Post by affrosponge88 on Dec 31, 2012 1:13:59 GMT -6
Freaks and Geeks: "We've Got Spirit" Review
by Capt. Blicero
What’s popular in these reviews is to share a personal story from high school that relates to the episode. I’m afraid I was a boring high school student and didn’t really have a social clique or too many friends. I was more of an impassive viewer who saw the geeks as a boring collection of brownnosers with more interest in a grade than true understanding and the freaks as a sad group of troubled kids who may or may not realize the treacherous future they were heading toward, mimicking their reviled parents unknowingly by rejecting a system that ultimately intends to help them. It’s a
show about a group of flawed people trapped in an institution that can do nothing to serve them, but unlike the Wire the consequences are more of a broken heart-level event rather than repeated stab wounds or 30 to life.(1) It’s a surprisingly and extremely “white” show – white as in socioeconomically speaking, as in the suburban US since these days people of many colors are embracing boring, white bread America – but a closer and more authentic examination of high school life is certainly fertile ground for television, which is used well as a populist’s venue. It’s almost shocking then that Freaks and Geeks was a ratings failure because of its high-level of realism and fascinating, deep characters; but that realism was so polished it veered into frank and cringe-inducing. And here I sit, the dispassionate observer watching a TV show about high school students that conjures memories of watching the peculiar students at my own school, hoping that these naïve, inexperienced kids learn faster.
Identity versus spirit
Freaks and Geeks is largely about identity at a time in a young person’s life where he or she is just discovering that identity. A child stumbles through the world with boundless energy, absorbing everything within sight, including everything the parents do; but by the time hormones have transformed the innocent kid into a raging beast of sarcasm and MTV raps, the parents are violently rejected and new identities are explored from jock to new-found atheist to emo to Visigoth.(2) The teens assume it’s a turbulent region, but groups organically form from the churning depths of teenagehood, assembling in cliques like the cheerleaders, the jocks, and our freaks and geeks. The show’s catalyst, in fact, was Lindsay daringly switching sides after a death in the family from the brainiacs to the burnouts. A common thread between the two seemingly opposite factions is the ultimate human power of self-awareness and
intellect, from the feats of mental dexterity and intense analytical evaluation to the outsider’s view of the freaks, gazing at the hypocritical and vain world of high school to reject the status quo of building a wall around one’s being: the hip clothes, the polite language, homework on subjects they have no reason for caring, pretending their home lives are perfect. The geeks and mathletes differ by acting like perfect students, using their smarts to ace within the system while the freaks attempt to bypass it. Lindsay is bridging the two realms, using the freedom the freaks have to let her mind and skills grow.
The underlying structure to the episode is school spirit where a big basketball game with a rival school is nearing and even though the main characters care little about the outcome it seeps into their lives.(3) The concept of forcing kids to cheer and be imbibed with spirit is so particularly high school. Virtually every student there had no choice in going to McKinley and at a time when kids were rejecting their family to form their own personas it’s not exactly ideal to persuade them to cheer with a group of people that included many they actively hated or ignored. The freaks openly mocked the game to the point where it was embarrassing to watch them fervently express their disinterest in athletics, but they were ultimately thrust into support by the
America’s favorite foreign political strategy: violence. The geeks cared even less about the game, but Sam was trying to win Cindy’s heart (somehow) by donning an ugly Viking costume and acting as the school jester and Neil saw an opportunity to showcase his comedic “mastery” while Bill watched coolly from the sidelines daydreaming about the last episode of Dallas.(4)(5) Cindy herself is mostly unaware of Sam’s crush and openly lusts for the basketball star while she cheers on the sidelines, seemingly not for the school itself but to have her legs plowed open by a handsome blond teen boy but maintaining her credibility as an upright high
school student on the straight and narrow. Lindsay and Nick continued their ongoing, awkward relationship saga, but even that broached the subject as Nick’s secret life as a young basketball star was revealed; when you learn more about your partner you learn about his or her romantic past and how identity it not stable, your degree of trust in the person is damaged by questions about who your partner really is. Even father Weir got into the story, seeing his run for a school board position contaminated by the excited “support” of the freaks in an encounter in the hallway.(6) Ultimately, no one really cares for the school itself, and only poor Todd cares for the game itself; they only care about each other, but mostly their own selfish interests.
