[8.5/10] Why do we choose to be good? When we’re little kids, it’s a pretty simple equation. We do good because we’re rewarded when we do, and punished when we don’t, and learn lessons about all the acquaintances and celebrities who have died after making the wrong choices in the interim. But as we get older, we gain more freedom little by little. The times when we get to be our own people are liberating, but they also complicate that relationship between good and bad. We start to realize that good isn’t always rewarded and bad isn’t always punished, and it makes us have to come up with our own system of values, our own reasons to be good even if we’ll never get a cookie for it.
That’s the struggle that Lindsay Weir is embroiled in at the beginning of Freaks and Geeks, the one-season wonder of a show that Judd Apatow and Paul Feig unleashed on a world that wasn’t ready for it in 1999. We’re given to understand that Lindsay used to be a “brain”, the type who could reliably be counted on to participate in academic decathlons and steer clear of the smoking patio. But after her grandmother dies clutching her young, unsteady hands, and speaks of her terror, or the lack of any divine reward that seems to be awaiting her, Lindsay is half-still in some stage of coping with death, both of a beloved relative and mortality itself, and half-figure out why she wanted to be a “good girl” in the first place.
That’s heady material, but it’s mostly under the hood in Freaks and Geeks’s first episode, one that introduces the all-too-real ecosystem at a Michigan high school in 1980. That’s the strength of this first hour. It is full of well-observed, very human struggles, but they’re packed into an irreverent package of fully-realized characters who still function as recognizable archetypes, great gags that rely on the relatable rites of passage of secondary education, and a familiar setting that, even for people who weren’t even born at the beginning of the Reagan era, comes off as a genuine ecosystem of weirdos, nerds, burnouts, and oddballs, trying to survive their teens years with their dignity and nose-bones intact.
The show delivers its mission statement to that effect in its superlative cold open, which initially centers on the football team, the star athlete, and his cheerleader paramour exchanging dopey banalities like so many high school stories before it. It’s then that Freaks and Geeks makes a hard dive below the bleachers, with a change in soundtrack to match, and the camera guides us gracefully through a parade of bad kids, bullies, dorks, and the people who aren’t quite sure where they belong. It’s a different kind of high school show, and that’s clear from the first episode.
What’s not so groundbreaking, if still enjoyable, is the plight of the other main character, Lindsay’s little brother Peter. He is a wiry, diminutive kid, flanked by his two nerdy chums who are more interested in Star Wars than in the gridiron. Peter starts the series with two problems: his Bully, Alan, who torments Peter throughout the episode for the slight of daring to exist, and his parents, who are encouraging him go to the school dance rather than watch Holy Grail which requires him to confront his crush on Cindy, a friendly cheerleader who’s pleased enough with his existence to bring him his coat.
The rhythms Peter goes through are pretty standard for the teenage lovable loser set. But it’s the execution and approach that really elevates these shopworn story beats and makes them feel so real and sympathetic. There’s a comic progression to how Peter’s pals try to keep their distance but end up targets of Alan just as easily. There’s a silliness but a truth to how their confrontation with Alan isn’t an epic showdown, but a goofy scrum among a pack of pasty kids. And there’s a true-to-life awkwardness in how Peter makes goo goo eyes at his lady loves, and musters up the courage to ask her to the dance.
Sure enough, Cindy has already been asked, but promises Peter a dance, which leads to them rocking out to the cheesy but dulcet tones of “Come Sail Away.” His friends survive the scrap with Alan and cheer him on. And even the dodgeball incident that ends in pelting with rubbery punishment from peers has a brief moment of glory. While Lindsay is struggling to figure out why she should be good, Peter is struggling with what it means to, as so many people are encouraging him to do, “be a man.” And he finds that what he lacks in physical prowess, he can make up for in sheer unassuming moxie, in a way that pays off with bops and bobs with his crush underneath the disco ball.
Lindsay ends up beneath that disco ball as well, but takes a very different path to get there. Hers is akin to Lisa Simpson’s in “Summer of 4 ft. 2” -- the nerdy kid trying hard to reinvent themselves as something approaching cool. What’s so compelling about that path for Lindsay is how it’s paved with emotional reactions the episode rarely comments on.
