I have lived my entire life-to-date after the example of a few (…fictional) figures from pop culture. If you are likewise addicted to television, perhaps you empathize. Un-coincidentally, I have also lived my life prizing a few very basic truths, such as: 1) there is world-altering power in a funny anecdote and 2) to quote Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous: “the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.”
Given the above, I am — obviously — a foaming, crazy Freaks and Geeks fan. I’m probably a bigger fan than you are. That was a test. Are you a fan? BECAUSE YOU SHOULD BE A FAN.
And honestly, what’s not to love? If you haven’t already Netflix-mainlined this lost-but-not-forgotten gem from the early aughts, walk don’t run. Freaks and Geeks was funnymen Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s self-proclaimed opus. Freaks and Geeks was a show about all of your actual friends in high school, as opposed to a bunch of thirtysomething impostors who looked like…no one, they looked like no one because they were models. In the interim x years, miserable miserable high school has proven sacred emotional ground. And I will stand up in any debate to say that Judd Apatow captured it best with this. One. Television show.
So the person I’ve emulated for many moons (until Janeane Garofalo’s Vickie Miner from Reality Bites usurped the throne; a.k.a. the college years) was Linda Cardellini as Lindsay Weir — and for a fleeting few moments in a recent Vanity Fair story, I got to spend time with my icon again. In the series below, Kim Kelly, Lindsay and Sam Weir, Bill Haverchuck, Neal Schweiber, Nick Andopolis, Ken Miller and Daniel Desario reunite to talk where-are-they-now. Vanity Fair has since released two more behind-the-scenes videos (starring the geeks and the freaks, respectively), and you can find those here. In the meantime:
Happy TBT indeed.
Image courtesy of Vanity Fair.
