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Freaks and Geeks Ep 1.04 ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ is a fantastic episode about Lindsay’s new friend

Freaks and Geeks Ep 1.04 ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ is a fantastic episode about Lindsay’s new friend

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Freaks and Geeks Season 1, Episode 4 ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’
Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter
Written by Mike White
Aired 9/5/2000 on FOX Family

It always boggles my mind that NBC never aired ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ because of the ‘darker’ material surrounding Kim Kelly’s home life, because it’s such an important episode in establishing her character for the rest of the series. Written by Mike White (creator of Enlightened, and writer of Orange County and School of Rock), ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ takes what’s been an archetype character to this point, and fills her out in three detailed and devastatingly poignant dimensions.

When the episode begins, Kim’s up to her usual antics, terrorizing freshman with her friend Karen (a young, particularly nasty Rashida Jones). Karen is shorter and slighter than Kim (and with dark hair), but she provides a mirror to judge Kim’s character against for the entire episode: at the beginning, they’re essentially the same person. They walk around, picking on Sam and his friends, saying rude things to Lindsay, and just being the kind of girls high school boys say “must always be having their periods” (in this episode, it’s Nick). They’ve both got terrible reputations – Kim openly calls her friend a slut, and Millie warns Lindsay that Kim “fornicates it” with boys in the yearbook dark room – and their shared repulsion of the human race seems to draw them together.

But there’s a fundamental difference between Kim and Karen, one that is continuously expressed through the episode: this isn’t the kind of person Kim Kelly wants to be. There’s a part of her that wishes she was in someone else’s life – like Lindsay’s, who represents the complete other end of the life spectrum to Kim, a girl everybody seems to like thanks to her good grades and affluent family. She’s jealous of her – and projects that onto her through ridicule and anger, an abuse Lindsay’s just “not in the mood for” anymore.

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But Lindsay doesn’t really understand any of this about Kim until she finally spends some time with her – catalyzed by Nick telling Kim to stop being a bitch to her, in his ever-so-subtle attempts to get Lindsay’s attention (his growing crush on her is noted a few times in the episode). Initially hesitant, she decides to have dinner at her house, even after her brother tells her that “her and Karen Scafoli are psychos”; for a moment, she even tries to put on Kim’s attitude and tell her brother “maybe you are a geek” after he tells her about Kim and Karen picking on him.

However, Lindsay quickly learns that she isn’t Kim, nor does she ever want to be: like Neal’s chemistry set, there’s no telling what will happen when explosive materials are mixed. Kim’s lies turn into a very unsettling scene at her house, where her mother berates both Kim and Lindsay, and her father chases Lindsay out of the house and violently shakes the car Kim’s mom insists belongs to her (Kim’s aunt gave her the car before she OD’ed on cocaine, apparently some time after doinking Ryan O’Neal at a party).

The physical act of Kim’s stepfather shaking the car is a metaphor for Kim’s reality rocking Lindsay’s brain: she’s suddenly exposed to a form of adolescence she can’t begin to understand. And after Kim explodes (after seeing Karen sucking on Daniel’s finger at the local park), the message is hit home for Lindsay: Kim’s personality has been formed and hardened by the shitty hand she’s been dealt in life. She’s got an abusive stepfather (as Kim ominously says, “I’ve got so much dirt on him, you know?”, which suggests an ever darker side to his already shady misdemeanor), her boyfriend is super hot and super horny (“he’s like… sexier than Rod Stewart, don’t you think?) – and even more sadly, the nicest guy she’s ever known, which  speaks to the male influences she’s had in her young life.

Kim’s personality is nothing but a bunch of barriers protecting a damaged, scared person who has no direction or sense of where she’s going to go in life. It’s the polar opposite of Lindsay of course, but as they sit in Kim’s car and she screams and cries, Lindsay finally realizes that Kim never wanted to hate Lindsay: it’s just another one of her barriers. She can’t trust her boyfriend (Lindsay’s not an ugly girl, which exacerbates the issue), she can’t trust her parents – she can’t trust anyone, and for the first time, Lindsay gets to peek under the rough exterior and see the damaged girl hiding underneath the thick facade.

