skipping class, watch this show. It’s not just about kids in the 80s. It’s about finding your place in life. And by the end of the series, hopefully everyone has found that place, even if it’s not necessarily where they thought it would be.