Freaks and Geeks

Lindsay Weir, main character of Freaks and GeeksLast week, Hugo ordered Freaks and Geeks DVDs from Blockbuster Online. I had never seen it before, but I decided to give it a spin. Despite the fact that I was working like crazy last week, I still found time (mostly by not sleeping) to watch the nine episodes that we had in our posession.

Now I have a dilema. I am in love with Freaks and Geeks. And I know that I have exactly nine episodes left. The show only lasted one season, and there are but eighteen precious episodes for me to love.

I’ve begun feeling anxious. Nervous. I’m already half-way through the best series ever, and there is no hope of there being any more story. Have you ever been a relationship that you knew wasn’t going to pan out, so you try to convince yourself that you don’t actually like the person? It’s starting to come to that. I can anticipate the separation anxiety. I already have it.

Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? I’ve started to tell myslef that it’s not really a series, cut short in its budding infancy. If I think of Freaks and Geeks as a really great movie that goes on for 18 hours, it seems to dull the pain a little.

Those of you who know me might try to minimize my love for the series as merely lust for the main character, Lindsay Weir, played by Linda Cardellini (who was 24 when this was filmed, f.y.i.). Sure, that’s a part of it. But the the whole cast is incredibly strong. And the writing is fantastic. The show is so gut-wrenchingly real that I actually find myself shouting back at the TV ("Go for it Sam! She likes you!").

My roller coaster feelings for this show remind me a lot of the way I feel when I watch The Wonder Years. Its an emotional current. That show evokes a very strange feeling that I’ve never been able to astutely describe. It’s like a "painful nostalgia." Back when I was a kid watching The Wonder Years, I was younger than the characters (and had never lived in the time period portrayed) yet paradoxically, the show would impart this feeling of nostalgia for things that I had not experienced. Earlier today, I went back and read the series synopsis on Wikipedia, and the feeling came back. My stomach tghtened up. I got goosebumps.

Too much.

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