Y'all know I don't watch the TV. I don't even have one. If I did, I'd watch three things: cycling, soccer, and that British car show Top Gear I think it's called, with that fascinating character who has the magic touch.
Since the implosion of the Lakers, basketball has dropped off the list, but that's another story for probably never. Yeah, fair-weather fan and all that. Guilty as charged.
Sometimes I miss good stuff though. I was into the Sopranos when I was spending a lot of time in NY and NJ, not because I was in NY and NJ but because it was easy to catch it at Amy and Alex's pad, although being in NJ and watching the Sopranos is a knife-full of icing on the cake.
What I also missed was this little show that came and went in one season called Freaks and Geeks. I watched the last three episodes Sunday night on DVD. My friend urgently suggested that given our common age and background, I needed to see this show.
She was pretty much right. If you came of age somewhere in that transition from the 70s to the 80s, it's a pretty neat show, with crisp, attentive story writing, and characters that will knock you out. It's almost spooky how every single character save Nick's dad reminds me almost precisely of someone I knew or maybe even still know. Precisely. Like I could just substitute names and let the show run its course. It would be that easy.
In those three episodes, scenario after scenario felt dreadfully, beautifully familiar. I even remembered kids I hadn't thought of in twenty years, including this red-headed girl at a friends' illicit "party" that we somehow all talked our parents into driving us to, where the Kinks' "Destroyer" owned us all, and we slow-danced to the slow songs illuminated by those cheap "disco" lights you could buy at Radio Shack, and on the way out I tried to steal a peck on the cheek--or more--from the red-headed girl. Her name was probably Jessica. Or maybe Jane. Or Esmerelda. Who knows?
She sure looked like the evil Cindy on the show though. And that party. Oh god. How real that party was. Spin the Bottle that never ended even remotely like the myth would have you believe it should (although the über geek getting up in the grill of that trendy bitch was SWEET! And he got a kiss for his troubles!). Hell, my buddies Paul and Abby got better results out of Truth or Dare at the end of a humid lunch in 6th grade than any of those sweaty, palpitating shag-carpet Spin the Bottle sessions.
Anyway, good show if you missed it. Check out the DVD. Although I warn you of one thing: the ending--and I mean the ending ending, like last minute of the last episode ever--hits the most sour note imaginable. My theory is that the creators knew they weren't getting renewed, so they wrote in this horrible coda that just hits the most clangingly wrong note.
Actually, my theory is bad because we listened to the commentary afterwards and there wasn't a trace of rancor in their voices. They seemed quite pleased with this little "clever" twist.
Trust me: it's awful. Really, painfully, awful and wrong and bad. Wrong-bad.
But do watch the episodes, especially if you're a pal of mine and you've ever vaguely wondered what it was like growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. I am assured that until that ending, all the other episodes preceding the three I watched are as good as the three I watched. All right notes and good things and two-panel velour shirts with white piping.
