Freaks and Geeks Rewind: Discos and Dragons

And so we've come to the end of our summer experiment. Very, very, very long spoilers for "Discos and Dragons," the final episode of "Freaks and Geeks," coming up just as soon as I learn to thread the projector...

"Discos and Dragons" was the In Case of Emergency finale. Convinced (rightly) that cancellation was imminent, Judd Apatow told Paul Feig to take as many ideas as he had for the future and stuff them into a single episode while he still had the chance. In fact, they even shot it a few weeks ahead of schedule, just so they would have a proper finale in the can should NBC shut down production early. But the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink aspect to its creation doesn't make the episode feel cluttered. If anything, the three major storylines seem together as if by design. What more perfect ending could there be for this series -- an 18-hour meditation on teenagers struggling to carve new identities for themselves -- than a triptych of stories in which three characters adopt completely unexpected new personas?

It's such a great finale -- one of the best ever, for any show -- that I'm going to ramble on a little more than usual. You may want to print this out and save it for bathroom reading, I don't know.

Let's start with the Dragons portion of the show, in which Daniel hits rock bottom and discovers the geeks are already there, just waiting to invite him to their D&D game.

This subplot actually begins as more of a pure geek story (even though the three central figures of the finale are all freaks). Bill, Sam and Neal are marching down the hallway, speculating on what people are going to write in their yearbooks -- Sam, optimistic, predicts some girl will confess a crush on him, while Neal knows that once again he'll get a lot of "You're a wild and crazy guy"s -- when a bunch of jocks run by, yell their intentions to clean out the geeks, and knock their books to the ground. While this is far from the worst humiliation any of them has suffered this year, it feels like the last straw to Sam, who complains that he doesn't want to be called a geek anymore, and wonders what's so geeky about them. Cue the perfectly-timed Harris, who wanders up with his new Dungeons & Dragons handbook, an easy answer to Sam's question.

Fortunately, sanctuary is only a few doors away, as the geeks arrive at the A/V room, where grown up, unapologetic geek Mr. Fleck always knows just the right thing to say to cheer them up. While puffing on a cigarette (a "cool" behavior he warns them not to imitate), he presents a graph of the lives of the jocks, starting with their early athletic triumphs. "Right there, where they cleaned you out? That's the pinnacle of their lives," he insists, then rattles off all the bad things that will happen to them in the future. The geeks, meanwhile, have nowhere to go but up: Ivy League schools, older girls realizing that they like smart guys, Fortune 500 jobs, and the inevitable moment where the jocks asks them if they want fries with that. (It's a lovely sentiment, but as the show pointed out repeatedly, our three main geeks weren't necessarily that smart -- or, at least, that academically inclined -- and I unfortunately could envision a future where Bill is serving fries to Todd Schellinger.) Sam, because he's 14 and has no interest in the "things get better when you're older" authority figure song and dance, complains that he wants things to improve right away. Mr. Fleck says the best they can do for now is to enjoy the simple pleasures in life... like the 18mm print of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" he just borrowed from his counterpart over at Lincoln. Neal raves that "A/V is paradise on Earth," but Sam doesn't seem convinced.

Speaking of not being academically inclined, Daniel is planning to cheat on Kowchevski's final exam off a guy named Dave, but on discovering that Dave broke his arm in gym class earlier that day, he goes into panic mode and slips out to pull the fire alarm. One problem: Mr. Rosso happens to be rounding the hall and tells him, "Better be a fire, bro." Rosso, as usual, tries to appear down with the young people, suggesting that Daniel thinks he's cool. "Don't think you're the Fonz or something? If a jukebox was broken, think you could hit it and it would start playing?" (Daniel, who probably hasn't watched "Happy Days" since junior high, if ever, just hangs his head in defeat.) Rosso says he's tried to be nice and is tired of Daniel taking advantage of that fact, so now he's going to humiliate Daniel by sending him to... the A/V room. One man's paradise on Earth is another man's Hell, apparently.

As all the geeks are having fun in A/V talking about their experiences screening the "girls' time of the month films," Mr. Fleck breaks the news about Daniel to them. Neal is indignant, both that someone would consider coming here punishment, and that they'll all have to suffer for Daniel's sins. Daniel, mortified and completely shut down (a state he'll remain in until the Dancing Sword scene) enters and tries to appear very, very small and quiet. Sam, who knows him through Lindsay, tries to be friendly without much luck, and the always-optimistic Gordon Crisp asks Daniel if he knows how to fix a projector. Daniel doesn't, and when Gordon offers to teach him, Daniel sinks even lower into his chair and says "Great."

In the cafeteria, Neal tries to get the other geeks to battlestations, insisting that Daniel will ruin the only place in school they like. Gordon shares the usual gossip about the freaks being high all the time and going nuts on drugs, and when Sam tries to defend Daniel as a good guy, Neal rebuts, "Sam, he gave you a porno. I wouldn't say you have a meaningful relationship with him." Over Sam's protests that they don't know him, Neal insists they have to make sure that Daniel shows movies every day so he won't be around to cause problems.

A day or two later, Lindsay, Nick and Kim are in English class with their fop of a teacher, when they're all stunned to see Daniel wheeling in the projector to screen the Zeffirelli "Romeo and Juliet." As the English teacher drones on and on about Zeffirelli casting real teenagers in the title role, Nick coughs out a "Geek!," Lindsay glances at Daniel with pity and Daniel struggles mightily to get the film going. After repeated assistance from some random kid, the projector starts working, the class gives Daniel a round of mock applause ("Saints be praised," sighs the teacher) and Daniel shrinks into a chair again, hating himself.

Daniel tries to throw himself a pity party, but Kim refuses the invitation, saying that it was his own choice to pull the fire alarm. "I suck at math!" Daniel moans. "I suck at everything!" Kim (either fed up with Daniel getting into trouble or feeling sorry for herself about the impending arrival of another crappy summer) has no pep talk to give him, and when Daniel complains that he always listens to her rant about her problems, she tells him coldly, "Why don't you go tell it to the fire alarm?"

(I feel like the episode's missing a scene, or even a line or two of dialogue, that gets more deeply into Kim's reasons for distancing herself from Daniel. It's not like he's done anything to her directly that would piss her off, but at the same time her being on the outs with him helps set up her scenes with Lindsay in the Deadhead plot, as well as Daniel's scenes with the geeks.)