The geeks and the crusade
The impetus episode is the fall of the school’s mascot, a poor small lad by the name of Herbert who falls when parading on a table, breaking his arm, and hitting his head, causing a concussion and suggestions from others that he dare not sleep because it might be an endless slumber. The fact that he’s merely a prop and utterly replacement, as Sam eventually takes his suit, is disturbing.(7) He has no self, and when he escaped the burden he was unrecognizable, as the geeks talk about him in harsh tones unknowingly in front of him. In fact, the mascot suit is a confusing mess of identity: it serves as an extension of the school and the abstract concept of spirit; concussion boy, Sam and Neil all become the mascot in the same continuum; it’s a play on the idea of the physical self being distinct from what’s inside; but when no one can see underneath the mask, there is no difference between Sam, Neil and Herbert.
The situation allows Cindy the opportunity to break young Sam’s spirit by either stupidly and unwittingly leading him on or purposefully gnawing on his heart strings for sheer joy like an evil Disney queen. In reality, Cindy had a crush on Todd the basketball star in much the same way as Sam on Cindy: Todd barely acknowledges her existence (at least at first). Truthfully, she’s just talking to Sam like the younger brother she sees him by selfishly complaining about her dire situation as a cheerleader, but her conversation is vague enough to flummox Sam, who in romantic matters is still learning to walk. Playing as the beautiful, soul-crushing swan figure that she is, when he announces his intention to try out for the mascot she derides his physical skill and indirectly his manhood and suitability as a mate. He does nail the
role in the audition, but as on many occasions in Freaks and Geeks his new suit is not the fit he imagined in his head.
When Sam finally gives up because he doesn’t performing for the school itself but for a chance to have an awkward kiss with Cindy, Neil steps up saying that what the school needed was laughter and he ought to know better since he’s obviously the comedy connoisseur that no one else is.(8) Unfortunately, he’s as self-absorbed as the freaks think the jocks are: he wants to show off, not help the cheerleading squad, and he’s so misguided he listens to no instructions and winds up causing mini-disaster at the hands of the ultimate bitch, the head cheerleader. The cheerleading squad is presumably about “cheer” and rallying glee from its students, but she’s as far from cheer as anyone is with her icy demeanor and tight rein of control over her minions. It’s another hypocrisy in an episode where many young people struggle to figure out who they really are and usually fail. After a series of misfortunes, it dawns on Sam that he can’t control who Cindy likes and taking out his anger on Todd would be the wrong thing to do, as when he talks to the basketball star he finds that he’s just a nervous kid in a big game.(9) Now it also seems that Todd wasn’t being indifferent to Cindy; he could have been nervous and shy in front of her. Sam shows a glimpse at a relationship maturity adults still struggle with executing, but the whole love triangle could have been avoided had the main characters had access to internet porn to burn off their sexual frustration and discover new, sick ways of sexualizing every part and process of the human body.
Lindsay and Nick and intense love
The episode actually opens with Lindsay talking to Nick on his couch. He’s talking about “deep” issues, like life and death, the afterlife, and she’s thinking, My boyfriend is a fucking idiot and a pothead. She confides in Kim that she’s thinking of breaking up with the dreaming drummer, but Kim warns that it’d be a nearly fatal idea. Daniel has the same reaction and pleads to her to stop. The look Lindsay has on her face in this episode (and the last one, particularly when Nick ends up not deflowering her but cuddling in a glorious display of high school awkwardness) is fantastic: she’s scared, she’s confused, and she has an inescapable sense of dread at the boy who was once sweet but is now a basket-case.
