Freaks and Geeks

It’s no surprise that there was only one season of this abomination spitting in the face of conformity and toeing the line. The female lead, Lindsey Weir (Linda Cardellini), is neither Ginger nor Maryann, but she appears to be crazy about Gilligan, who goes by Daniel (James Franco).

Truly, it’s reminiscent of Angela (Claire Danes) and her crush on Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) in MTV’s My So-Called Life.

Lindsey is a high school student with a younger brother, and they’re both smart kids from a good family with a dad (Joe Flaherty) who owns a sporting goods store and a mom (Becky Ann Baker) who makes veal picatta and dresses up for Halloween. Lindsey drops out of the mathletes and ditch her good girl image that doesn’t seem to fit anymore to pursue her crush, going so far as to befriend his girlfriend, Kim (Busy Philipps), and date his friend Nick (Jason Segel), whom she has no interest in.

Lindsey works so hard to impress her new friends that she eggs her brother on Halloween.

She also pulls the oldest trick in the book to get a guy to come over without being too forward: she has a party. Daniel and Kim end up making out in Lindsey’s bedroom while her brother’s friend Bill gets drunk on the real beer while he watches Dallas upstairs during the party. Daniel’s friend Ken (Seth Rogan) makes fun of everyone, including and especially his friends. And he hates disco.

It gets even worse. Lindsey often finds herself in the guidance counselor’s office, has the audacity to get political when she’s chosen to ask the Vice President a question when he visits the school.

Sam (John Francis Daley), Lindsey’s little brother, also has a crush, a perfectly respectable crush on a cheerleader named Cindy Sanders (Natasha Melnick), and Sam gets the girl, but Cindy is depicted as a vapid, superficial conservative who only shares one interest with Sam—herself. So he breaks up with her.

There’s a good bit of teenage romance and heartbreak in this one season series (does one season qualify as a series?). Daniel and Kim are constantly breaking up and getting back together. After one of their more serious breakups, Daniel pursues a punk rock girl, Jenna Zank (Shawnee Free Jones). He pulls a total Lindsey, going as far as getting his nose pierced in a punk club to impress Jenna.

Lindsey breaks up with Nick, Ken destroys his relationship with Amy, and Sam’s friends Neal (Samm Levine) and Bill (Martin Starr) have unrequited crushes on Lindsey.

Bill, Sam, and Neal get a spot of brightness in their lives when a new girl, Maureen (Kayla Ewell) befriends them and brightens their world before the cheerleaders and in-crowd discover her and steal her away. Bill has further troubles when the gym teacher (Thomas F. Wilson) dates his mom (Claudia Christian).

These characters rebel against programmed thinking, and they do typical teenager things like drink beer, smoke pot, and fool around. It’s horrible, a true departure from Happy Days.

This show seems to glorify independent thinking and finding one’s own way and ends with Lindsey ditching her academic summit at the University of Michigan. Her parents, brother, and his friends see her off at the bus station, where she boards a bus bound for Ann Arbor but gets off at the next stop and climbs into a VW microbus with Kim and a bunch of neo-hippie Deadheads to follow the Dead on tour. Coincidentally, it’s the Guidance Counselor who tirns her on to the Grateful Dead by loaning American Beauty on vinyl to her.

Do yourself a favor, and, for the sake of conformity, do NOT binge watch this realistic take on what it was like to be a young teenager in 1980s suburban America.

Currently available on Amazon Prime and Paramount +