In the hallway, Bill and Neal are getting excited about the upcoming D&D game. Bill wants to be a thief named Gorthon, even though Neal complains that he always falls down a well trying to steal stuff. Neal's going to stick with his Kragenmor the Destroyer character (apologies if I misspelled that one; my F&G script books are packed away right now) and asks Sam if Logan the Huge will be joining them. Sam's still suffering his bout of geek self-hatred and says he doesn't want to play. Neal accuses him of feeling too cool since he dumped Cindy (even though part of the reason Sam dumped Cindy was so he could go back to having fun as a geek). They argue over whether the game's too geeky, and Sam realizes he left a book back in A/V. He goes to retrieve it and finds Daniel slaving over the projector and a manual, desperately trying to learn how to be good at something for once.

The next day in A/V, Harris is boasting about the D&D campaign he has planned for that night (Gordon and Bill naturally go off on a tangent about the hot-looking goddesses in the handbooks) and mentions the use of the Dancing Sword. Daniel, who's been sitting small and silent as usual, stuns everyone by asking what the Dancing Sword is. Harris explains that it's a sword that can fight independently of its owner, and when Daniel complains about knights staying home and sending swords into battle for them, Sam tells him that the owner has to be nearby, and that the Dancing Sword is just a gimmick to allow you to fight two enemies at once. Daniel's genuinely impressed by this, and Harris -- who, don't forget, once suggested Daniel might make a good Dungeonmaster -- invites him to come play tonight, to Daniel's confusion and Neal's dismay. Harris insists Daniel would like it, and when Daniel laments that he wouldn't be good at it, Sam talks about how much fun they have telling stupid jokes and scarfing down junk food. Then Gordon -- lovable, always look on the bright side of life Gordon -- puts it in irresistible language for Daniel: "And the best part is, you get to pretend to be somebody you can't be in real life." Daniel agrees to play but tries to manage expectations about how terrible he'll be. Harris says he can't be worse than Bill, then asks Sam if he'll play. With his sister's cool, leather jacket-wearing friend in on the game, suddenly D&D seems more intriguing to Sam and he agrees.

That night in the Weir dining room, the geeks set about transforming Daniel into one of their own. Harris explains that Daniel will have to roll for his ability scores, and when the other geeks complain that Harris likes to use his role as Dungeonmaster to mess with their heads, he says in this marvelously sarcastic (and yet very Canadian) tone of voice, "Oh, I'm sorry. Perhaps I should let you encounter kittens and grandmas, so as not to upset you." Daniel rolls the dice, and it quickly becomes clear that he'll be a dwarf. Daniel doesn't want that, he wants to be a big destroyer guy like Neal plays as, but the guys convince him that dwarves are better at a lot of things than people give them credit for. (Again, this is just the message Daniel wants/needs to hear.) So he agrees, so long as he can call himself Carlos (no doubt an homage to Santana, which he and Nick discussed back in "Tricks and Treats"). "Carlos the Dwarf?" asks Bill, incredulous. "Yeah, you got a problem with it, Gorthon?" Daniel retorts sarcastically. When he sees all the geeks recoil at his tone (again, they don't know him), he laughs and says he was just joking, and from there on out, things go smoothly.

We don't see any actual playing of the game (though there's a deleted scene where Daniel figures out how to get everyone safely out of a dark cavern), but we see a montage of everyone -- especially Daniel -- having a blast. We return a few hours later (a record finish for a D&D campaign?) to Daniel proudly declaring, "Greetings, princess. It is I, Carlos the Dwarf. The dragon has been slain, and you're free to rule your kingdom." Harris congratulates him, the geeks all applaud. Daniel looks the happiest that we have ever seen him and asks if they can play again tomorrow night. As Daniel goes to the kitchen for a soda (after first asking the other guys if he can get them something, another sign of how happy and grateful he is to be in their presence, as he would never make the same offer to Ken), the geeks quietly huddle up and ponder the significance of Daniel's presence. "Does him wanting to play with us again mean he's turning into a geek or we're turning into cool guys?" asks Bill. Sam mulls it over and decides, "I'm going to go for us becoming cool guys."

If it hadn't been for Daniel's stint as a punk in "Noshing and Moshing," and, to a lesser extent, some of the scenes in "Looks and Books" (including the deleted bit where he asks Kowchevski for tutoring), I might have a harder time buying the geek wish-fulfillment aspects of all this. But Daniel's clearly been someone searching for a new role to play other than King of the Dirtbags, so why not Carlos the Dwarf?

So here's my question: in your imagined second season of this show, how long did Daniel's geekdom last? It's kind of a nice respite from all the crap in his life, but at the same time Daniel's 3-4 years older than his new pals, and if there's been a ruling impulse in his life other than self-loathing, it's a need to seem cool. He agrees to play in part because he's estranged from his own group; Kim and Nick mocked his moment of shame with the projector, and he and Kim had another of their temporary break-ups. What's going to happen when Kim comes back from following the Dead and finds out that Daniel's been hanging out with a bunch of freshman nerds and playing Dungeons & Dragons? How much is Ken going to make fun of him for this? And would Daniel have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for his new friends, or would he immediately fall back into his old pattern of delinquency and not giving a damn? And how exactly would Mr. Weir respond to the hoodlum he didn't want around Lindsay (more on that below) suddenly hanging out with young Sam?

While you mull that over, let's move on to Nick's story of death by disco.

It's the Friday night before Daniel's fateful D&D game, and the bowling alley on 15 Mile is having its weekly disco night (where Mr. Rosso picked up the woman who gave him herpes), DJ'ed by none other than the guy who sold Sam his Parisian night suit. Daniel and Ken show up, dragging Kim and Lindsay (but not Amy, no doubt a victim of the out-of-order production) along for a freak tradition: mocking disco and anything associated with it. Daniel and Ken count to three and yell out "Disco sucks!," which brings the entire dance floor to a halt... including a polyester-clad Nick, who's there with Abba-loving Sara, whom he's been dating on the sly for a while now.

The freaks are all aghast and, back at school, they try to get to the bottom of this strange new relationship. Kim insists to Lindsay that this is just a ploy to make Lindsay jealous. Ken does a slow burn as Sara calls him "Kenny" and invites him to practice dance moves with her and Nick. They're so excessively schmoopy that Ken finally asks Nick, "When does Allen Funt come boogieing out?" Nick, having gone completely to the dark side, starts comparing disco favorably to Led Zeppelin, and Ken bluntly states the making-Lindsay-jealous theory. When Nick storms off, annoyed, Ken grabs Lindsay and begs her to start dating Nick again; "I can't take much more of this."

