Gracie Hays
A & E Editor
Tuning in for a TV show every Wednesday at 8 p.m. for an entire season is considered true devotion in TV Land. I went up and beyond the dedication level that is expected of a professional couch potato, somehow managing to squeeze in the entire Freaks and Geeks season — roughly 18 hours — into less than one week. Day five of the Freaks and Geeks marathon was a day of mourning, marking the end of the season.
Of all the artistic representations of high school, the 1999 TV Show Freaks and Geeks set in the ’80s hits the nail on the head bringing the viewer back to the awkward, humiliating, and overall glorious adventure of high school. From 6-foot-tall boys with voices that squeak and crack, to dodge ball games in gym class that look more like battlegrounds, to playing bad covers of “Sunshine of Your Love” too loudly in your dad’s garage, Freaks and Geeks doesn’t miss a beat in accurately portraying the complexity of adolescents.
Paul Feig does an excellent job of digging deeper into the seemingly trivial dilemmas of teenage life, never ending an episode with the undeveloped, superficially moral-driven, cookie-cutter “happily ever after” finish. His approach towards each episode creates realistic multi-dimensional characters. Every character has a strong presence in the show and if you took one character out, Freaks and Geeks wouldn’t have the genius.
Part of the genius of Freaks and Geeks is that each character is never fully defined or oversimplified to fit into a box, but rather each character continually juggles personas, both false and true. In the beginning of the sitcom, the main character, Lindsay Weir, a former champion mathlete, joins a group of rockers identified by outsiders as the “freaks.” Throughout the sitcom, Lindsay struggles with maintaining her original values and loyalty towards old friends and family while at the same time, trying to please her new friends in hopes of fitting in. By the last episode, the social pool changes dramatically with a tough rebel playing Dungeons and Dragons alongside geeky freshmen on Friday nights and a devout rock drummer switching his aspirations towards the once hated lifestyle of a disco dance star. The characters are not portrayed in the same way in the end as they were from the first episode, yet Feig still leaves their futures open, and undefined.
After the 18 hours, I felt a sense of emptiness when I discovered that only one Freaks and Geeks season had been made before it had been canceled. The feeling of loss only worsening when I gathered that, of all the “teenage” TV shows “90210” was chosen to be remade.
That’s like Gap coming out with a new line of red slacks, claiming that they’re bringing back the “retro” fashion. Almost every channel has a sitcom cloned after “90210.”
It makes no sense to resurrect a type of TV show that never truly died. Honestly, it’s easier to relate with faceless jewelry handlers on late night infomercials than to do so with the characters on most successful TV shows today.
