‘Freaks’: honest, funny portrayal of adolescent pain
by JOEL HOFFMANN

Freaks and Geeks was a short-lived, late '90s TV sitcom that portrayed the pains of adolescence with more honesty and compassion than any show this reviewer has seen to date. Many other reviewers and critics around the country share this view.

If Hell is other people, then high school must be the seventh circle of the Inferno.

Disguised as a choir of archangels, the popular kids judge their subjects from high above, determining the fate of mortals according to their fashion sense, athletic prowess and sexual appeal.

Like any metaphor, this one has its limits, but there is a strong element of truth. It’s a mythical representation of what many of us faced as teenagers, a theme that flows through every episode of Freaks and Geeks, a short-lived, late ‘90s TV sitcom that portrayed the pains of adolescence with more honesty and compassion than any show I’ve seen to date.

The show focuses on Sam Weir (John Michael Daley), a 14-year-old kid struggling with bullies, puberty and unrequited love at a Michigan public high school in the early ‘80s, and his sister, Lindsay (Linda Cardanelli), a straight-A student who leaves the mathletes for a group of drug-addled underachievers known as the “freaks.”

Rising film stars Seth Rogan (Pineapple Express), James Franco (Milk) and Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) played uber freaks Ken Miller, Daniel Desario and Nick Andopolis, and Judd Apatow, who wrote and produced the blockbuster comedies Pineapple Express, Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, was a writer, producer and director on the series.

Freaks received early acclaim from critics when it premiered in the fall of 1999, but only 12 episodes had aired when the show was canceled in early 2000. Series creator Paul Feig attributed its demise to an unfortunate time slot — Saturday at 8 p.m. — and his inability to depict high school as if it were paradise.

As he explained to USA Today pop culture blogger Whitney Matheson in 2004, when all 18 episodes of the show were released on DVD, many of the characters and situations were drawn from Feig’s not-so-pleasant adolescence:

“...for years I’d been seeing high-school movies and high-school shows, and I’d always go, ‘Well, that’s interesting, but that has nothing to do with what I went through in school.’ I wanted to do something about the people you don’t normally see on TV, or the people that you see and they’re generally portrayed as being ridiculous or, like, nerds with tape on their glasses who snort when they laugh or the burnouts — these dark, scary people that do terrible things.

“That’s why I think people responded to it, is because they go, ‘Finally, my story’s being told.’ It’s all of our stories. Because think about it: You watch these other shows, and they’re fine, but how many of us were that cool in high school and that concerned with dating the greatest person in school? You thought about it, but at the same time, you’re just trying not to get beat up. And you were trying to survive your classes and keep your dignity intact.”

Freaks explored teenage rites of passage with an authenticity that we didn’t usually see in the genre at the time. Unlike Saved by the Bell, for example, the plots weren’t contrived or brought to fruition with a formulaic moral. The characters on Freaks weren’t spoiled, shallow, rich kids like those on Beverly Hills, 90210.

No, Freaks put a fresh spin on the most mundane aspects of high-school life. The first experiment with sex, the first sip of beer, the first experience with death is treated with humor and due reverence. Each laugh is followed with knowing recognition of how hard it is to be a kid; at least that was the case for me.

I was a teenage band geek: awkward, thin and self-loathing; a class clown, desperate to be accepted by the in-crowd, though I never would have admitted it.

Like Sam, I never truly fit in. I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t unpopular. I was in social purgatory. I had crushes on girls who were out of my league. Most of them were nice to me, and I thought that if I could win one of them over, then maybe, just maybe, I could be cool, too.

Sam and I both learned how foolish that sort of thinking is. In his case, the opportunity to date a cheerleader didn’t turn out as he expected. Cindy Sanders (Natasha Melnick) is hot by high school standards, but she’s hardly stunning. Her social status is what most attracts Sam, though he never says so to his best friends Bill Haverchuk (Martin Starr) and Neil Schweiber (Samm Levine).

Bill learns early on that Cindy isn’t quite as she seems. While working in a science lab with Bill, she farts hard enough to rip the seams of her panties but blames the sound on a squeaky leather chair. When Cindy leaves the room, Bill tests the chair to see if she was lying. The look on his face is one of utter disbelief, one that says, “How can someone so popular and attractive have done something so foul, so human in my presence?”

Sam sees beneath Cindy’s mask toward the end of the season, when she dumps varsity basketball star Todd Schellinger (Riley Smith) for being, gasp, a Democrat.

Todd was just another sex-crazed jock, she tells Sam. But it’s Cindy who proves to be “interested in one thing.” She and Sam have little in common, and so she hides behind her sexuality to make the relationship more bearable. Sam realizes how bad Cindy is for him when she doesn’t so much as giggle at Steve Martin when Sam takes her to see The Jerk.

Neil tries to dissuade Sam from breaking up with Cindy: “Years from now you’re going to be sitting in your house, looking at your unattractive kids with your unattractive wife, saying to yourself, ‘Man, why did I ever dump that goddess Cindy Sanders?’” but Sam has learned that “just because a girl’s pretty, doesn’t mean that she’s cool.”

The breakup is one of the show’s most poignant and transformational conflicts.

CINDY: Friends? Why would you just want to be my friend?

SAM: I just really want to be your friend, like before.

CINDY: No.

SAM: No?

CINDY: No, Sam. You can’t break up with me. You’re supposed to be nice. That’s the only reason why I’m going out with you in the first place.

SAM: Hey, I am nice! I’m just not having any fun. Are you?

CINDY: No. No, I’m not having any fun, Sam.

Cindy slams her locker and throws a necklace Sam gave her  – a family heirloom  – on the floor. She had never worn it because it was “ugly,” almost as ugly as what Sam found beneath her mask. Bill and Neil show up to console him, sort of.

NEIL: You did the right thing. You’re too good for her.

BILL: Are you going to eat with us at lunch today?

SAM (flustered): Yeah.

BILL: Thank god.

That scene brims with truth about love, delusion and human nature. There is no relief for Sam. He is worried about the consequences of his fall from grace, but he has gained more than he has thrown away.

I never dated a Cindy Sanders. My brush with high school fame came when I convinced two of Interboro High School’s most popular guys to join my band. We sounded awful, but I figured it was worth the sacrifice. I was finally cool. There was just one problem: The cool kids were mostly boring and had nothing interesting to say. I was happier living on the fringe.

My 10-year high school reunion is fast approaching, but I’m not eager to go. On any weekend (and many weeknights), I can see many of the archangels pissing their lives away at one of our hometown watering holes.

The truth is that the archangels rarely leave the Inferno. In their minds, a highlight reel of their greatest accomplishments plays on repeat as the misery they inflicted upon the geeks returns ninefold.

May time have mercy on their souls.

The complete series of Freaks and Geeks can be purchased from Amazon.com for $54.99. It can be rented from Netflix and probably from local video stores.