In his basement -- still bereft of the drum kit -- Nick and Sara practice their moves in preparation for him competing in that week's dance contest at the bowling alley. Nick marvels at how good he is at this, since he couldn't stand disco. Maybe, he suggests, "you end up being the best at something you hate." As if that wasn't enough of a warning sign to Sara, he goes on to talk about how good Lindsay is at math even though she doesn't enjoy it, and Sara wisely calls a time-out to find out what Nick's feelings are for his ex. Nick pledges his allegiance to Sara, and she confesses that he's had a crush on him since the sixth grade. "I can't believe that you like me," she says. (She's Nick's own Nick, way too into him for anyone's sake.)

The night of the contest, Ken literally drags Lindsay through the bowling alley, begging her to help him undo Nick's disco brainwashing, but the DJ spots him as the heckler from last week and tries to mock him in turn. As the bouncer drags him out, Ken points that the place is empty and disco is dead, but the DJ insists (in a marvel of spacey devotion by Joel Hodgson), "Disco is alive! It's alive, I tell you! You know it, and I know it, and" -- as he puts "I Will Survive" on the turntable -- "Miss Gloria Gaynor knows it, too!"

(One person who doesn't know it: the bouncer, who tells Ken he's right, and that Disco Night will be replaced by Foxy Boxing as of next week.)

Lindsay's on her own, and Nick insists to her that he's not doing this to win her back. "I'm not some idiot," he says. "You told me to move on, and so I did." Nick goes on and on about how Sara's introduced him to all kinds of new things, and that he even quit smoking pot. Lindsay -- who might still be with him had he been willing to give up the ganja -- is taken aback, and tries to recover by complimenting him for the achievement. "You seem like you're having way more fun with her than you ever did with me," she says, before wishing him luck in the contest and walking out.

As Nick turns back towards the dance floor, he looks completely and utterly defeated; he was putting on a good front for Lindsay, but everyone was 100 percent right that this entire thing has been one painful, unsuccessful ruse to win her back. (Lindsay's expression as she exits is harder to read; obviously, she's upset he couldn't find the strength to stop smoking pot while he was with her, but I can't decide if she wishes she was still with him now that he's clean.)

The opening bass line of "The Groove Line" begins, and after Nick casts one last regretful look back at the departing Lindsay, he puts on his angry game face and launches into an epic dance routine, at once smooth (the moves themselves, which he's great at) and ridiculous (the look on his face, which is 1000 times too intense for the moment). In one of the commentaries, Apatow laments that intercutting the dance scene with Lindsay's departure casts the scene in a much sadder tone than he maybe wanted, but I think that's what makes it brilliant. It's comic and tragic at the same time: Nick now trapped in a relationship he hates as much as Lindsay hated being with him, discovering that he's a far better disco dancer than he ever was a rock drummer, strutting around that dance floor looking like he wants to kill someone. If it didn't require so much advance knowledge about Nick and Lindsay and their doomed relationship, I would easily pick it as the perfect scene to show to someone to explain the genius of the series. As it is, Segel's dancing is so funny I might use it, anyway.

And even if Nick's dancing gets a little too sad for Apatow's liking, the button to this subplot is so hysterical on its own that all should be forgiven. After Nick's turn is over, he's replaced by "the magical disco stylings of Eugene," a floppy-haired, leisure suit-wearing guy who doesn't so much dance as do a little mime and then start pulling out scarves, canes and playing cards for various tricks. The crowd eats it up, and as Nick sees even this hollow victory slipping away, he protests, "They didn't say you were allowed to do magic!" (As if he would have been able to had he just been allowed.) Sara then commits the cardinal girlfriend sin of rooting for the other guy, saying of Eugene, "Wow. He's really good." (Check the look of disgust on Nick's face in reaction to that; as if he didn't already hate this relationship enough, you know?)

Finally, we come to the one D-word left out of the title: Deadhead.

The same English teacher who took such delight in disparaging Daniel announces to the class that our very own Lindsay Weir has been selected to attend a prestigious two-week academic summit at the University of Michigan. Lindsay doesn't seem pleased by this development, especially after hearing a description that involves daily ranking, competitions and rivalries -- in other words, all the things she gladly left behind when she quit Mathletes.

Mr. Rosso is dumbfounded by Lindsay's unhappy reaction. She protests that she hasn't studied much this year; are the other students in Michigan that dumb? No, Rosso tells her; she's just that darned smart! He starts quoting lyrics from the Grateful Dead's "Box of Rain," which she predictably doesn't recognize, and after a bit of Abbott and Costello ("Quoting the who?" "Not The Who! The Grateful Dead!"), he pulls out his copy of "American Beauty" (the album, not the movie) and explains that it helped get him through a lot of confusing times in college. (Or did it? More below.) Sensing her confusion, he loans her the record to help her get through finals and get her mind right for the summit -- not realizing how badly this one decision will backfire for McKinley High's academic pride.

While Lindsay's walking through the cafeteria, the Deadheads we first met in "Smooching and Mooching" spot the album tucked under her arm and compliment her good taste. Lindsay admits she's never heard it before, and they tell her it's the best album ever. Deadhead Samaire gushes, in her glassy way, "I wish I never heard it, just so I could hear it again for the first time." After school, Lindsay drops the needle on the record, and as "Box of Rain" begins to play, she lets the music slowly wash over her, until she's swinging her arms and dancing around like she's standing in the mud at Woodstock. (Cardellini and Segel must have been killer dance partners when they were still together, no?) Clearly, the music speaks to her like it spoke to Mr. Rosso.

At dinnertime, Jean and Harold rave about Lindsay getting into the summit, and are taken aback when she suggests she might not go. "Are you wacky?" asks Harold. (John Daley has a great moment where he laughs and repeats "Wacky?" with his mouth full of food.) "You are going to that summit, Lindsay. It isn't even open for debate." Jean and Harold explain that she'll be exposed to so many great people, get a foothold into attending any college she wants, and shut down any of Lindsay's attempts to protest.

At the cafeteria, the Deadheads tell Lindsay stories of following the Dead around on tour. Deadhead Samaire talks about a show in Jersey where it started raining, and everyone danced in the mud, and when a rainbow fell over the stage, "I started crying." (The funny thing is, Samaire sounds exactly like she does when she's not playing a stoned character.) The male Deadhead pulls a Gordon Crisp and puts the culture into language Lindsay can get behind: "It's about being together and having a good time... Judging has nothing to do with it. That's not what the Dead are about. It's about being connected and being free." They intend to spend a week and a half after school ends following the Dead from Texas to Colorado, and when Lindsay sheepishly explains she won't be able to go because of the academic summit, they cement their position as her new idols by not judging her about it, saying, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

While walking the halls with Kim, Lindsay complains about the summit and how it'll feel like going back into school. Kim, as she did with Daniel, declines to feign sympathy, instead noting that at least Lindsay gets to leave town for a while and do something, while Kim herself will be stuck behind because she has no money and, besides, Daniel hates going anywhere. Lindsay -- relatively well-off Lindsay, with her functional, supportive parents -- tries to suggest that Kim can go anywhere she wants, but Kim -- she of the ramshackle home, harpy of a mother and creepy stepdad -- replies, "That's easy for you to say, Lindsay, 'cause you get to leave. I don't."

