Why Freaks And Geeks is the teen show that endures

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https://tv.avclub.com/why-freaks-and...res-1844539529

Thanks to streaming deals, DVD/Blu-ray releases, and a documentary, Freaks And Geeks keeps finding a new audience and reconnecting with its established fanbase. But when Paul Feig’s poignant teen drama-comedy premiered on NBC on September 25, 1999, it looked every bit the outsider that its eponymous characters were. Its teen-show peers were more heightened affairs like Dawson’s Creek, which had inherited the mantle from Beverly Hills, 90210, a show that ended its 10-season run the same year that Freaks And Geeks premiered. Roswell and Buffy The Vampire Slayer juggled adolescence and the supernatural—though, by 1999, the core group of teens in the latter was practically out of high school. Freaks And Geeks didn’t fit in a whole lot better with the rest of NBC’s lineup, which was made up of police procedurals and medical dramas like Law & Order and ER, and comedies like Friends and Frasier. As executive producer and series director Judd Apatow has lamented in interviews and DVD commentaries, “There was no home for us in 1999.”



But, for at least part of the 1999-2000 TV season, Freaks And Geeks was a beacon to anyone whose high school experience was awkward, boring, humbling, or painful—basically, anything other than the sexy and stylish depictions that had dominated teen-centered movies and shows. It begins with a feint in the pilot episode, one of best series introductions ever. Director Jake Kasdan scans the high school track, seeking out a very blond football player (Gabriel Carpenter, in a role not unlike his appearance in 1999’s Drive Me Crazy) who’s confessing his affection to a very blond cheerleader in the bleachers. This early encounter is the extent to which Freaks And Geeks would engage with the kind of prepossessing teens who were frequently the subjects of these shows. This decision, Feig tells The A.V. Club, was based on having “grown up on such a diet of teen stuff being about beautiful people who were so cool with everything, including sex. It didn’t reflect anything I grew up around. You would see those kids; they were around. But they weren’t my group. They weren’t the majority of the kids that I knew.”