Sorry for the Freaks and Geeks overload, but I just finished watching the series again and decided I’m not done writing about it. This is mainly because of how the series ends for its protagonist, Lindsay Weir.
A quick summation of the Lindsay storyline in the finale, “Discos and Dragons,” for those of you who have better things to do with your free time than repeatedly watch an entire television series: Lindsay gets accepted into an academic summit at the University of Michigan for the summer, but after hearing about the competitions and ranking system it involves, she isn’t sure whether or not she wants to go. Mr. Rosso, her guidance counselor, loans her his copy of The Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” to help get her thoughts straight. Lindsay listens to it, loves it, and talks about it to some deadheads at school who tell her they’re planning on following the Dead this summer for a week and a half once school gets out. Lindsay appears intrigued, and at the episode’s conclusion we find out why. To the peaceful tune of “Ripple,” she boards a bus ostensibly headed for Ann Arbor but gets off at an earlier stop to meet up with the deadheads instead, electing to spend her summer rocking out at concerts instead of matching wits with the best minds Michigan has to offer. She happily boards their VW Microbus, and the series ends.
And I don’t like it.
I didn’t like it the first time I saw it, and I didn’t like it the second time, either. So this time I decided to think about why, if only because doing so made it easier to justify watching the series for a second time. The reason I came up with is extremely self-centered but also accurate and simple: I would never do what Lindsay did.
For most shows I like, this isn’t a big deal. Homer Simpson and I, for instance, have very little in common apart from a fondness for blue pants. The same is true for G.O.B. Bluth, Michael Scott, everyone on It’s Always Sunny, etc., but I love these shows anyway because the main appeal doesn’t lie in how realistic the characters are. It lies in the jokes. In other words, I don’t watch these shows to relate to them; I watch these shows to be entertained. If I see myself in any of the characters, that’s a nice bonus (or, in the case of It’s Always Sunny, downright terrifying), but it’s not essential.
Freaks and Geeks is different. It’s definitely funny (thank you Harold Weir and Bill Haverchuck), but I don’t think you can say that the comedy was what inspired such a devoted cult following for the show. The joke-to-minute ratio is too low, and the interludes between laugh out loud moments are long and, on occasion, pretty agonizing.
The biggest strength Freaks and Geeks has, then, (for me, anyway) is how true to life the characters are. The show isn’t pornographic adolescent escapism in the vein of 90210 or The O.C. It’s grounded very strongly in reality, and reality isn’t always very much fun or consistently peppered with hilarious one-liners. It can be a painful, awkward place—especially from ages 14-18—and Freaks and Geeks reflected that. You didn’t watch this show to futilely long for the glamorous lives of Brenda Walsh or Seth Cohen. You watched it because it was comforting to realize that, while you were dealing with all your insecurities and angst in high school, a lot of other people were, too. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made a television show about it.
This is what made the finale of Freaks and Geeks so jarring to me. After spending the season relating to the main characters (mostly Sam, but all of them at some point or another) (even the parents) (damn it, I’m getting old) almost too easily, to have it end with the protagonist making a decision that I was far too good of a kid to ever make was a bit unsettling. When I was in high school, lying to my parents about anything was a terrifying ordeal. Lying to them about where I was going to spend a week and a half was completely out of the realm of possibility. And since Lindsay isn’t supposed to do things that I wouldn’t do, the ending of Freaks and Geeks was a bit of a disappointment for me.
Having said that, it did make perfect sense for the character. The major story arc for the series consisted of Lindsay trying to leave behind her identity as a mathlete and trying to decide whether or not she wanted to. She made a clear choice in the finale. The fact that I would have made a different one ultimately just means I’m not as similar to a television character as I thought, which really shouldn’t be cause for frustration.
Anyway, great series. Now, onto Undeclared.
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