(Watching the episode in chronological order, we then spend a while with Lindsay and Nick at the bowling alley, but when I sorted my notes by storyline, I was struck by the fact that the Kim scene leads directly into the next one. I've always wondered how much of Lindsay's decision has to do with her desire to escape her brainy good girl image once and for all and how much is her trying to help out best pal Kim. I think it's probably 70-30 image reinvention, but I could be persuaded to change that ratio.)

The Weirs walk Lindsay to the bus, Lindsay lying that she doesn't want to be driven to Ann Arbor so she can spend the trip thinking and getting her head straight. Jean and Harold are overflowing with pride, and Sam says he's going to miss her. Neal and Bill run up to say goodbye, Neal offering a box of chocolates as his latest futile attempt to woo Lindsay. (Bill, hilariously, notes that they give the same gift to his grandma whenever she travels by bus -- along with pinning her name and address to her coat in case she gets lost.) Lindsay kisses them both on the cheek, and Neal is naturally outraged over Bill getting equal reward even though he didn't spend a cent.

We hear the acoustic guitar of "Ripple" begin to play, and Linda Cardellini absolutely destroys me with the way she turns back from the bus steps and says, "Hey, Mom?" Jean, ignorant of what her daughter plans to do, beams and says, "Yes, sweetie?" Lindsay, fully aware that she's about to break her mother's heart -- that she's going to fundamentally alter her relationship with her parents, forever -- tries to find a way to apologize in advance, but all she can say is, "I'll see you soon."

The bus pulls away, the Weirs and Neal and Bill waving enthusiastically as Lindsay has to live with her decision. But by the time the bus pulls up to a stop (still in town? in Ann Arbor? I'm never clear, and it's obviously an LA city street), she's clearly made her peace with it, and steps off to see Kim leaning against the Deadheads' VW Microbus (of course they drive a Microbus), waiting to greet her for the start of their journey along the concert road. Lindsay strips off the conservative jacket she'd been wearing and gladly pulls on her familiar Army jacket (embracing her freakdom once and for all). Everyone piles into the van, and Samaire drives them up to the corner where the bus is sitting and then off in the opposite direction.

The End.

I've always loved that ending, but it really angers some people I know well -- including my wife and one of my sisters, both of whom attended summer academic events in high school and had a great time. I feel like, having gone back and looked at all 18 hours of this series, Lindsay was no longer a person who was capable of enjoying herself at an event like that. "Looks and Books" clearly showed that. If it wasn't the Dead, or Kim's need for some kind of summer adventure, she would have found another excuse not to go. It's who she had become, for good or for ill.

And while we're debating whether Lindsay made the right choice or not, let's also have a spirited argument about my old good-looking corpse theory: that I'd rather have one perfect season of a show than witness it get watered-down over the years as producers repeat themselves, try to attract a bigger audience, etc. It's a theory directly inspired by this here show. While we have no way of knowing what the creative team would have been able to do in the event of a miracle renewal, I imagine NBC would have put on major pressure to make the show more commercial, just like "Homicide" wound up featuring all those serial killers and evil drug lords and beauty queen detectives as a compromise for its continued survival.

For what it's worth, I asked Apatow what remaining plans he had for a second season that didn't get used up by episodes like this and the Sam dates Cindy arc, and this is what he wrote:

I wanted to write about Lindsay having a real drug problem. Bill's mom would marry the gym teacher and Bill would be forced by his step dad to play on the school basketball team. And I would have explored Neal's parents' divorce trial and his life as he lived with his mom and saw dad on Sundays.

If Paul Feig or any of the other writers are out there and want to share any other stories they hoped to do in year two, fire away. Clearly, though, there was lots of material still to be written about these characters. (Lindsay having a drug problem -- no doubt part of her time with the Dead -- would have set up an unexpected role reversal with the suddenly-clean Nick.) But do you think the show could have still been the show we all worshipped if it came back? And what would you have wanted to see in a second season? (As I mentioned last week, my big hope was for some scenario, any scenario, that put Bill and Kim Kelly in a room together for a few minutes, just to see what happened.)

Some other thoughts on "Discos and Dragons":

• Because I hadn't seen most of these episodes in so long, when Harold banned Lindsay from ever hanging out with the freaks again after the car crash in "Looks and Books," I couldn't remember whether we saw him relenting in a later episode or if the writers just let it slide. Based on Harold inviting Nick into their home in "Smooching and Mooching," it feels like the latter. I just wish it had been more directly addressed at some point, as it would have added an extra layer to Lindsay's decision to forsake the summit in favor of following a hippie band with her freak best friend. In our mythical season two, Joe Flaherty was going to rain some major hellfire and brimstone down on Lindsay for this.
  
• One last possible chronological boo-boo: "American Beauty" was released in 1970, only 10 years before the series began, yet Rosso talks about listening to it while he was in college. How old is he supposed to be? Dave Allen was in his early 40s at this point; would Rosso have needed to still be in school to dodge the draft in his early 30s, or is he supposed to be significantly younger than the actor playing him?
• One other "American Beauty" question: how do hardcore Deadheads feel about that album? It and "Workingman's Dead" are the only two albums of theirs I own, in part because, as I understand it, they're atypical of the band's studio output, as well as the concert jams that made them famous. Would Deadhead Samaire really have been that over the moon about that record?
• Speaking of Dave Allen, Mr. Fleck is played by Steve Higgins, who, along with Allen and Higgins' brother David Anthony Higgins (from "Ellen" and "Malcolm in the Middle"), were the stars of "The Higgins Boys and Gruber," one of the first series on The Comedy Channel (one of the two channels, along with Ha!, that merged into Comedy Central). The creator and producer of that show? Mr. Joel Hodgson.
• And speaking of Hodgson, I've neglected until now to mention that one of his "MST3K" co-stars, Trace Beaulieu, appeared repeatedly on this series as the biology teacher, Mr. Lacovara. He has a very funny moment here in the cafeteria, where after assuring Lindsay that attending the summit put him on the path to his current level of success, he turns and knocks over a student's lunch tray. As the students all jeer, he raises his hand and says, "That was me! I'm a clumsy clod!" in an overly-cheerful way that suggests he suffered many such humiliations when he was younger before learning that self-deprecation is the only way to survive them. (God, this show was great with the little moments like that, wasn't it?)
• Another lovely little touch: the beret Sam wears while playing D&D. (Also, even though Sam keeps the other geeks hanging about his involvement until the last minute, they wind up playing the game at his house; chalk that one up to the Weir dining room being one of the show's standing sets, I guess.)
• Seth Rogen's Canadian accent didn't come out too blatantly for the most part during the season, but there's a line where he's complaining about Nick's love of disco and says, "No, thank GAWD!" like he's on the verge of ordering a Molson's and some back bacon.

