I’m enamored with “Freaks and Geeks.”
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Every year, dozens of TV shows make their debut and subsequent exit from television schedules across the nation, many only garnering of a handful of viewers if their lucky. Sometimes a show will get lucky and gather a cult following that grows steadily over the course of a season, allowing the show to be picked up again. Others die a quick and ignominious death, and are forgotten by those who happened to see them, even before the evening is over.
And then there are shows like 1999´s "Freaks and Geeks." A critical success, "Freaks and Geeks" tells the universal story of the high school experience for, "the rest of us." At once uproariously funny and depressingly somber, the show managed to take the viewer on an intense, often abrupt, emotional rollercoaster that brought out intense feelings of nostalgia yet stayed incredibly relevant. On a critical level, I can easily say that "Freaks and Geeks" was one of the best television programs that I can remember having the fortune to lay my eyes on. But the question that leaves, simply, is why did it fail? We´ll get to that point in a moment, but first let´s take a look at the show itself, in an attempt to illuminate the subject for those who, like myself, were unfortunate enough to miss it in its original broadcast run.
While I can say the show is nearly perfect in every way, that won´t slake the thirst of curiosity that afflicts DVD Town´s readers, so let´s get down to nuts and bolts. First, and most obvious to anyone who watched the show, is the ambiance of the period. Creator Paul Feig, along with Producer Judd Apatow and crew managed to capture the confident cluelessness that is adolescence, and apply it to a period of transition, the early 1980s, when Disco was dying and Punk was yet to ascend to popularity, while Rock was still king and New Wave was still an Alfalfa Sprout on a youngster´s head. "Freaks and Geeks" makes the brilliant stylistic choice to apply a period of national identity confusion and use it as a metaphor for the confusion of change and growth that every adolescent has felt. The costumes, the sets, the look of the school and homes, right down to the subtle out-of-date clothing worn by different groups within the school simply works.
The characters within "Freaks and Geeks" might easily be tossed off as a stock creation, a product of the classifications that are born in the show´s title, but Feig manages to expose the true nature of each Freak, each Geek in his or her own way. The characters run a gamut of emotions, from comic to tragic to indifferent from episode to episode, and they deal with problems that aren´t of the "90210" set, but are issues that resonate well with the audience who had an average upbringing. The characters would be nothing, however, without some precipitously brilliant casting choices. Teenagers who look like teenagers dot this young cast, and actors who know how to bring out the true nature of the characters they portray help to sell this average story. Even those characters who I initially didn´t like in the early stages of the production, namely Kim and Ken, grew on me as they gained more material and focus in the show. Feig´s patience in developing the characters slowly, and not letting them become one-note throwaways was a wonderful change from contemporary television drama. Even the supporting cast, limited as they were, really pulled together a complete picture and are more round than most featured characters on network television today.
The pacing of each episode, much like the development of the characters, is so even and deliberate that it´s hard not to respect Paul Feig for his creation, and those that trusted him that it would work on screen. Each episode is very deliberate in its structure, creating a set of, for want of a better term but lack of geometric knowledge, reflective arcs that takes the viewer for an excellent ride. For example, in the second episode, Lindsay and Sam are both experiencing emotional growth spurts, with Lindsay growing into her rebellious own, while Sam learns the pain of growing up and not being able to act like a kid before. At the episode´s apex, Lindsay and Sam both learn a lesson about responsibility and what it means to them. It is at that moment that Feig turns an uproariously funny and exhilarating scene into one that is painful to watch. Each episode, while some are better than others, features this point-counterpoint structure that´s both funny and serious.
Like a proper drama, each episode in "Freaks and Geeks" builds off its predecessor, but it´s done in such a way as to create the illusion of stand-alone episodes. While later shows in the series´ run became more integrated into an overall narrative arc, the early few subtly brought the viewer into a better understanding of the characters and their motivations… that is, until a radical character shift was eliminated through network censorship, confusing the living hell out of anyone who was watching, I´m sure. The way the exposition is done in each episode is very simple, enough to remind the viewer of what came last week without slapping them with plot.
As you can tell, I´m enamored with "Freaks and Geeks." Honestly, on the strength of the show itself and for what´s here, I can recommend you go pick up this set today. But as a starting-off point for discussion, I want to talk briefly about why I think the show failed.
Upon viewing my first three episodes of the show about two months ago, it became very apparent to me that this show was going to be very hard to watch. Dredging up memories I´ve spent hundreds of dollars in alcohol to repress, "Freaks and Geeks" forced the viewer to confront things that they´d done in the past, or people they used to be. I´ll admit it, when I was younger, say about 6th grade… I was, in fact, a geek. Hard to believe, I know. I used to have the discussions about comic characters, about Star Trek vs. Star Wars, and used to do a mean William Shatner. And yes, I even had trouble with the ladies. But the stupid things that Sam and the geeks do, and the thoughtless actions of Lindsay and her posse, how they unintentionally hurt a lot of people around them, forced me to reexamine my own past, and it wasn´t something that was easy, I can say that with all honesty, and I know I´m not the only person who felt that way. A very intense show when it wanted to be, "Freaks and Geeks" wasn´t for everyone.
Furthermore, the up-and-down pacing I found so novel is very counterproductive to today´s MTV attention span, when people want simply constructed, easy-to-follow narratives with a good kick in the end. What "Freaks and Geeks" did was build a show slowly, and give a great payoff to anyone who was willing to stick with it. Without a good hook in the beginning, and wiz-bangs every few minutes, some viewers may have given up on the product before it got going. As I said earlier, these character were real, and you couldn´t tune in every week and expect Bill to be funny, or Sam to be whimsical, it just wasn´t going to happen. Those people who did tune in saw a very different show from week-to-week.
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