Your partner’s romantic history sometimes does not feel like your business even though a history of STDs is pretty pertinent information and how relationships ended can tell you a lot about him or her, but really the problem is the insecurities that arise when looking at a past boyfriend or girlfriend and the fear your beloved is actually someone else entirely. Lindsay learns one side of the story of Nick’s ex, and it’s disturbing: he sounds like a crazy stalker, but as he tells it he’s a romantic. The truth, as it usually is, is blurred in between those two poles, but no one can completely determine what it exactly is. The early part of the relationship is all fluff and hormones, and once that abates what’s left might still be pleasant or it might be a nightmare. There are shades of horror in talking with Nick’s old ex-girlfriend, who is presented like some sort of disaster survivor. Lindsay is like a detective stuck in a film noir mired in an increasingly bizarre and suspenseful chase through a labyrinthine underworld, and she has absolutely no idea what to expect from Nick. The scene where he climbs to her second story window is not out of place from a Michael Myers movie. Lindsay stalls her plan of ditching him after she hears about how the ex showed everyone his romantic poems, but it’s unclear how unstable Nick is since his own friends openly theorize about why he’s such a psycho in a relationship.(10)
Yet even with Nick’s scary relationship past what unties them is Lindsay’s unlucky mother, who was only trying to be a better parent but became too involved and broke up the young couple after Lindsay hesitated on the break-up.(11) A character trying to become someone – in this case Jean Weir as a super involved and loving mother – is the basic and essential physical process of the show. Lindsay became one of them, a freak, but dating her new kind proved unsuccessful, and the puppy dog Nick was supposed to be was more of a damaged, neglected mutt with a bad history.
The freaks cheer loudest
The freaks are exposed for being as selfish and shallow as the jocks, where they at first deride the jocks for playing a sport they (generally) love. In the freak world, showing that you care about something mainstream is the ultimate failure. A related sin is conformity; you can’t be “them”. Paradoxically, you have to conform to the freaks’ rule if you want to be accepted, which is an aspect that caused Lindsay problmes time and again, hiding her mathlete past, for example. The freaks would ultimately mature and be more accepting, as in this episode they participated in the collective
support of the basketball team. This, however, was only after they were assaulted fluidly by a group of kids from the obviously evil rival school. They did not become enlightened, saw the beauty of coming together as a school or an understanding of how other people have different values; they were pissed they got beat up by kids from another school after failing on their vengeance plan. The freaks generally consider themselves as high and mighty, detached from the shallow high school experience, but all it takes is a petty feud. They are freaks of communal bonding, not freaks escaping an intellectually-numbing world.
After a quick scene of the three original freaks who appeared to be merely gazing at the innards of Daniel’s car (they took off right away, so it’s not like a hose was detached or something), the kids who absolutely hate their school are assaulted by idiots from the rival school for just being from that school. In another scene, they see the rival school’s car and decide to spray paint the side as revenge. Of course, this is TV, and they have a terrible getaway plan. A fight ensued, but it was camaraderie: men bond when they play sports or fight together, and Kim is as much of a man as anyone. She’s the one who instigates the ass-kicking by pushing the blond-haired rival athletic star (now there’s a cliché of a character) and then hilariously backing out demanding that Daniel fight for her. Now that’s an empowered feminist.(12)
The pummeling they received together put them all in a good mood, as when we next see them they’re smiling and yelling, Go McKinley, but unfortunately father Weir is meeting with someone apparently important about the school board and their casual mention of being jumped and trashing another car causes his face to turn white. Daniel greets Mr. Weir, destroying any chance of him denying awareness of the hooligans; I was half-expecting Nick to ask if they still had any fruit roll-ups. During the game, when Neil is doing his carrot-top best with the props and Todd puts on an athletic display of stunning prowess with his 18-inch vertical, the freaks yell in the stands as proud and as enthused as anyone there, prompting a girl in the stands to applaud them for their spirit as a reversal of their support. The fact that it’s (probably) the same girl who stood next to them in the cafeteria near the star to the episode where they were outwardly jeering is a nice conclusion to their subplot, from freaks to cheerleader via a little bit of bloodshed.
