Freaks And Geeks. An accurate description of the Pilot TV team. Also a TV show.
How a one-season wonder became a cult hit with a farreaching legacy
A high-school baseball game, 1981. The batter swings, and in slow motion all eyes follow the ball. Freshman fielder bill haverchuck — always picked last for sports — runs backwards with mitt outstretched to the theme from Rocky II.
Jubilation! he makes the catch! his teammates surround him and… call him a moron for not tagging out and so letting the other side score.
That’s as close as the teenagers in Us comedy-drama Freaks And Geeks come to a win. bill’s baseball catch was its creators’ sly concession to the President of Nbc entertainment’s demand that this highschool series, cancelled in 2000 after one season, include “more victories”. here’s a victory, said Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. is this what you meant?
it wasn’t. he had meant what other teen TV shows had: aspirational wealth, model good looks and cameos by britney spears. stories where the guy gets the girl, the quarterback takes off his shirt and advertisers sign fat cheques. he wanted it to be feelgood.
Freaks And Geeks was funny and kind, poignant and painful, but feelgood? how could it be, when high school rarely does for the kids that don’t fit in? besides, this wasn’t just fiction — it was also telling the true stories of its misfit creators.
Bridesmaids director Paul Feig once turned up to his 1970s high school wearing a powder-blue flared disco jumpsuit with a wide pointed collar and integral belt. it was a look he was convinced would earn him cool points from his peers and secure his place as a teen style icon.
it didn’t. however, the ignominy paid off when, decades later, Feig and fellow stand-up Judd Apatow sold a high-school TV series to Dreamworks. Fourteen year-old sam Weir (John Francis Daley) wore Feig’s “Parisian Night suit” in an episode that typified the show’s cringe comedy.
The disco dancing contest he entered (and lost). his home-made cardboard c-3po halloween costume. his wannabe drummer years. Many of Feig’s real-life humiliations and heartaches found their way into Freaks And Geeks. Not only his, but those of the entire writing staff. (As chance would have it, Feig wasn’t the only nerd to have had a bad
day at school.) Freaks And Geeks’ portrait of adolescence felt authentic because its stories weren’t just well observed, they were lived.
We meet Freaks And Geeks’ main character, 16-year-old straight-a student Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), in crisis. After witnessing her grandmother die, Lindsay loses her faith and crosses the high-school ecosystem from mathlete to burnout, geek to freak.
The move isn’t the disaster everybody predicts. Thanks to her desperately uncool but loving parents (Becky Ann Baker and Joe Flaherty), Lindsay is a fundamentally good person. She rebels, but with a stout heart and a functioning conscience.
Her new crowd — dreamer Daniel (James Franco), tough girl Kim (Busy Philipps), stoners Nick and Ken (Jason Segel and Seth Rogen) — aren’t high achievers, but they’re just as lost as she is in the shadow of looming adulthood. Younger brother Sam Weir’s crowd — comedy obsessive Neal (Samm Levine) and priceless low-energy oddball Bill (Martin Starr) — also struggle, with bullies, crushes, peanut allergies and lousy dads.
Disappointment, awkwardness, hilarity and pain, evocative performances and clever writing were all on Freaks And Geeks’
syllabus. America though, didn’t want to learn. Saturday night at 8pm is an unlucky slot for any scripted show, especially one trying to reach a teenage audience. Despite cheerleading from the press and a core of fans so devoted they paid for a full-page Variety
ad against the cancellation, Freaks And Geeks
lost viewers from its pilot onwards. (Feig has a theory that the sight of a student with learning disabilities screaming in pain after breaking his arm 20 minutes into a new comedy put people off. He could be right.)
Losing ratings meant losing the support of the network president. The show’s promo ads dried up and NBC refused to air episode four altogether, objecting to its bleak but honest depiction of violence and unhappiness in Kim Kelly’s home life.
The broadcast run was stop-start, on air one week then off the next. Instead of receiving the traditional ‘back nine’ order to take Freaks And Geeks to a full season, two further episodes were commissioned, and then another, and then one more. Eighteen were made in total, three of which were never shown on NBC and three others were rushed out in a single airing.
Moved to Monday nights, Freaks And Geeks was scheduled opposite Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It was a popularity contest the show just couldn’t win.
When the series was cancelled, Judd Apatow was informed that its cast just weren’t star material. Cue what actor Jason Segel describes as “a Count Of Monte Cristo-style revenge plan on Judd’s part”.
The 40 Year-old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, Funny People — as a movie producer, Apatow filled his films with the Freaks And Geeks cast, not only making household names of Segel, Rogen and Franco, but encouraging them and the rest of Mckinley High’s alumni to write and direct their own work, which they duly did.
The result? Hollywood domination. It’s a fitting coup from a show about surviving disappointment and recovering from failure, but never about victory.
freaks and geeks is available on itunes