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Give "Freaks" a chance | page 1, 2
Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment.
To that roster, you can add Lindsay and Sam's grouchy dad Harold ("SCTV" legend Joe Flaherty), their mom Jean (Becky Ann Baker), who yearns for her kids to need her again, and Mr. Rosso (Dave "Gruber" Allen), the hippie guidance counselor who has made it his personal mission to set Lindsay back on the straight and narrow. Laid-back, long-haired Mr. Rosso is an indelible bozo, the archetypical guidance counselor/narc; he's always subjecting Lindsay to his own "Scared Straight" confessions about how he ended up with herpes, or got beat senseless in an alley in Tijuana. In Mr. Rosso's finest hour, he herded Lindsay and her freak pals into his office for a "rap session," punctuating the discussion by pulling out an acoustic guitar and singing Alice Cooper's "Eighteen" with some p.c. lyric additions: "I'm a boy (or girl) and I'm a man (or wo-man) ..." Lindsay's reactions to Mr. Rosso's lectures are usually halfway between open-mouthed incredulity and unabashed disgust. But you can see why he expends so much energy on her. Lindsay is the most endearingly, believably mixed-up teenage girl on TV. Wrapped in a ratty Army jacket with her brown hair hiding her intelligent, heart-shaped face, Lindsay is trying to find her own way in the world, a place somewhere between her parents' expectations and the dead-end lives she fears her friends are headed for. She usually succeeds and fails at the same time. In one episode, for example, she's goaded by the freaks into "borrowing" her parents' car for a joyride and then gets into an accident. She feels so guilty when she sees her parents' profound disappointment -- and feels so betrayed when the freaks laugh it all off -- that she cleans up her act and re-joins the math team. But she has nothing in common with her old mathlete friends anymore, and, to confuse matters further, the freaks prove to be good friends after all, showing up at the math meet to cheer her on. Lindsay realizes that she doesn't have to choose between being a freak or a geek; she can just be herself. But she also realizes that being herself is the hardest path of all, especially when those misleading high school labels -- freak, geek, mathlete, slut -- keep getting in the way. In the show's brilliant opening-credit sequence, set to Joan Jett's shrug of bad-girl defiance "Bad Reputation," the characters take turns sitting for their school photos, but the camera keeps flashing when they're not ready. They're caught off guard. The faces that will appear in their yearbooks are not the faces they wanted to show the world; like those labels, they'll just be one more misrepresentation of their true selves. And the kids aren't the only ones here whose identities are works in progress; Harold and Jean Weir are having trouble adjusting to their roles as parents of teenagers. Harold's perpetual grimace is like a cartoon thought balloon reading, "What do I do now?" Jean's inability to let go is comical and poignant; in the Halloween episode, she's crushed when Lindsay blows off their annual mother and daughter candy-dispensing ritual to go hang with her friends. But Jean perks up when Sam announces that he still wants to go trick-or-treating even though he's in ninth grade. At least she still has one little bird in the nest! I suppose parental angst is not the sexiest way to sell a show about teenagers, but "Freaks and Geeks" gets it absolutely right. The broadcast history of "Freaks and Geeks" (chronicled by creators Apatow and Feig on their Web site; they've earned their tone of bitter exasperation) eerily mirrors the social Darwinism of high school itself. When the show premiered in September, NBC stuck it in the geekiest of time slots, Saturday night at 8. Then it was pushed off the air completely by the jocks (NBC was airing baseball playoffs) and the popular kids (November sweeps programming). NBC moved "Freaks and Geeks" to Mondays in January, where the ratings improved, but not enough; it was yanked off the air again after it failed to beat the "Mary and Rhoda" movie in the first week of February sweeps. Hey, that's the way to build an audience! There are eight unaired episodes of "Freaks and Geeks" remaining; the March 13 show is "Garage Door," in which Neal is devastated when Sam uncovers evidence that Dr. Schweiber, the coolest dad they know, is having an affair. If you care even a little bit about this series, let NBC know. Now for that pop quiz: A.) What's the name of Daniel Desario's girlfriend? B.) How many times did Lindsay have sex with Nick? C.) Who did Bill dress up as for Halloween? D.) Why is NBC always tossing this inventive, sincere, appealing series into detention, but giving empty-headed kiss-ups like "Stark Raving Mad" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" an unlimited hall pass? Answers: A.) Kim Kelly. B.) Zero. C.) The Bionic Woman. D.) Because life, like high school, isn't fair.
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