73-72: McKinley wins
I have an issue with a sports game in a TV show or movie inevitably ending on a “final” show because it’s unrealistic how often it happens and the dramatic effect is lost when used repeatedly, but McKinley has to win: it’s an uncomfortable show at certain points with characters who are stumbling through life. People who have
graduated high school will tell you that it’s something to go through; it’s only something. You’ll likely do more important things in college. A job will make some of your homework assignments look silly. You’re in an insulated little ecosystem so you can learn and mature before you’re sent off to the “real world”. This was just a basketball game in high school (though it was regionals!) The adults serve out mandates for what the students have to do, either thinking it’s for their own good or because it’s tradition, but the students don’t grow because they watch a few men throw a ball into a hoop; they grow because they’re engaging with each other and socializing. That it’s in a high school is almost arbitrary.
The episode ends with Neil getting beat up by a group of cheerleaders*, serving as a reminder of the hypocritical nature of “cheer” in high school.(13) The irony of the episode is how few people actually experienced spirit besides the vengeance-seeking freaks and the faceless crowd. Any sort of “spirit” within Lindsay is a new woman dealing with young love and an over-amorous pothead boyfriend. The spirit in Neil is the comedian. Sam is the young boy with a crush; his spirit is crushed by Cindy who was lucky enough to land bland Todd (fuck him and his stupid baby.) And the biggest transformation in the show was from the broken mascot Sam replaced: the actor became Indiana Jones’ son (Shia LaBeouf).
---------------
(1)The show may display banal problems in white suburbia, but it’s still important as these events shape the lives of these kids forever, and the worst effects are horrific: suicides, car crashes, drug overdoses, teen pregnancies that destroy futures. High school is indeed a crucial point in a person’s life. The problem is that they don’t realize which events are important.
(2) Speaking of identity, Daniel becomes a post graduate Pynchon reader, Ken becomes the stoner lord that Nick is as Seth Rogen, Bill throws on a wicked beard in Apatow movies, Sam becomes an attractive young super-psychologist on Bones, I saw mother Weir’s breasts on the show Girls, and Lindsay actually appears to have gone off with the Grateful Dead off the face of the Earth. Not to mention what happened with the actor behind the mascot.
(3) Lincoln versus McKinley. Who’s the better president? The game will decide.
(4) Vikings raped and pillaged, showing the hypocritical process in high school in molding with idealism young people into the adults of tomorrow by not mentioning all the flaws and sins abound, white-washing the truth.
(5) Bill didn’t have a big part in the episode, but whatever line he had was superb. His excitement in telling Sam that Cindy was into him because she mentioned they needed a mascot was a pleasure to watch: his eyes bugging out, his skinny arms swinging, and his mention that she was practically feeling him up. He would know.
(6) He could be mayor, you know.
(7) The scene where Sam works on his chicken dance is a bit horrifying in how the refrain, How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose? is repeated again and again only for the ice queen cheerleading queen to say, “Not funky enough, Sam,” is a Kafta nightmare. I rewatched the episode a few times, and I can’t get the song out of my head. It’s demonic.
(8) Neil serves as a stand-in for the writers who in their youth were probably obsessing over Saturday Night Live and Steve Martin like he was.
(9) Bill Russell, 11 NBA titles and all, was known for puking before games from being so nervous. I didn’t see much of Todd’s defense, but we can safely assume he’s an all-time defensive anchor.
(10) The song Nick listens to in the car is a pitch perfect “woe is me I’m young and an unimportant relationship with no consequences like a kid or a house just ended” song a high school boy would listen to.
(11) Mother Weir was still correct, however. It’s better that they break-up now anyway then stay together and become more attached; the break-up would be more devastating.
(12) She won’t tag the car with spray paint, but she’ll start the fight. That’s a good sidenote for understanding her character.