Up next: B'dee, b'dee, b'dee, that's all folks! Sorry. (If you're coming to the party late, you can find all the recaps by click on the Freaks and Geeks label below, or just clicking here.) This has been a fun little experiment. Some of these episodes I had only ever seen once, and most I hadn't watched since the real turn of the millennium. So it's been a pleasure to watch them again and rediscover certain things (James Franco was funny! Joe Flaherty was a good dramatic actor!) while reconfirming things I already knew (Martin Starr, genius! Jason Segel, completely unafraid of public humiliation!).

I know at least a few people who worked on the show have seen these. Apatow's aware of it, and Gabe Sachs stopped by the "I'm With the Band" post to talk about how cool it is to see everybody praising the show so many years later. If anyone else who was lucky enough to be involved with this series is reading this, I hope it's gratifying to see so many people haven't forgotten the love. (Also, judging by the comments and some of my e-mail from people who just bought the DVDs, there are still people willing to experience it for the first time all these years later.) It was a classic as soon as it aired, it is a classic now and it's going to stay a classic for as long as there are teenage outcasts (or semi-reformed adult outcasts).

At the tail end of my "The Little Things" recap, I said I'd like to do this again next summer with another brilliant but canceled selection, and there are already a lot of suggestions in those comments. Feel free to keep 'em coming, keeping in mind some of the following criteria that made "Freaks and Geeks" such a good choice: 1)Only ran one season (and less than the full 22, at that); 2)Is readily available on DVD so the people who didn't see it can catch up if they want; 3)Is deep enough to merit extended recapping and analysis (this would leave out most straight comedies -- including, much as I love it, "Undeclared"); 4)Is just old enough that there's some nostalgia to revisiting it (that would probably leave out something like "Firefly"); and 5)There's an ending. Maybe it's not a definitive, all your questions answered ending, but the creators got to go out on the note they wanted. Anyway, when the upcoming TV season starts winding down in May, I'll look back over the suggestions and consider my options. (It took me seeing "Knocked Up" in early June to give me the idea in the first place; be nice to have a head start this time.)

Whew. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Freaks and Geeks Rewind: The Little Things

Spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Freaks and Geeks," "The Little Things," coming up just as soon as I get people to stay away from those cans...

Behold, the episode that launched a comedy empire. Sort of.

"The Little Things" was the episode that convinced Judd Apatow that Seth Rogen was a man he wanted to keep working with, which in turn led to him hiring Rogen as both actor and writer on "Undeclared," which in turn led to Rogen showing him the "Superbad" script he wrote with his childhood best friend, which in turn led to Rogen getting cast in "40-Year-Old Virgin," etc., etc., etc. I'm not saying that Apatow wouldn't be Hollywood's reigning Comedy God without Rogen, but the two men definitely bring out the best in each other.

But we'll get back to that. I want to kick off this look at "The Little Things" with the story that carries over from the previous episode: Sam's doomed relationship with Cindy Sanders.

A fair amount of time seems to have passed since "Smooching and Mooching," enough that Bill can later refer to his Seven Minutes in Heaven in a "Did I ever tell you about that time?" way to Neal. We open up with Cindy dining with the Weirs, Cindy kissing up to Harold with her talk about being a young Republican (George H.W. Bush, then the VP, is due to speak at McKinley High, and she gets to introduce him) and her hatred of poor people. Sam, in turn, is already learning to hate her. At school, he now eats at the popular kids' table, while the other geeks look on resentfully. (Harris as Yoda: "Once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.") Cindy continues to prove herself to be judgmental and manipulative, first by insulting a rival school's cheerleaders for being ugly, then trying to goad Sam into fighting Todd. Sam still hasn't quite grasped that Cindy is definining him only in comparison to Todd, but Todd gets it and tells Cindy that he likes Sam too much to beat him up.

After school, Sam complains to Bill and Neal that Cindy's boring, and only wants to make out. (Neal, predictably: "I'd kill to be that boring.") Bill suggests that Sam take Cindy on a real date to do something that he wants to do instead of one of her ideas, and when Sam is skeptical about Cindy's desire to do something that Sam enjoys, Bill the wise man asks, "Then why are you going out with her?" (Neal the horndog: "Because she's a goddess!")

So Sam gets Cindy's permission to take her on a date of his own design (because it's that kind of relationship that he needs permission), and we get our final glimpse of the collected geeks' views on dating. Gordon adopts an awful British accent and suggests a Broadway show of some kind. Bill suggests a screening of "The Jerk" (no doubt he remembers how it helped him get over with Vicki), and when Neal insists that that's not a romantic movie, Harris counters, "Laughter is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Get a woman laughing, you get a woman loving." The matter of the locale having apparently been settled, they turn to a discussion of the appropriate gift, and Sam asks Harris what he gets for the much-discussed but rarely-seen Judith. Unfortunately, he's no use -- Judith wants only scented oils "and time with her man" -- so Sam turns to his mom. Jean, beaming at the idea of her son becoming a man (and that he still wants her counsel in a way that Lindsay doesn't), gets out an heirloom necklace from her mother, positive that Cindy will love it. (Clearly, she hasn't been paying attention when Cindy comes over for dinner.)

And then, disaster on every level. At the movie theater, Cindy hates the necklace, both because it's old and not her style, and because Sam didn't spend any money on it. (With Cindy, it's not the thought that counts.) But you know what she hates even more? "The Jerk." While Sam is laughing uproariously at the legendary "He hates these cans!" scene, Cindy's putting on the lemon face to end all lemon faces. Sam notices Cindy's displeasure and offers to buy her popcorn. "Will popcorn make this movie funnier?" she asks, her voice dripping with scorn. This in turn pisses off Sam so obviously that even Cindy realizes she's gone too far with her boytoy, so she tries to distract him with a hickey, which only annoys him more. (Nothing like a girl you've grown to loathe trying to give you a hematoma.)