No one (save for the brutish but clearly threatened Kim) comments on the fact that what’s motivating Lindsay in the moment is her schoolgirl crush on class-cutting bad boy Daniel. The episode doesn’t belabor the fact of how nervous and out of place she feels with him and his forth-form chums, but how hard she’s trying to seem like she belongs. It doesn’t skimp on how painful it is when Kim topples her facade and exposes her poser insecurities for the world to see. And it doesn’t overdo how cheered she is when Nick springs her from class and sweetly tries to hell her to find her own overstuffed drum kit in life, or how the wind goes away from her sails when their grand plans are foiled by the “let’s rap” guidance counselor.
There’s an emotional trajectory in all of this, one that carries Lindsay throughout the episode. When she’s embarrassed by Kim in the wallway, it prompts her to try to save Eli, the developmentally-disabled young man at her school whom she’d asked to the dance in a show of defiant altruism, from being unwittingly teased by his fellow students.
But when she tries to intervene, she only causes pain. Eli is hurt emotionally when Lindsay refers to him as “retarded,” and physically when he trips and breaks his arm when running away in a state of emotional distress. It’s hard to feel like you’re doing good, like there’s a point to doing good, when your good deeds don’t accomplish what you mean for them to, and you end up hurting the people you’re trying to help.
And yet, when Lindsay, who’s forced to attend the same school dance, thereby thwarting her Cinderella plans with Nick, sees her brother chasing his bliss and doing his best boogie, her sense of good, her sense of right comes back. She sees Eli standing alone and asks him to dance, and when he acquiesces, she seems truly, unreservedly joyful for the first time in the episode.
This isn’t how Lindsay imagined spending her Saturday night. She imagined herself hanging out with the smoking patio crowd, taking those first awkward steps toward adulthood and self-determination that sometimes involve stepping out of your safe comfort zone. Instead, she finds herself condemned to concession table, but finds the worth, and the joy, in doing good for good’s sake, not because it’s expected of you, not because you’ll be rewarded for it in Heaven or on Earth, but because it’s just worth doing. In a single hour, Freaks and Geeks tells a tale of a young woman learning one of the trickiest but most vital lessons of becoming a young adult, and does it to the tune of Styx. Rock on.
lindsay pissed me off when her ass acted like saying to that poor guy that "you're not making them laugh; they're laughing 'cause you're r*t*rd*d!!" was in fact "helping him"..........girl.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-01-26T03:21:07Z
[8.5/10] Why do we choose to be good? When we’re little kids, it’s a pretty simple equation. We do good because we’re rewarded when we do, and punished when we don’t, and learn lessons about all the acquaintances and celebrities who have died after making the wrong choices in the interim. But as we get older, we gain more freedom little by little. The times when we get to be our own people are liberating, but they also complicate that relationship between good and bad. We start to realize that good isn’t always rewarded and bad isn’t always punished, and it makes us have to come up with our own system of values, our own reasons to be good even if we’ll never get a cookie for it.
That’s the struggle that Lindsay Weir is embroiled in at the beginning of Freaks and Geeks, the one-season wonder of a show that Judd Apatow and Paul Feig unleashed on a world that wasn’t ready for it in 1999. We’re given to understand that Lindsay used to be a “brain”, the type who could reliably be counted on to participate in academic decathlons and steer clear of the smoking patio. But after her grandmother dies clutching her young, unsteady hands, and speaks of her terror, or the lack of any divine reward that seems to be awaiting her, Lindsay is half-still in some stage of coping with death, both of a beloved relative and mortality itself, and half-figure out why she wanted to be a “good girl” in the first place.
That’s heady material, but it’s mostly under the hood in Freaks and Geeks’s first episode, one that introduces the all-too-real ecosystem at a Michigan high school in 1980. That’s the strength of this first hour. It is full of well-observed, very human struggles, but they’re packed into an irreverent package of fully-realized characters who still function as recognizable archetypes, great gags that rely on the relatable rites of passage of secondary education, and a familiar setting that, even for people who weren’t even born at the beginning of the Reagan era, comes off as a genuine ecosystem of weirdos, nerds, burnouts, and oddballs, trying to survive their teens years with their dignity and nose-bones intact.
The show delivers its mission statement to that effect in its superlative cold open, which initially centers on the football team, the star athlete, and his cheerleader paramour exchanging dopey banalities like so many high school stories before it. It’s then that Freaks and Geeks makes a hard dive below the bleachers, with a change in soundtrack to match, and the camera guides us gracefully through a parade of bad kids, bullies, dorks, and the people who aren’t quite sure where they belong. It’s a different kind of high school show, and that’s clear from the first episode.
