Oh high school. It was a rough time for a lot of us. Maybe more memorable for some. While we’re passed those adolescent days now, we’re deep in Back to School days and getting more than a little nostalgic. That’s due in part to all the high school teen movies that still rattle around in …
Netflix’s new original series Bloodline centers around an affluent family in the Florida Keys, well regarded in the community for the inn and charter tour business run by Robert (Sam Shepard) and Sally Rayburn (Sissy Spacek). Their business, and indeed world, is turned upside down with the arrival of family black sheep Danny (Ben Mendelsohn), …
Maladies Written and directed by Carter USA, 2012 Somehow, the most inexplicable thing about Maladies is that it’s being released around the United States for release; considering the film’s deliberately experimental and impenetrable quality, this is no easy feat to achieve. But the overriding question upon watching Maladies is as follows: who is this movie …
Freaks and Geeks Episode 17 ‘The Little Things’ Written by Jon Kasdan, Judd Apatow, and Mike White Directed by Jake Kasdan Aired 7/8/2000 on NBC Although its clearly a truncated story line, the immediacy with which Sam and Cindy’s relationship falls apart in ‘The Little Things’ (which aired immediately after ‘Smooching and Mooching’ in the …
Freaks and Geeks Episode 16 ‘Smooching and Mooching’ Written by Steve Barros Directed by Jake Kasdan Aired 7/8/2000 on NBC By the time the script for ‘Smooching and Mooching’ was broken in the writer’s room, the writing was on the wall for Freaks and Geeks. Knowing they only had three episodes left to work with, they …
Freaks and Geeks Episode 15 ‘Noshing and Moshing’ Written by J. Elvis Weinstein Directed by Jake Kasdan Aired 10/17/2000 on FOX Family On a macro level, Freaks and Geeks is a show about acceptance. There are a lot of facets to this idea; accepting identity, acceptance of the shit piles life starts handing us in high school (and …
When I think of the long-term potential missed out on Freaks and Geeks, episodes like ‘Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers’ come to the forefront of my memory. It’s an episode about two non-main characters (Bill and Millie) giving unexpected depth to their characters, family situations, and teenage lives. They come in very different forms – one from the death of a family member, and the other from a family gaining one – but they tie back to this similar idea of teenage rebellion, of how forcing ourselves to not deal with something emotional only makes things worse in the long run.
Freaks and Geeks Episode 13 ‘Chokin’ and Tokin” Written by Judd Apatow Directed by Miguel Arteta Aired 3/20/2000 on NBC The last episode to air before NBC canceled Freaks and Geeks, ‘Chokin’ and Tokin” displayed many of the things that made the show great: layered characters (both major and minor), a stark look at the transitions …
Until ‘The Garage Door’, Neal and Ken are far and away the least-developed characters on the show. Ken disappears for episodes at a time, we’ve never seen the inside of Neal’s house – and both are people who use jokes to cover up their own feelings and insecurities. Both of them have to come face to face with something they’re dreading to realize in ‘The Garage Door’; but while Ken’s has a happy ending, Neal’s almost certainly will not, the latest of Freaks and Geeks’ tragic, relatable teenage anecdotes.
Freaks and Geeks Episode 11 ‘Looks and Books’ Written by Paul Feig Directed by Ken Kwapis Aired 2/7/2000 on NBC Through the first ten episodes, we’ve talked a lot about high school and identity, a theme that crops up over and over in Freaks and Geeks, again dominating the narrative foreground in ‘Looks and Books’. Thankfully, Freaks …
Freaks and Geeks Episode 10 ‘The Diary’ Written by Rebecca Kirshner (Teleplay), Judd Apatow & Rebecca Kirshner (Story) Directed by Ken Olin Aired 1/31/2000 on NBC As most episodes of Freaks and Geeks do, ‘The Diary’ begins innocently, and slowly snowballs into a brutally honest story about identity. The cold open takes this a step farther: it …
There is a holy trinity of events that bring a high school population: lunch every day, school dances, and big sporting events. In theory, high school is really just a bunch of people thrown together because of their geographic location, so those few moments are the rare instances where the population of a school really comes together. But sports events are a monster all to their own: when a sports team becomes a powerhouse, it brings the entire community together, despite all the personal and social dramatics that might be afflicting us. Amongst all the teen angst of McKinley High and its inhabitants, ‘We’ve Got Spirit’ quietly reflects on those rare moments when everyone comes together.