Later that night, Sam tells Lindsay about this awful date, and when he mentions that Cindy hated "The Jerk," Lindsay knows her brother enough to say "Uh-oh." "What's wrong with me?" Sam asks. "She's so pretty; why don't I like her?" Lindsay explains that not all attractive people are cool, and that he should break up with her. Sam's afraid to do this because people already can't believe Cindy's willing to date him; what will they think of him if he dumps her? (Dude, did you not see "Can't Buy Me Love?" That's the whole premise. Oh, wait... seven years down the road. Sorry.) Lindsay, speaking from very painful experience, tells him that he can't keep dating someone he doesn't like.

Sam shows up for school the next day wearing a baggy turtleneck, the better to hide Cindy's love mark. Neal is deeply offended that Sam would be willing to break up with such a hot girl, and refuses to believe that a hot girl could be uncool. After Sam pukes out his courage and has a men's room chat with Ken (more on that below), he mans up and approaches Cindy, who immediately confirms his feelings by barking "What the hell is that?" at the sight of his hickey-hiding turtleneck. When he counters that she won't wear the heirloom necklace, she spits, "It was ugly!" She tries to get out of this fight because she needs to go introduce Vice-President Bush, but Sam's not going to let her wriggle off the hook. Sam tells her that he doesn't want to date her anymore, and would rather go back to being friends.

"No, Sam," she tells him in complete disbelief. "You can't break up with me. You're supposed to be nice. That's the only reason I'm going out with you in the first place!" Sam points out that he, in fact, is a nice guy, but they have nothing in common and they're not having any fun. Cindy admits this is true, but she can't deal with the humiliation of being dumped by her nerdy rebound guy, so she throws the necklace at him and storms off. (Our final glimpse -- ever -- of Ms. Sanders is her all red-eyed and unrecognizable as she introduces a future Commander in Chief.) Neal and Bill wander over for moral support, and Neal's enough of a friend to tell Sam he did the right thing. Bill asks if this means Sam will go back to eating lunch with them, and when Sam says yes, Bill says, "Thank God."

Can I just say how much I love the turn this story took? Whatever plausibility issues people may have had with Cindy asking Sam out in the first place, this is pretty much how the story should have gone once they went out, even if it was completely unexpected. Any other show would have had Cindy turn out to be awesome, or else would have had her be the dumper, not the dumpee. It's not even that she's a bad person, just spoiled and a little selfish. But she's a terrible match for Sam, and he was too blinded by her looks to realize that until he got to spend a lot of up close and personal time with her. (The idea of the cheerleader goddess not being the perfect woman is something the writers from "Ed" could have really learned from; I kept waiting for that show's hero to realize that his dream girl from high school was a fairly dull adult.) Some great squirmy comedy performed by both John Daley and Natasha Melnick.

The episode's other relationship story is even squirmier and more unexpected, as Ken has to wrestle with the discovery that Amy was, as he puts it so memorably to Daniel and Nick, born with both the gun and the holster.

Things have seemingly been going great with Amy since they hooked up back in "The Garage Door," and the only source of stress in their lives is Amy's nervousness about having to play "Hail to the Chief" at the Bush assembly. ("There's a lot of tuba," she notes.)

While hanging out in her bedroom for a "study" session, Ken opens up about his distant relationship with his parents -- they're not bad people, but "I guess raising me wasn't one of the things they learned in college" -- and how he's closer with his nanny. Amy in turn decides it's time to let Ken in on her deepest secret and explains that, "When I was born, I had the potential to be male or female." Ken, confused, says, "Yeah, me too." And so she delicately walks him through the concept of being born with ambiguous genitalia, and how her parents and the doctors decided the best thing would be to make her a girl.

Ken, not surprisingly, doesn't know how to respond to this. "No... This is good... that you told me... this," he tells her, trying to play cool. He acts reassured when she tells him that she's all-girl now, but when they bump into each other in school the next day, he engages in clumsy small talk and then makes a point of hugging her instead of kissing her. Later, she confronts him directly, and he gets more and more worked up about his inability to do anything to change this situation. "It's over, move on," he insists. She says it's not that easy, that there will always be a part of her that's...

"... a guy?" Ken asks, and Amy brushes him off.

That night, the male freaks are sleeping over in Nick's basement. Ken declares that he's going to break up with Amy, and when Daniel and Nick protest, he explains about the gun and holster situation. Nick seems appeased by news of Amy's long-ago surgery making her into a girl, but Daniel -- in maybe his harshest moment of the series (if he's not goofing around, and Franco plays the scene so oddly that it's hard to tell) -- says "I don't think it works that way. I think you better get rid of her." Ken realizes he doesn't want to break up with her, he "might even love her." Daniel asks if that means Ken's gay, and Ken angrily replies, "I don't know, does it?" Daniel insists he was joking (or was he?), but now it's all Ken can think about.

Ken needs advice, and tries to get some from Mr. Rosso, but only after explaining that he assumed Rosso was gay. Rosso (already suffering a lot of indignities that week; for more, see below) then turns the counseling session into an interrogation to figure out why Ken might think that of him, and Ken quickly bolts for yet another half-baked attempt to figure out which way he swings. First he puts on a David Bowie record, then some heavy metal, then a disco album to see which one he responds best to. When that (shockingly) fails to provide a concrete answer, he pulls out two nudie mags, one featuring men, one women, and studies them intensely. Rogen's reactions throughout are priceless. (If I had to guess which moment during the episode made the lightbulb go off above Apatow's head, I'd pick the filming of this sequence.)

The freaks are hanging around at night, and Ken reads way too much into Daniel greeting him and Amy with "Hey, guys," demanding to know what Daniel meant by that and then punching him in the face. Amy, realizing that Ken told the others her secret, runs off and refuses to let him in to explain when he comes tapping on her bedroom window. In a very nice little moment scored to Jackson Browne's "The Road," Ken starts walking home alone from Amy's house; Daniel pulls up in his Trans Am and sheepishly offers to drive Ken home. Not a word is said about the punch, or about the earlier conversation in Nick's basement; nothing needs to be said.