(13) I guarantee you he beat off to that scenario that very night.
by Capt. Blicero
What’s popular in these reviews is to share a personal story from high school that relates to the episode. I’m afraid I was a boring high school student and didn’t really have a social clique or too many friends. I was more of an impassive viewer who saw the geeks as a boring collection of brownnosers with more interest in a grade than true understanding and the freaks as a sad group of troubled kids who may or may not realize the treacherous future they were heading toward, mimicking their reviled parents unknowingly by rejecting a system that ultimately intends to help them. It’s a
show about a group of flawed people trapped in an institution that can do nothing to serve them, but unlike the Wire the consequences are more of a broken heart-level event rather than repeated stab wounds or 30 to life.(1) It’s a surprisingly and extremely “white” show – white as in socioeconomically speaking, as in the suburban US since these days people of many colors are embracing boring, white bread America – but a closer and more authentic examination of high school life is certainly fertile ground for television, which is used well as a populist’s venue. It’s almost shocking then that Freaks and Geeks was a ratings failure because of its high-level of realism and fascinating, deep characters; but that realism was so polished it veered into frank and cringe-inducing. And here I sit, the dispassionate observer watching a TV show about high school students that conjures memories of watching the peculiar students at my own school, hoping that these naïve, inexperienced kids learn faster.
Identity versus spirit
Freaks and Geeks is largely about identity at a time in a young person’s life where he or she is just discovering that identity. A child stumbles through the world with boundless energy, absorbing everything within sight, including everything the parents do; but by the time hormones have transformed the innocent kid into a raging beast of sarcasm and MTV raps, the parents are violently rejected and new identities are explored from jock to new-found atheist to emo to Visigoth.(2) The teens assume it’s a turbulent region, but groups organically form from the churning depths of teenagehood, assembling in cliques like the cheerleaders, the jocks, and our freaks and geeks. The show’s catalyst, in fact, was Lindsay daringly switching sides after a death in the family from the brainiacs to the burnouts. A common thread between the two seemingly opposite factions is the ultimate human power of self-awareness and
intellect, from the feats of mental dexterity and intense analytical evaluation to the outsider’s view of the freaks, gazing at the hypocritical and vain world of high school to reject the status quo of building a wall around one’s being: the hip clothes, the polite language, homework on subjects they have no reason for caring, pretending their home lives are perfect. The geeks and mathletes differ by acting like perfect students, using their smarts to ace within the system while the freaks attempt to bypass it. Lindsay is bridging the two realms, using the freedom the freaks have to let her mind and skills grow.
The underlying structure to the episode is school spirit where a big basketball game with a rival school is nearing and even though the main characters care little about the outcome it seeps into their lives.(3) The concept of forcing kids to cheer and be imbibed with spirit is so particularly high school. Virtually every student there had no choice in going to McKinley and at a time when kids were rejecting their family to form their own personas it’s not exactly ideal to persuade them to cheer with a group of people that included many they actively hated or ignored. The freaks openly mocked the game to the point where it was embarrassing to watch them fervently express their disinterest in athletics, but they were ultimately thrust into support by the
America’s favorite foreign political strategy: violence. The geeks cared even less about the game, but Sam was trying to win Cindy’s heart (somehow) by donning an ugly Viking costume and acting as the school jester and Neil saw an opportunity to showcase his comedic “mastery” while Bill watched coolly from the sidelines daydreaming about the last episode of Dallas.(4)(5) Cindy herself is mostly unaware of Sam’s crush and openly lusts for the basketball star while she cheers on the sidelines, seemingly not for the school itself but to have her legs plowed open by a handsome blond teen boy but maintaining her credibility as an upright high
school student on the straight and narrow. Lindsay and Nick continued their ongoing, awkward relationship saga, but even that broached the subject as Nick’s secret life as a young basketball star was revealed; when you learn more about your partner you learn about his or her romantic past and how identity it not stable, your degree of trust in the person is damaged by questions about who your partner really is. Even father Weir got into the story, seeing his run for a school board position contaminated by the excited “support” of the freaks in an encounter in the hallway.(6) Ultimately, no one really cares for the school itself, and only poor Todd cares for the game itself; they only care about each other, but mostly their own selfish interests.
