[8.4/10] It’s a surprisingly difficult thing to learn when you’re young that just because someone is attractive and nice to you doesn’t mean that you make sense as a couple. TV and movies tended to depict people falling in love mostly because they’re pretty and make goo-goo eyes at one another. That doesn’t really prepare you for the real world where compatibility is infinitely more complicated than just a nice smile and basic kindness.
It’s a lesson Sam learns firsthand with Lindsay, and it’s a nice way that Freaks and Geeks breaks the mold for how young romances work on television. Everything on the surface is right with Cindy from Sam’s perspective: she’s pretty, she’s popular, and she thinks he’s nice. But he discovers that they don’t like the same things; they don’t have much to talk about when he’s not just a sounding board for her romantic troubles, and that they’re just not on the same page. The show dramatizes that with politics Sam could care less about and family heirlooms that Cindy doesn’t appreciate, and hickeys that the pair are at complete odds about.
And yet the episode, thankfully, doesn’t really make either of them the bad guy. Admittedly, the show exaggerates Cindy’s rougher edges here, casting her as someone who thinks the poor are lazy and who’s materialistic, and generally more shrewish than we’ve seen in the past. (Though really, that’s not so implausible given how generic an aspirational crush she’s been up until this point.)
But for the most part, the show just paints them as two people who don’t work, and as hard as it is for the two of them to face that, Sam has the courage to break up with her despite him dating out of his social league, and Cindy admits that she’s not having any fun either. It’s a sign of maturity, and a sign that Freaks and Geeks wasn’t content to follow the usual high school drama tropes, like it seemed to be indulging a little in the prior episode.
But the flipside to that, as the show signifies in the scene between Sam and Ken, is that while Sam’s maturity comes from realizing that while he likes the idea of Cindy as a girlfriend, he doesn’t like the reality, Ken’s maturity comes from realizing that he likes Amy for who she is, and that he shouldn’t let his idea of who she is get in the way of that.
I have to say, I really admire Freaks and Geeks for doing a storyline about someone who’s intersex. It’s not something I’ve ever seen before, especially not on a network television show, and the episode addresses it honestly.
Again, the show continues its march of showing us that secondary characters have some depth and added dimension to them. The fact that we not only get a Ken story, but one that shows some growth for him as a person beyond him just being a one-liner machine is really good. And by the same token, the episode takes Amy’s struggles, and Ken’s insensitivity to them, seriously.
That’s not to say that the show doesn’t manage to wring some humor out of it. Thankfully, the joke is always on Ken, with him freaking out that he might be gay in a characteristically immature way before having his conversation with Sam where he realizes what an insensitive jerk he’s being about this whole thing. I love the shot where he goes through the band procession, finds Amy, and offers his mea culpa. It’s really heartening from a character standpoint, and again, encouraging that the show addresses an issue like this in such a positive manner.
The last story in the episode has to do with activism, in an episode where there’s an undercurrent of politics throughout. I like the bits with Mr. Rosso feeling like the spirit of rebellion he fought for has died, and seeing it sparked once more in Lindsay. It’s mostly quiet and mostly humorous (see also: Ben Stiller’s cameo as an unhappy Secret Service agent), but it’s still a tight little story about Lindsay fighting for something in her own small way (and getting some humorous reactions out of her parents in the process.
Overall, another outstanding episode of the show that hits some important ideas about what it really means to care about someone, and what really matters on that front.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-02-07T02:22:23Z
[8.4/10] It’s a surprisingly difficult thing to learn when you’re young that just because someone is attractive and nice to you doesn’t mean that you make sense as a couple. TV and movies tended to depict people falling in love mostly because they’re pretty and make goo-goo eyes at one another. That doesn’t really prepare you for the real world where compatibility is infinitely more complicated than just a nice smile and basic kindness.
It’s a lesson Sam learns firsthand with Lindsay, and it’s a nice way that Freaks and Geeks breaks the mold for how young romances work on television. Everything on the surface is right with Cindy from Sam’s perspective: she’s pretty, she’s popular, and she thinks he’s nice. But he discovers that they don’t like the same things; they don’t have much to talk about when he’s not just a sounding board for her romantic troubles, and that they’re just not on the same page. The show dramatizes that with politics Sam could care less about and family heirlooms that Cindy doesn’t appreciate, and hickeys that the pair are at complete odds about.
And yet the episode, thankfully, doesn’t really make either of them the bad guy. Admittedly, the show exaggerates Cindy’s rougher edges here, casting her as someone who thinks the poor are lazy and who’s materialistic, and generally more shrewish than we’ve seen in the past. (Though really, that’s not so implausible given how generic an aspirational crush she’s been up until this point.)
But for the most part, the show just paints them as two people who don’t work, and as hard as it is for the two of them to face that, Sam has the courage to break up with her despite him dating out of his social league, and Cindy admits that she’s not having any fun either. It’s a sign of maturity, and a sign that Freaks and Geeks wasn’t content to follow the usual high school drama tropes, like it seemed to be indulging a little in the prior episode.
But the flipside to that, as the show signifies in the scene between Sam and Ken, is that while Sam’s maturity comes from realizing that while he likes the idea of Cindy as a girlfriend, he doesn’t like the reality, Ken’s maturity comes from realizing that he likes Amy for who she is, and that he shouldn’t let his idea of who she is get in the way of that.
I have to say, I really admire Freaks and Geeks for doing a storyline about someone who’s intersex. It’s not something I’ve ever seen before, especially not on a network television show, and the episode addresses it honestly.
Again, the show continues its march of showing us that secondary characters have some depth and added dimension to them. The fact that we not only get a Ken story, but one that shows some growth for him as a person beyond him just being a one-liner machine is really good. And by the same token, the episode takes Amy’s struggles, and Ken’s insensitivity to them, seriously.
That’s not to say that the show doesn’t manage to wring some humor out of it. Thankfully, the joke is always on Ken, with him freaking out that he might be gay in a characteristically immature way before having his conversation with Sam where he realizes what an insensitive jerk he’s being about this whole thing. I love the shot where he goes through the band procession, finds Amy, and offers his mea culpa. It’s really heartening from a character standpoint, and again, encouraging that the show addresses an issue like this in such a positive manner.
The last story in the episode has to do with activism, in an episode where there’s an undercurrent of politics throughout. I like the bits with Mr. Rosso feeling like the spirit of rebellion he fought for has died, and seeing it sparked once more in Lindsay. It’s mostly quiet and mostly humorous (see also: Ben Stiller’s cameo as an unhappy Secret Service agent), but it’s still a tight little story about Lindsay fighting for something in her own small way (and getting some humorous reactions out of her parents in the process.
Overall, another outstanding episode of the show that hits some important ideas about what it really means to care about someone, and what really matters on that front.