Amy realizes in a conversation with Lindsay the next day that Ken didn't tell everyone, but she's too caught up in "Hail to the Chief" nerves to concentrate on her Ken problem. Ken, meanwhile, goes to the men's room to figure out what to do and comes across Sam Weir, puking in anticipation of his Cindy break-up. Ken, who knows Sam in passing as Lindsay's kid brother, asks why Sam would want to dump a girl that hot. "She's really different than I am," Sam explains, to which Ken replies wearily, "Yeah, I know how that one goes." Ken says he's on the verge of dumping his girlfriend, too, but can't explain why, so Sam offers up his tale of woe about how Cindy hated "The Jerk," how they have nothing to talk about, and don't have any fun together. Ken explains that Amy's really cool about all that stuff, and Sam bitterly asks him, "God, then what's the problem?" Ken realizes what an idiot he's been and wishes Sam luck.

(Just a perfect scene, as almost every geek/freak world-colliding moment tended to be. Maybe that's why so many people consider "Beers and Weirs" their favorite episode. Among the many reasons I lament the non-existent second season is that at some point the writers would have had no choice but to put Bill and Kim in a room together, if only to see what happened.)

The camera work switches over to hero-style as Ken walks (marches?) through the long line of McKinley marching banders in search of his tuba girl. He finally finds her near the front of the line and declares, sincerely, "I'm sorry, and I don't care, and I'm sorry." Amy smiles, he smiles, and they hug -- only this time, the hug feels like a huge step forward instead of two steps back. (And as a nice real-world touch, ala Lindsay's bag getting stuck on a desk while she tries to storm out of Kowchevski's classroom in "Tests and Breasts," Ken bonks his head on the rim of the tuba while he's moving in.) The Bush assembly begins, and as Amy begins playing "Hail to the Chief," Ken catches her eye and yells out, "Yeah! 'Hail to the Chief!' This song rocks!"

This subplot got the episode nominated for a GLAAD award (they lost to an episode of "Ed," as a matter of fact), and it's not hard to see why. The writers (Apatow, Jon Kasdan and Mike White) get some big laughs out of Ken's confusion, but they also take the situation itself seriously; none of the laughs ever come at Amy's expense. It's a minefield topic, and the writers avoided blowing up.

Considering how much of the episode hangs on Ken and Sam's relationships, it's funny how the climax has little to do with either one, but instead on a third, non-romantic subplot. (The deeper we got into the season, the more the writers seemed interested in moving away from the familiar "This and That" story structure, which may also explain this episode's non-traditional title. Either that, or Apatow, Kasdan and White couldn't come up with a variation on "(Blank) and Bush" that would pass Standards & Practices.)

After treating Mr. Rosso as the very easy butt of jokes for most of the season, the show's penultimate episode (last, really, as "Discos and Dragons" was made several weeks ahead of schedule) finally decides to give our guidance counselor a little respect -- but only after piling one humiliation after another onto the guy.

Rosso proudly tells Lindsay that she's been selected to ask VP Bush the first question in the informal cafeteria Q&A and is bewildered that Lindsay seems so unhappy with this honor. She notes that she's a Democrat, and he responds that they live in a country where you're supposed to question your leaders, but "I guess me and all my hippie friends were just wasting our time at Berkeley." He finally gets her into the spirit of things by explaining that she's special (not in the Eli way) and destined to be around world leaders. At seeing Lindsay's excited face, he utters the "I've got the best job in the world!" line that was cut from the end of the pilot as being too ironic. Before he can bask in the moment, a Secret Service agent -- played by Apatow's old boss, Ben Stiller -- enters and explains that they're commandeering his office as a workspace until the VP's visit is over. As Rosso walks out, Agent Meara (named for Ben's momma) keys his mic and requests a background check on this teacher, who he describes as "about 6'3," a real Dr. Feelgood look."

Lindsay invites Kim to help her brainstorm a really tough question for Bush (Kim jokes that she should ask about Area 51). We don't know what they come up with, but when Lindsay runs into Mr. Rosso in the parking lot -- locked out of his car, because it's just one of those weeks for him -- he bitterly explains that Bush's people rejected whatever the question was as "too... sophisticated" and instead wrote a vapid one of their own: "What is your favorite place to eat in Michigan?" Rosso is really down at the realization that this is a "glorified photo op" and suggests that his Berkeley protesting didn't accomplish much, that "they" stopped the war when they felt like it. Rosso's friends have all sold out for Wall Street jobs that no doubt pay many times his $12 grand salary, "and I can't get the keys out of my mother's car!"

By this point, Lindsay's developed an odd little crush on Rosso ("He's actually kind of good-looking," she tells the disbelieving freaks), but when she complains about the situation to Harold, he asks her not to make waves -- and, in fact, to use the opportunity to put in a plug for his store, which is facing an uncertain future with a chain megastore moving into the mall. "Your only affiliation right now to any party is to the Weir party," he tells her, half-threatening, half-pleading. He even produces an A1 t-shirt for her to wear (which we'll later discover has "Welcome George Bush" stenciled on the back).

The day of the assembly, Lindsay's impressed to see Rosso all cleaned up in a suit, his hair pulled back into a neat braid. He apologizes for his parking lot meltdown and feigns enthusiasm about the VP's visit, but Agent Meara bars him from entering the cafeteria because he's on the mailing list of some questionable organization. As Meara escorts him to a "holding area" (really Rosso's own office), Mr. Rosso shoots Lindsay a beautiful, knowing look that makes it clear exactly what she needs to do.

Agent Meara takes advantage of the situation to get some career counseling from Rosso (being the vice-president's bodyguard feels as pointless a job to him as being a high school guidance counselor no doubt felt to Rosso in the parking lot). He says he just wants to rip off his vest and jacket sometimes and go make pancakes somewhere, "But that'd be crazy, right?" Rosso smiles wisely and offers to give him something like the Kuder preference test to determine his ideal career.

At the assembly, a tearful Cindy Sanders walks off and Lindsay rises nervously in her A1 t-shirt to ask the first question. As her parents gaze proudly at her, she says, "Mr. Vice-President, my name is Lindsay Weir. My dad owns A1 Sporting Goods on 16 Mile Road. My question is... why did your staff reject my question? Are you afraid of an open discourse with the students?" (Really, it's the best possible question she could have asked; if anything's going to make the ineffectual vice-president look bad, it's an attempted cover-up at a high school assembly.) Rosso is listening on the PA as Meara goes through the test ("Do you like working with major appliances?") and, smiling like the proud papa that Harold resembled moments earlier, calls Lindsay "One of McKinley's finest." You know, sometimes that job's not so bad, is it?