The geeks and the crusade
The impetus episode is the fall of the school’s mascot, a poor small lad by the name of Herbert who falls when parading on a table, breaking his arm, and hitting his head, causing a concussion and suggestions from others that he dare not sleep because it might be an endless slumber. The fact that he’s merely a prop and utterly replacement, as Sam eventually takes his suit, is disturbing.(7) He has no self, and when he escaped the burden he was unrecognizable, as the geeks talk about him in harsh tones unknowingly in front of him. In fact, the mascot suit is a confusing mess of identity: it serves as an extension of the school and the abstract concept of spirit; concussion boy, Sam and Neil all become the mascot in the same continuum; it’s a play on the idea of the physical self being distinct from what’s inside; but when no one can see underneath the mask, there is no difference between Sam, Neil and Herbert.
The situation allows Cindy the opportunity to break young Sam’s spirit by either stupidly and unwittingly leading him on or purposefully gnawing on his heart strings for sheer joy like an evil Disney queen. In reality, Cindy had a crush on Todd the basketball star in much the same way as Sam on Cindy: Todd barely acknowledges her existence (at least at first). Truthfully, she’s just talking to Sam like the younger brother she sees him by selfishly complaining about her dire situation as a cheerleader, but her conversation is vague enough to flummox Sam, who in romantic matters is still learning to walk. Playing as the beautiful, soul-crushing swan figure that she is, when he announces his intention to try out for the mascot she derides his physical skill and indirectly his manhood and suitability as a mate. He does nail the
role in the audition, but as on many occasions in Freaks and Geeks his new suit is not the fit he imagined in his head.
When Sam finally gives up because he doesn’t performing for the school itself but for a chance to have an awkward kiss with Cindy, Neil steps up saying that what the school needed was laughter and he ought to know better since he’s obviously the comedy connoisseur that no one else is.(8) Unfortunately, he’s as self-absorbed as the freaks think the jocks are: he wants to show off, not help the cheerleading squad, and he’s so misguided he listens to no instructions and winds up causing mini-disaster at the hands of the ultimate bitch, the head cheerleader. The cheerleading squad is presumably about “cheer” and rallying glee from its students, but she’s as far from cheer as anyone is with her icy demeanor and tight rein of control over her minions. It’s another hypocrisy in an episode where many young people struggle to figure out who they really are and usually fail. After a series of misfortunes, it dawns on Sam that he can’t control who Cindy likes and taking out his anger on Todd would be the wrong thing to do, as when he talks to the basketball star he finds that he’s just a nervous kid in a big game.(9) Now it also seems that Todd wasn’t being indifferent to Cindy; he could have been nervous and shy in front of her. Sam shows a glimpse at a relationship maturity adults still struggle with executing, but the whole love triangle could have been avoided had the main characters had access to internet porn to burn off their sexual frustration and discover new, sick ways of sexualizing every part and process of the human body.
Lindsay and Nick and intense love
The episode actually opens with Lindsay talking to Nick on his couch. He’s talking about “deep” issues, like life and death, the afterlife, and she’s thinking, My boyfriend is a fucking idiot and a pothead. She confides in Kim that she’s thinking of breaking up with the dreaming drummer, but Kim warns that it’d be a nearly fatal idea. Daniel has the same reaction and pleads to her to stop. The look Lindsay has on her face in this episode (and the last one, particularly when Nick ends up not deflowering her but cuddling in a glorious display of high school awkwardness) is fantastic: she’s scared, she’s confused, and she has an inescapable sense of dread at the boy who was once sweet but is now a basket-case.
