The Automatik

There is no language in our lungs, to tell the world just how we feel.
When the 60s revival came along in the 80s, I got into paisley, the Monkees TV show reruns, and peace signs. In the 90s, when the 70s revival came along, I was even more excited since disco and bellbottoms were things I remembered from my own childhood. I never really felt that either pop-culture renaissance spoke to my teen years, though. It was a fabulous revelation then to discover NBC’s Freaks and Geeks.

The show was peerless because its creators focused on characters and situations and let the iconography of the 80s enhance, rather than define, its atmosphere. Freaks and Geeks was able to elicit genuine feelings of empathy from its viewers without using the schmaltzy, obvious methods of shows like The Wonder Years. Yet this was its greatest strength and its ultimate downfall.

Many of the people I tried to convert into fans of the show liked it, but were actually turned off by the painful emotions and memories the show evoked in them. Truly, watching the show was often like regression therapy. Yet I am one of those masochists who views catharsis as the preferred method of dealing with difficult issues.

NBC obviously did not agree with me (or the other devotees) and played a devious shell game with the show, changing the schedule on a whim or not airing episodes for weeks at a time. The paucity of promotions for the show proved that no one knew how to market it. It wasn’t a contrived, goofy flashback to the most obvious symbols of a decade, an angst-ridden teen soap opera or a hip crossover about twentysomethings who practice black magic. Instead of brainstorming, they just ignored it and shows like ER and Suddenly Susan continued their banal existence.

The small, but slavishly devoted group of people (in which my role was woefully meager) who tried valiantly to save the show with a blitzkrieg-style letter-writing campaign and a full-page ad in Variety magazine were a poignant example of can-do spirit. Unlike La Femme Nikita, however, Freaks and Geeks wasn’t glossy enough to warrant a stay of execution. While Fox Family Channel graciously continues to play the reruns, they have edited out even the most inoffensive swear words from every episode. So look for the complete Freaks and Geeks on DVD, if you were unlucky enough to miss it the first time around. And realize that it wasn’t that the show was too big, it was that the minds of the network executives were too small.