Nostalgic for Nosalgia

Even for someone like me who watches a fair amount of TV, and reads a lot of stuff about TV, it's simply not possible to see everything, or even everything I might be interested in. Shows get overlooked, or they don't seem like something I'd want to watch, or maybe they get canceled before they have a chance to catch on and build an audience. Actually, that's what happens to most new TV shows, at least the ones that air on the major networks.

Once in a while, one of these gone-too-soon shows ends up overcoming oblivion and goes on to become a cult classic. Even more rarely, a show canceled too soon goes on to become a cult classic and also becomes the foundation for the successful careers of several of its stars.

Can you tell that I finally got around to watching all of Freaks and Geeks? The show premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999 to critical acclaim but abysmal ratings. Eighteen episodes were completed, which more or less constitute a full season, though the show was officially canceled early in 2000 and not all of the completed episodes aired back then.

Freaks and Geeks tells the stories of two groups of high school students in suburban Michigan. Lindsay is a good student who is tired of being seen as just one of the smart kids, so she starts hanging out with the freaks, who gradually accept her. Her younger brother Sam and his friends Bill and Neal are misfits who are just trying to get through a day at school without getting picked on or beaten up. The episodes take place during the 1980-81 school year. This happens to be when I was a senior in high school, so the show was directly on target for me in so many ways: clothes, music, hairstyles, cars. We didn't use the term "freaks" though; where I grew up we referred to those kids as "burnouts."

The creative minds behind the show were Paul Feig and Judd Apatow, who have both gone on to highly successful careers as producers and directors of movies like Bridesmaids and Knocked Up. The cast included James Franco, who's gone on to do just about everything; Jason Segel, who is one of the stars of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (about to begin its seventh season) and has starred in movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the upcoming Muppets; Linda Cardellini, who went on to play nurse Sam on ER; Seth Rogen, who is a regular in many of Apatow's movies and is also in the upcoming 50/50; Busy Philipps, who is a star of the ABC sitcom Cougar Town and has a role in the upcoming I Don't Know How She Does It alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Christina Hendricks; Martin Starr, who appeared in Party Down (another show that deserved a better fate) and has done many other shows and movies; and John Francis Daley, who's on the Fox drama Bones. Not bad, huh?

The show had a few missteps: I felt the storyline about one character's interest in disco was a couple of years too late (disco's popularity had started to fade by '81), and for a show that was supposedly set in Michigan, there was a glaring absence of snow; in fact, I don't recall seeing so much as a winter coat. But really, these are just quibbles. The strength of the writing and acting overcomes such inconsistencies.

Freaks and Geeks has been running in what seems to be a continuous loop, one episode per week, on the cable channel IFC for at least the past year, probably longer. I wanted to watch the episodes in order, so I checked the schedule on IFC's web site to figure out when the first episode was airing, and started recording them back in the spring. If you're interested in the show, the bad news is that it's not available to watch through Netflix streaming; the good news is that the cycle of episodes is starting over next Monday at 6 pm Eastern time on IFC, so set your DVR to "record all episodes." You can always go the DVD route, but it's kind of fun to watch one episode per week, like in the old days of TV. It's well worth your time.