Your partner’s romantic history sometimes does not feel like your business even though a history of STDs is pretty pertinent information and how relationships ended can tell you a lot about him or her, but really the problem is the insecurities that arise when looking at a past boyfriend or girlfriend and the fear your beloved is actually someone else entirely. Lindsay learns one side of the story of Nick’s ex, and it’s disturbing: he sounds like a crazy stalker, but as he tells it he’s a romantic. The truth, as it usually is, is blurred in between those two poles, but no one can completely determine what it exactly is. The early part of the relationship is all fluff and hormones, and once that abates what’s left might still be pleasant or it might be a nightmare. There are shades of horror in talking with Nick’s old ex-girlfriend, who is presented like some sort of disaster survivor. Lindsay is like a detective stuck in a film noir mired in an increasingly bizarre and suspenseful chase through a labyrinthine underworld, and she has absolutely no idea what to expect from Nick. The scene where he climbs to her second story window is not out of place from a Michael Myers movie. Lindsay stalls her plan of ditching him after she hears about how the ex showed everyone his romantic poems, but it’s unclear how unstable Nick is since his own friends openly theorize about why he’s such a psycho in a relationship.(10)
Yet even with Nick’s scary relationship past what unties them is Lindsay’s unlucky mother, who was only trying to be a better parent but became too involved and broke up the young couple after Lindsay hesitated on the break-up.(11) A character trying to become someone – in this case Jean Weir as a super involved and loving mother – is the basic and essential physical process of the show. Lindsay became one of them, a freak, but dating her new kind proved unsuccessful, and the puppy dog Nick was supposed to be was more of a damaged, neglected mutt with a bad history.
The freaks cheer loudest
The freaks are exposed for being as selfish and shallow as the jocks, where they at first deride the jocks for playing a sport they (generally) love. In the freak world, showing that you care about something mainstream is the ultimate failure. A related sin is conformity; you can’t be “them”. Paradoxically, you have to conform to the freaks’ rule if you want to be accepted, which is an aspect that caused Lindsay problmes time and again, hiding her mathlete past, for example. The freaks would ultimately mature and be more accepting, as in this episode they participated in the collective
support of the basketball team. This, however, was only after they were assaulted fluidly by a group of kids from the obviously evil rival school. They did not become enlightened, saw the beauty of coming together as a school or an understanding of how other people have different values; they were pissed they got beat up by kids from another school after failing on their vengeance plan. The freaks generally consider themselves as high and mighty, detached from the shallow high school experience, but all it takes is a petty feud. They are freaks of communal bonding, not freaks escaping an intellectually-numbing world.
After a quick scene of the three original freaks who appeared to be merely gazing at the innards of Daniel’s car (they took off right away, so it’s not like a hose was detached or something), the kids who absolutely hate their school are assaulted by idiots from the rival school for just being from that school. In another scene, they see the rival school’s car and decide to spray paint the side as revenge. Of course, this is TV, and they have a terrible getaway plan. A fight ensued, but it was camaraderie: men bond when they play sports or fight together, and Kim is as much of a man as anyone. She’s the one who instigates the ass-kicking by pushing the blond-haired rival athletic star (now there’s a cliché of a character) and then hilariously backing out demanding that Daniel fight for her. Now that’s an empowered feminist.(12)
The pummeling they received together put them all in a good mood, as when we next see them they’re smiling and yelling, Go McKinley, but unfortunately father Weir is meeting with someone apparently important about the school board and their casual mention of being jumped and trashing another car causes his face to turn white. Daniel greets Mr. Weir, destroying any chance of him denying awareness of the hooligans; I was half-expecting Nick to ask if they still had any fruit roll-ups. During the game, when Neil is doing his carrot-top best with the props and Todd puts on an athletic display of stunning prowess with his 18-inch vertical, the freaks yell in the stands as proud and as enthused as anyone there, prompting a girl in the stands to applaud them for their spirit as a reversal of their support. The fact that it’s (probably) the same girl who stood next to them in the cafeteria near the star to the episode where they were outwardly jeering is a nice conclusion to their subplot, from freaks to cheerleader via a little bit of bloodshed.
