Freaks and Geeks - E01

Pilot
First Aired: Saturday September 25, 1999

Focusing on a high school in Michigan, we see the lives of two siblings play out; Lindsay, who has just recently shed her "brainy" station in life to hang out with the freaks of the school, and her brother Sam, who is lumped with the geeks of the freshman class.

The series opens in a high school in Michigan where Lindsay Weir looks to try to integrate with the freaks of the school. However, she ends up helping her brother and his geek friends from being harassed by a freshman bully. We learn that their parents wish them to go to the Homecoming dance in order to better socialize, since Lindsay has been slipping into darkness and Sam is becoming too much of a geek. Lindsay eventually starts to interact with the freaks, but she is shown hostility by Kim, the other female of the group. Though there is this female rift, the guys still try to be nice to Lindsay. Elsewhere, Sam's bully continues to harass him and his friends try to convince him that Cindy, a pretty freshman cheerleader, is in love with him. Lindsay, trying to be a good person, asks the "special" person in school to the dance when she sees him being harassed. Later, when she sees him being harassed further, she tries to help again but enrages him when she says he is retarded. The boy runs away, but ends up falling and breaking his arm. Afterwards, the guidance counselor tries to get Lindsay to rejoin the Math-eletes, but she doesn't want to. When she later skips school with one of the freaks, he sees them and tries to blackmail her into joining the Math-aletes. She still refuses and he rats her out, making her serve refreshments at the school dance. That night, she reveals to her brother that she had been their when their grandmother died. She is jaded now because she was convinced her grandmother didn't see anything related to Heaven, like God or a bright light. The next day, Sam and his friends, who are also now targets of the bully, decide to have a showdown. Sam is caught up talking to Cindy, though, so his friends are left on their own. While they aren't able to beat him up, they do scare off the bully. Sam asks Cindy to the dance, but she is already going with someone but will save a dance for him. Sam is happy besides this because his friends stood up for him. In the end, Lindsay is serving the refreshments but does dance with Eli anyway. Cindy and Sam also dance.

I had heard about this show a number of times over the years, but never ended up seeing it. I wasn't convinced too much within the first 10-15 minutes, but after that, I started to really enjoy the show. The thing I like about the humor was it as sometimes subtle and those moments were I ususally chuckled the most. In particular, I liked the idiocy of Seth Rogan and Martin Starr. I really started to like Linda Cardellini's character about halfway through and I kind of understand what she is doing with her high school life. The directing and filming were good and on par with this sort of dramatic show. I can see why this may not have succeeded, as it looks like it would be more targeted towards the teen through thirty year olds, but some of those people might not get some of the stuff. Overall, after the shaky beginning, this turned into something that I wanted to watch the next episode of right away.

Score: 8.6 / 10