Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks may fail because it has no hope of drawing viewers to a crummy Saturday night time slot. But don't ever suggest it lacks soul. Or heart. Or brains. Freaks and Geeks is that wonderful rarity among television series, a show that simultaneously lampoons reality and embraces it. [25 Sept 1999, p.C1]

Joe Flaherty, the former SCTV standout, chips in as a perfectly apt one-note pop who preaches that all of his former misbehaving classmates are now - "dead!" [25 Sept 1999, p.1C]

In addition to fresh, sharp writing, the casting in Freaks and Geeks is exceptional. [25 Sept 1999, p.E05]

The new fall season's best show...Here's how good: It will make you like a Styx song. Yes. It may even make you love it. It will definitely make you hum Come Sail Away, that awful anthem from one of corporate rock's biggest hack acts. Why? Because it is the dead solid perfect choice for the first episode's closing scene, a scene so painfully perfect you'll wish you were 16 again. [25 Sept 1999, p.1D]

Freaks and Geeks will certainly capture the heart of anyone who came of age in the late '70s and early '80s (it's set in 1980) and should ring true for anyone whose high school memories have not been totally sublimated...One of the few shows this season that's left me waiting anxiously for week two. [25 Sept 1999, p.1E]

This quirky comedy-drama stands out as one of the real pleasures among the 35 new series...It is funny, but also tender and nostalgic. This is one homecoming dance you don't want to miss. [25 Sept 1999, p.E1]

The best new show of the season...It's less sentimental than "The Wonder Years" and not as concerned with its period setting. Unlike "My So-Called Life," which was real in a gloomy-doesn't-life-stink way, Freaks and Geeks finds abundant humor in the absurdity of the situations the characters face. [22 Sept 1999, p.C-1]

A frisky little triumph of real spirit and a collaboration between creator-writer-supervising producer Paul Feig ("Life Sold Separately") and executive producer Judd Apatow ("The Larry Sanders Show"). You'll feel better about yourself, and television - if only you'll stay home on Saturdays to watch it. [25 Sept 1999, p.53]

We've all been there. Which is why Freaks and Geeks works so well. Cloaked in grunginess, it's a totally unpretentious slice of high school life, a decidedly unmelodramatic drama devoid of "Dawson's Creek"-speak and sticky self-analysis. No one is wearing designer duds and the closing scene at the high school homecoming dance reveals that not one student possesses a shred of rhythm. [25 Sept 1999, p.25]

The young actors are natural and convincing, and the high school characters manage to be funny without too much Dawson's Creek glibness.

Freaks and Geeks shows promise of touching the same common chord that The Wonder Years played so well for the classes of the '60s. [25 Sept 1999, p.7]

There's a touch of "The Wonder Years" here-but there's also a dash of "Welcome to the Dollhouse." As high-school shows go, Freaks and Geeks boasts a rare authenticity. [27 Sept, 1999, p.64]

It is, with only a couple of exceptions, sharply observed, poignant and original, and even worthy of getting the family together to watch. [24 Sept 1999, p.Tempo 3]

Freaks and Geeks is a grittier "Wonder Years," while retaining some of that show's sweetness. The writing is sharp, and the young stars are vividly, awkwardly real. Spending an hour with them is almost worth going back to high school again. [24 Sept 1999, p.E10]

Emotionally, the pilot of “Freaks and Geeks” feels just about right — touching, but not sappy, amusingly off-kilter but not crude. Sure it’s nostalgic — former freaks and geeks are notorious wound lickers, the better to savor their post-high school triumphs. And this affectionate nostalgia, this assumption that viewers have been through what the characters are enduring and come out OK, is the show’s greatest strength and weakness. Freaks and Geeks depicts its ancient bygone era so well, it’s hard to imagine actual teenagers — freaks or geeks — tuning in.

So much in the Freaks and Geeks premiere is shrewdly, tenderly and sagaciously observed that one wonders whether there'll be enough material left for additional episodes. Probably. [25 Sept 1999, p.C01]

In its own affectionate way, Freaks and Geeks puts a pimple into the TV-ized approach to adolescence. This delightfully observed 1980s-set dramedy is high school as many of us remember it, with Twinkie-pounding bullies and Army-jacket wearing druggies and pale nerds with speech impediments and "Star Trek" fixations. It's high school unplugged, a sort of "Dazed and Confused" for the small screen, and it is one of the fall season's most likable new shows. That NBC has thrown "Freaks and Geeks" into the wilds of Saturday night - it premieres tonight at 8 on Ch. 7 - is only further evidence of network nitwitness. [25 Sept 1999, p.C1]

Oddly affecting. [25 Sept 1999, p.E-7]

In mere minutes and with a few instantly evocative images, Freaks draws its characters more precisely than some shows do in a season. [24 Sept 1999, p.11E]

A tartly written number, (by Paul Feig) that is amusing and frequently hard-eyed in its look back at certain not so dear old school days. [27 Sept 1999, p.A32]

Freaks and Geeks is tapping into something primal: adolescents' hunger to begin to understand themselves and their world. Freaks and Geeks is too honest to offer answers. But it affirms the value and the universality of asking the questions. [24 Sept 1999, p.140]

Like the kids it's about, this show deserves a better fate, however. (Saturday night at 7? Come on, NBC.) It's a dry-eyed but ultimately sweet program, and if you're home alone on a date night, it's for you. [24 Sept 1999, p.48]

Though it has a winning, low-keyed charm, Freaks and Geeks can't escape its sense of borrowed wonder. But at least it has some. [24 Sept 1999, p.E1]

Speaks with a more authentic teen voice than other series in this genre, becoming an antidote for WB's "Dawson's Creek," whose articulate, sophisticated high schoolers are adults in youthful bodies...The downside is that situations and characters here are so overdrawn, little space remains for subtlety or nuance. [25 Sept 1999, p.F1]