What’s not so groundbreaking, if still enjoyable, is the plight of the other main character, Lindsay’s little brother Peter. He is a wiry, diminutive kid, flanked by his two nerdy chums who are more interested in Star Wars than in the gridiron. Peter starts the series with two problems: his Bully, Alan, who torments Peter throughout the episode for the slight of daring to exist, and his parents, who are encouraging him go to the school dance rather than watch Holy Grail which requires him to confront his crush on Cindy, a friendly cheerleader who’s pleased enough with his existence to bring him his coat.
The rhythms Peter goes through are pretty standard for the teenage lovable loser set. But it’s the execution and approach that really elevates these shopworn story beats and makes them feel so real and sympathetic. There’s a comic progression to how Peter’s pals try to keep their distance but end up targets of Alan just as easily. There’s a silliness but a truth to how their confrontation with Alan isn’t an epic showdown, but a goofy scrum among a pack of pasty kids. And there’s a true-to-life awkwardness in how Peter makes goo goo eyes at his lady loves, and musters up the courage to ask her to the dance.
Sure enough, Cindy has already been asked, but promises Peter a dance, which leads to them rocking out to the cheesy but dulcet tones of “Come Sail Away.” His friends survive the scrap with Alan and cheer him on. And even the dodgeball incident that ends in pelting with rubbery punishment from peers has a brief moment of glory. While Lindsay is struggling to figure out why she should be good, Peter is struggling with what it means to, as so many people are encouraging him to do, “be a man.” And he finds that what he lacks in physical prowess, he can make up for in sheer unassuming moxie, in a way that pays off with bops and bobs with his crush underneath the disco ball.
Lindsay ends up beneath that disco ball as well, but takes a very different path to get there. Hers is akin to Lisa Simpson’s in “Summer of 4 ft. 2” -- the nerdy kid trying hard to reinvent themselves as something approaching cool. What’s so compelling about that path for Lindsay is how it’s paved with emotional reactions the episode rarely comments on.
No one (save for the brutish but clearly threatened Kim) comments on the fact that what’s motivating Lindsay in the moment is her schoolgirl crush on class-cutting bad boy Daniel. The episode doesn’t belabor the fact of how nervous and out of place she feels with him and his forth-form chums, but how hard she’s trying to seem like she belongs. It doesn’t skimp on how painful it is when Kim topples her facade and exposes her poser insecurities for the world to see. And it doesn’t overdo how cheered she is when Nick springs her from class and sweetly tries to hell her to find her own overstuffed drum kit in life, or how the wind goes away from her sails when their grand plans are foiled by the “let’s rap” guidance counselor.
There’s an emotional trajectory in all of this, one that carries Lindsay throughout the episode. When she’s embarrassed by Kim in the wallway, it prompts her to try to save Eli, the developmentally-disabled young man at her school whom she’d asked to the dance in a show of defiant altruism, from being unwittingly teased by his fellow students.
But when she tries to intervene, she only causes pain. Eli is hurt emotionally when Lindsay refers to him as “retarded,” and physically when he trips and breaks his arm when running away in a state of emotional distress. It’s hard to feel like you’re doing good, like there’s a point to doing good, when your good deeds don’t accomplish what you mean for them to, and you end up hurting the people you’re trying to help.
And yet, when Lindsay, who’s forced to attend the same school dance, thereby thwarting her Cinderella plans with Nick, sees her brother chasing his bliss and doing his best boogie, her sense of good, her sense of right comes back. She sees Eli standing alone and asks him to dance, and when he acquiesces, she seems truly, unreservedly joyful for the first time in the episode.
This isn’t how Lindsay imagined spending her Saturday night. She imagined herself hanging out with the smoking patio crowd, taking those first awkward steps toward adulthood and self-determination that sometimes involve stepping out of your safe comfort zone. Instead, she finds herself condemned to concession table, but finds the worth, and the joy, in doing good for good’s sake, not because it’s expected of you, not because you’ll be rewarded for it in Heaven or on Earth, but because it’s just worth doing. In a single hour, Freaks and Geeks tells a tale of a young woman learning one of the trickiest but most vital lessons of becoming a young adult, and does it to the tune of Styx. Rock on.