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Of course, all these events coalesce for the episode’s fantastic climax, when a super-high Nick shows up to help Daniel and Kim talk it out, which leads to a violent scene of Kim smacking him around in the kitchen, while Daniel does his best James Dean and stares at her, repeating to her that he didn’t do anything wrong. It clicks the final puzzle piece into place for Kim, and opens the door for future episdoes to dig into Daniel: these two may be completely awful for each other, in terms of their grades, the health of their relationship, and their prospects for the future – but unlike everybody else in the world (including all members of the Weirs), they understand each other. It’s a sad love story (one that probably ends up with a failed marriage or an unhappy life), but it’s poignant because it speaks to the truths of both Kim and Daniel: they’ve both been handed a shit pile when it comes to family life, and they feel like they’re the two people alone in the eye of the storm. They’re perfect for each other, in ways that we can only fully understand when we see that kitchen scene.

I’ve written a thousand words without talking about the other Weir member we spend a lot of time with: Sam, who is dealing with the fallout of Lindsay’s new friendships, mostly the Kim-sanctioned torture by Karen. Of course, Lindsay doesn’t really care about any of it – which is not only true to how a sister would feel about such a thing, but allows Lindsay to step aside for Kim to step in later during the episode and stick up for Sam and his friends. His material is just as relatable as Lindsay and Kim’s, but with a more comical edge, especially as he pounds down food (so he’s not a ‘pygmy geek’ anymore) that he burps and immediately vomits after finishing his dinner (Harold: “well, that’s a waste of a perfectly good piece of veal”). But Sam’s struggles with Karen are the final piece to bringing Kim’s character full circle: she’s able to show a human side by helping him out (and getting back at Karen: “well after school, I’m going to hit on you”), but still remind us that she’s Kim Kelly when she responds to Sam’s thank you with “No problem, geek.”

‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ is far and away the darkest episode of Freaks and Geeks – and in that light, I suppose it makes sense that NBC would’ve been uncomfortable with some of the material (especially Kim’s stepfather, who is an absolute creep). Maybe my point of view is biased: if I were to rank my favorite episodes of this show, there’s no way this episode doesn’t find its way into the top three. Although it features much less of the supporting crew than most episodes (Ken doesn’t even appear on-screen in the episode), ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’ is one of the most powerful episodes of Freaks and Geeks, injecting just enough humor and catharsis into what is a very, very unsettling and depressing episode without it.

 

Other thoughts/observations:

– the cold open with Daniel and Nick snagging donuts from Millie is so funny. Daniel’s reason? “I really like sprinkles, though.”

– Sam’s a little out of it, having just been smacked in the solar plexus and all.

– we get our first sighting of Jerry Messing as Gordon in this episode, telling Lindsay that she can sit with them at lunch because the kid who usually sits there is out with impetigo.

– Nick tells Lindsay “It’s really cool when you hang out,” and later tries to give her a massage (in the midst of everything going haywire at the Weir house).

– there’s a tracking shot that begins focused on Daniel and Lindsay that then swings around to Kim yelling at her mom on the phone that is just terrific.

– Sam to his mom: “You want me to stay a midget???”

– Kim pulls up to Lindsay’s driveway: “Ugggh, I got the worst cramps, I just about DIED on my way over here.”

– Kim also makes a suggestion that her step-father can’t read. Ouch.

– while watching the episode ‘Hash’ of Barney Miller (where the whole police squad gets stoned off pot brownies) Kim talks about her brother Chip (writer Mike White in a great little cameo), who got beaten by the cops and now just lays on the couch sleeping all the time.

– we see Nick Miller shooting hoops, a nod to Jason Segel’s high school basketball career. Fun fact: he played on the same team as Sherrod and Jason Collins, the NBA player who recently came out as gay.

– Kim to Lindsay: “You’re like my only friend – and you’re a loser! No offense.”

– Harold: “have I seen your parents shopping my store?” Kim: “yeah, my mom hates going there, though, because your stuff is so over-priced.”

– Nick and the fruit roll-ups is one of my favorite little gags on the series.

– after Kim leaves and Lindsay heads off to do homework, Harold looks at Jean and says “This is not good.”

 

— Randy

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