![]() ![]() Judd Apatow and Paul Feig are friends from the Los Angeles comedy world. T he Freaks and Geeks story begins in late 1998. And Apatow and Feig re-teamed not long ago, as producer and director of the 2011 hit Bridesmaids. Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and James Franco-in their first roles or first roles of note, like nearly all their young castmates-got their start there. It was also the wellspring of a dominant force in 21st-century comedy: the School of Apatow. Whether telling the story of an A student straying from her expected path, a drummer whose dreams outstrip his talent, a kid addressing his parents’ foundering marriage through ventriloquism, or a geek who gets the girl of his dreams only to learn she bores him, the show-unusual for a network series-always preferred emotional truth to rosy outcomes, character to type, and the complicated laugh to the easy one. Both on-screen and behind the scenes, the story of Freaks and Geeks is one of community beating against the odds and growing stronger for it.Īn hour-long comedy with drama at its core (a “dramedy,” to use the then current term of art), the series centered on a sister and brother, 16-year-old Lindsay Weir and 14-year-old Sam, and, widening its frame, the outsider crowds in which the Weirs run-the older freaks for Lindsay, the younger geeks for Sam-as everyone copes with the sad, hilarious unfairness of life. But its beauties are not cosmetic, and its ambitions are subtle. Though you would not think it of a show set in a suburb of Detroit during the 1980–81 school year, Freaks and Geeks, which premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999, is one of the most beautiful and ambitious television series ever made.
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