73-72: McKinley wins
I have an issue with a sports game in a TV show or movie inevitably ending on a “final” show because it’s unrealistic how often it happens and the dramatic effect is lost when used repeatedly, but McKinley has to win: it’s an uncomfortable show at certain points with characters who are stumbling through life. People who have
graduated high school will tell you that it’s something to go through; it’s only something. You’ll likely do more important things in college. A job will make some of your homework assignments look silly. You’re in an insulated little ecosystem so you can learn and mature before you’re sent off to the “real world”. This was just a basketball game in high school (though it was regionals!) The adults serve out mandates for what the students have to do, either thinking it’s for their own good or because it’s tradition, but the students don’t grow because they watch a few men throw a ball into a hoop; they grow because they’re engaging with each other and socializing. That it’s in a high school is almost arbitrary.
The episode ends with Neil getting beat up by a group of cheerleaders*, serving as a reminder of the hypocritical nature of “cheer” in high school.(13) The irony of the episode is how few people actually experienced spirit besides the vengeance-seeking freaks and the faceless crowd. Any sort of “spirit” within Lindsay is a new woman dealing with young love and an over-amorous pothead boyfriend. The spirit in Neil is the comedian. Sam is the young boy with a crush; his spirit is crushed by Cindy who was lucky enough to land bland Todd (fuck him and his stupid baby.) And the biggest transformation in the show was from the broken mascot Sam replaced: the actor became Indiana Jones’ son (Shia LaBeouf).
---------------
(1)The show may display banal problems in white suburbia, but it’s still important as these events shape the lives of these kids forever, and the worst effects are horrific: suicides, car crashes, drug overdoses, teen pregnancies that destroy futures. High school is indeed a crucial point in a person’s life. The problem is that they don’t realize which events are important.
(2) Speaking of identity, Daniel becomes a post graduate Pynchon reader, Ken becomes the stoner lord that Nick is as Seth Rogen, Bill throws on a wicked beard in Apatow movies, Sam becomes an attractive young super-psychologist on Bones, I saw mother Weir’s breasts on the show Girls, and Lindsay actually appears to have gone off with the Grateful Dead off the face of the Earth. Not to mention what happened with the actor behind the mascot.
(3) Lincoln versus McKinley. Who’s the better president? The game will decide.
(4) Vikings raped and pillaged, showing the hypocritical process in high school in molding with idealism young people into the adults of tomorrow by not mentioning all the flaws and sins abound, white-washing the truth.
(5) Bill didn’t have a big part in the episode, but whatever line he had was superb. His excitement in telling Sam that Cindy was into him because she mentioned they needed a mascot was a pleasure to watch: his eyes bugging out, his skinny arms swinging, and his mention that she was practically feeling him up. He would know.
(6) He could be mayor, you know.
(7) The scene where Sam works on his chicken dance is a bit horrifying in how the refrain, How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose? is repeated again and again only for the ice queen cheerleading queen to say, “Not funky enough, Sam,” is a Kafta nightmare. I rewatched the episode a few times, and I can’t get the song out of my head. It’s demonic.
(8) Neil serves as a stand-in for the writers who in their youth were probably obsessing over Saturday Night Live and Steve Martin like he was.
(9) Bill Russell, 11 NBA titles and all, was known for puking before games from being so nervous. I didn’t see much of Todd’s defense, but we can safely assume he’s an all-time defensive anchor.
(10) The song Nick listens to in the car is a pitch perfect “woe is me I’m young and an unimportant relationship with no consequences like a kid or a house just ended” song a high school boy would listen to.
(11) Mother Weir was still correct, however. It’s better that they break-up now anyway then stay together and become more attached; the break-up would be more devastating.
(12) She won’t tag the car with spray paint, but she’ll start the fight. That’s a good sidenote for understanding her character.
(13) I guarantee you he beat off to that scenario that very night.
