You should probably watch Freaks and Geeks
So Superbad is still popular. Knocked Up was a huge summer smash. The 40-Year-Old Virgin was big two summers ago. Doesn't it make you wonder where this Seth Rogen guy (and those other dudes) came from?
The answer is Freaks and Geeks, a show that aired for one season (1999-2000) on NBC and Fox Family Channel. It focused on the travels through high school of the Weir siblings: the unrepentantly nerdy Sam Weir and his geek bros and goody-two-shoes-turned-mild-rebel Lindsay Weir and her newfound "freak" friends.
A lot has been written about how great the show was, so it's not worth regurgitating too much here. It's enough to say that not only was the show hilarious, embarrassing, tragic, and sweet (often in the same scene), it also was probably the only show in TV history about high school that actually might have vaguely resembled a real person's high school experience, in all its uncomfortable glory (yes, moreso than My So-Called Life). It's hard to imagine anyone not liking it, especially when you take into account the connection to the aforementioned hit films.
Plus, check out the talent on hand: Linda Cardellini (ER, Brokeback Mountain, and, um, the Scooby-Doo movies), James Franco (The Spider-Man movies), Busy Philipps (ER), Joe Flaherty (SCTV), Tom Wilson (Back to the Future), Stephen Lea Sheppard (Dudley from Royal Tenenbaums), Joel Hodgson (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Ben Foster (X-Men 3), Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls), Rashida Jones (The Office, and we can't believe we forgot her - thanks, Mike!), David Krumholtz (like, a thousand things) and the now-famous "repertory players": Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Jason Segel (Knocked Up and How I Met Your Mother), and Martin Starr (the guy with the beard in Knocked Up, also had a small cameo in Superbad). Also: guest spots from Jason Schwarzman, Ben Stiller, and a way-before-he-was-famous Shia LeBeouf. It was produced by Judd Apatow and created by Paul Feig, who went on to direct episodes of Arrested Development, The Office, and 30 Rock.
If you haven't seen it yet, the DVDs are available on Netflix. Why not check it out?
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