TV 225 – Week No. 12

Some TV shows I know I'm going to love within the first episode, or even the first five minutes. I love it when that happens. Last week, I discovered one of those: "Freaks and Geeks".



"Freaks and Geeks" (1999) was one of Judd Apatow's first big, critically acclamed projects. He was the executive producer, and several of the cast members (Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel) have appeared in many of Apatow's recent hit movies (Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express). The show is about, well, freaks and geeks in a suburban Detroit high school in the early 1980's.

Here's the very beginning of the pilot episode. The first 45 seconds is terrible. I almost turned it off right then, but everything after that is great. Check it out. Skip to 0:45 if you want.

The man won't let me embed the video. Click here to watch it.

By the opening credits, I was completely hooked. In fact, the credits themselves are pretty much perfect in my opinion. The music is great, the sequence reflects the feeling of the show very well, and you get a surprisingly powerful snapshot (pun intended) of who each character is in their tiny two-second credits.

I'll admit, the show is not perfect. The writing sometimes contains a nauseating density of clichés. Other times it's brilliant. Same story with the acting. Mostly, the cast is absolutely stellar. John Francis Daley plays the cutest 103-pound nerd you've ever seen, and Segel and Cardellini are fantastic at playing kids torn between the freak world and the geek world. Rogen and Franco are also quite comfortable and believable as apathetic bad boys. One thing that irritates me a little is that Lindsay's (Cardellini's) constant rebelliousness and discontent are a little extreme and mostly inexplicable. Maybe that's the point, though. I don't know. It's frustrating.

All in all, though, it's another great show that no one watched, and was consequently canned after one season. There are far too many of these.