‘Girlfriends and Boyfriends’ begins with Lindsay entering McKinley for another day of school. On her way to the patio, she passes by the other cliques you typically see in high schools dramas – jocks tossing around a football, nerds with their binders in hand, and the like. She notices them, but quickly dismisses them as she heads outside (reminding us that Freaks and Geeks is not a show that operates within cliches, allowing us to reset our expectations for the stories to follow)… that is, until she passes Generic Couple Making Out in the hallway, and becomes fixated on their grope-y embrace. If the title didn’t already give it away, that moment reveals the sole focus of the episode: sex and relationships.
Technically the tenth episode (in terms of production order) of Freaks and Geeks, there’s a noticeable dissonance in this episode’s tone when contrasted against the episodes surrounding it – things are markedly more optimistic in the first two thirds than in last week’s ‘I’m With the Band’ and next week’s ‘Girlfriends and Boyfriends’. But considering where it was placed (after a two-month hiatus at the end of 1999), ‘Carded and Discarded’ actually provides a nice light moment in between the dark stories bookending it.
Freaks and Geeks Episode 6 ‘I’m With The Band’ Directed by Judd Apatow Written by Gabe Sachs & Jeff Judah Originally aired 11/13/99 on NBC At its core, ‘I’m With The Band’ is about fear. Fear of failure, fear of exposure… and most of all, the fear of the unknown, as seen with the two focal …
If anyone needed proof that James Franco was going to be a great actor, all they had to watch was his show-stealing performance in ‘Tests and Breasts’. But the tale of Daniel Desario is a tragic comedy – and following on the heels of ‘Kim Kelly Is My Friend’, firmly establishes the streak of cynical realism underneath the touching character moments and hilarious conclusions. Last week it was Kim’s disturbing life, and next week it will be Nick’s reality check – but this week belongs to Daniel, who has a profound impact on nearly every character on the show in this episode.
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.
Freaks and Geeks Episode 3 ‘Tricks and Treats’ Directed by Bryan Gordon Written by Paul Feig Aired 10/30/1999 on NBC It always amazes me how Freaks and Geeks started a series with such strong episodes, only to be ignored by the public and dismissed by NBC. ‘Tricks and Treats’ is a thoroughly impressive hour of television, weaving …
Freaks and Geeks Episode 2 ‘Beers and Weirs’ Directed by Jake Kasdan Written by J. Elvis Weinstein & Judd Apatow Aired 10/2/99 The problem with most second episodes of television shows is they spend too much time re-establishing the story beats and relationship dynamics between characters from the pilot, just in case there’s a few …
If there’s such thing as a perfect pilot, Freaks and Geeks’s first hour is it. Most pilots are mish-mashed groups of scenes with some overly constructed jokes, an audience-grabbing plot hook, and numerous scenes where characters explain who other characters are. ‘Pilot’ is the exact opposite of that, a beautiful, detailed photograph into a high school in suburban Detroit on the first day back from summer vacation.
One narrative mechanism that offers the potential for the audience to feel truly transported into another world, familiar or unfamiliar as it may be, is having someone in the story to represent our perspective. This is an old trick of fiction: insert a Nick Carraway-type person for other characters to confide in, and through these …
With ABC cancelling Last Resort and 666 Park Avenue recently, we decided to look back on other TV series that were cancelled too soon. 10. Ringer (1 season, 22 episodes, ended in 2012) Sarah Michelle Geller plays a pair of twin sisters who are complete opposites. There’s Bridget, a recovering drug addict and stripper, and …
With Eastbound & Down’s series finale set to air this Sunday and the 2012 MLB season a few weeks underway, baseball is on the brain of many a sports-loving TV fan. With such a long and rich history, and such a strong place in American culture, it’s only natural for so many series to take …