Some other thoughts on "The Little Things":

• Two of the deleted scenes for this one are amazing, but one got cut for time and the other got cut because it was mortifying and creepy even by the standards of a show that had Nick stalking Lindsay for the better part of a season. The former is a sequel to Ken's failed visit to Mr. Rosso, in which we discover that while Rosso's not gay, Mr. Kowchevski is. (Kinda puts his whole "Tests and Breasts" speech about Daniel's bedroom eyes in a different light, doesn't it?) The latter features Cindy forcing Sam to recreate their slow dance from the pilot, and to sing "Come Sail Away" (because, of course, Todd never sang for her) and it is absolutely, wonderfully horrible. If you've got the DVDs, please check 'em out. They may be the two best cut scenes in the entire package.
• Speaking of Kowchevski, his one surviving moment in the episode is a funny one, as he (on the Secret Service's orders, because he's a good soldier) chases the freaks from their usual stairwell hangout. Daniel cracks, "How are we ever going to plan our coup?" and Kowchevski seems very pleased by the prospect of getting Daniel arrested for saying that.
• I remembered Stiller's performance as being far more mannered, but he really dials it down. You never don't notice that it's Stiller the movie star, but he has some nice moments like the pancake scene.
• What's with the male freak sleepover? I would write it off as them just hanging out while high, but sleeping bags are involved.
• Getting back to the issue of guns vs. holsters, can we get a gender breakdown of how everybody feels about "The Jerk"? While I've found some women who like it, the list isn't very long, and it feels like one of the more gender-polarizing members of the Geek Comedy Pantheon.
• Need another ruling: is Bill a bad guy for telling Neal about his time with Vicki, or is it cool because he knows Neal will never believe him?

Up next: The end. But what a great and glorious end it is. I hope to be taking some days off later this week for some much-needed family time, so don't expect the "Discos and Dragons" review before, say, Monday. It's going to be a long one, and I want the time to do it right.

What did everybody else think?

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Freaks and Geeks Rewind: Smooching and Mooching

Spoilers for the "Freaks and Geeks" episode "Smooching and Mooching" coming up just as soon as I drop the needle on some Gene Krupa...

And here is where it becomes obvious that Apatow, Feig and company could see the cancellation writing on the wall, as they go ahead and do an episode where Sam gets to date Cindy Sanders.

This was actually something the writers had in the back of their heads from the start, but for a hypothetical second season, where one of the story arcs would be Sam falling in with the popular crowd and distancing himself from Bill and Neal. When they realized that there would be no second season, the arc got moved up and squeezed into two episodes while there was still time to do it, with this first one the giddy rush (sort of) and "The Little Things" the cold reality.

Back in the post for "Girlfriends and Boyfriends," a few commenters complained that Sam getting to date Cindy seemed like something that came from the network (it wasn't), and that they couldn't buy Cindy jeopardizing her social standing by going out with a geek. I'm okay with it, for a few reasons. First, Sam had been established as less blatantly geeky than Neal or Bill, and someone who the popular kids didn't automatically mock. (Alan did, but he was just as much of an outcast in his own way.) Todd liked him, for instance. Second (and somewhat tied to the first), Cindy hadn't been depicted in the past as someone who felt uncomfortable being seen with Sam, whether it was dancing him at Homecoming (remember, he asked her to dance in full view of several of her friends) getting a bite to eat with him at the fast food joint, etc. It probably would have worked a little better if the storyline had been allowed to progress at its intended pace, but it doesn't feel completely out of left field, either.

Anyway, on to recapping..

So Cindy and Todd have the break-up that Sam's been rooting for, and after once again using Sam as her shoulder to cry on, Cindy decides to give the poor kid a shot. As she explains to ex-lab partner Bill -- her go-between to get Sam to ask her out, since it's not cool for her to do it directly -- "It's like I never date nice guys. I should try it. I think I deserve to." (That line, by the way, is the other reason I totally buy this development. Cindy's not interested in Sam himself; it's the idea of Sam that seems appealing to her while she's on the rebound.)

The moment he's been dreaming about forever (or, at least, since the pilot) has finally arrived, and now Sam's so scared of it that he accuses Bill of lying to him as a cruel joke. Bill insists he's not, and Sam psyches himself up for a very long walk down the hall (bridging the large social gap between the geeks and the popular kids). In the usual halting, puppy dog affect he takes on whenever he's around Cindy, he asks, per her instructions to Bill, "I was wondering... do you want to come to Mona's party with me?" To his great relief and astonishment, she says, "I'd love to." Having achieved his goal, Sam doesn't know what to do next, so Cindy -- clearly enjoying her role as the dominant partner -- leans in and kisses him on the mouth.

Sam continues to panic about not being up to Cindy's high standards. He asks Lindsay for kissing advice; she's pleasantly surprised at the news that Cindy wants to date him, and assures him he'll know what to do when the moment arrives. "She's the lucky one," Lindsay says. "Be a gentleman and don't be weird, and don't smother her." (Even Sam's smart enough to realize that Lindsay's listing all the things Nick didn't do; as Lindsay admits, "Nick was so into me he made me want to move to a different country.")

Sam's fear only grows the next day at lunch, when the other geeks explain that Mona's party is a make-out party. As I've said before, geeks + romantic advice = gold, and here we get Bill ranting about the grossness of French kissing ("Hello? Germs, spit, mucus, old bits of food? I mean, why do you have to use your tongue, anyway?... What are you supposed to do, lick the inside of her mouth? Lick her teeth?"), Gordon explaining that he's saving his virginity "for the future Mrs. Crisp" (Gordon has a real gift for putting a positive spin on anything), and Harris passing on a chance to go the party because he has a date with Judith and "Every night's a make-out party with us."

(In a deleted scene that foreshadows the direction this story will go in with "The Little Things," Sam asks Cindy if Bill and Neal can come to the party; her lip curls like she's just been asked to eat something out of the trash, but she reluctantly says yes.)

Neal decides to give Bill a Spin the Bottle tutorial (and there are no special effects involved; Samm Levine took that bottle home to practice with it for hours), and Bill admits his aversion to kissing has nothing to do with hygiene, but with his very prescient fear that girls won't want to kiss him. He'd rather not go to the party than see a girl look disappointed (or worse) if Bill's bottle points at them. Neal tries to reassure him, and in a funny ad lib (Levine forgot the line, but his flub was funnier than what had been written), answers Bill's question about whether people French kiss during the game by saying, "Some do. Most don't. I do." This then leads to our first Bob Seger montage of the evening, as the geeks get ready to the tune of "Katmandu": Bill obsessively brushes his teeth and experiments with tongue positions in the mirror, Sam ponders fashion disasters like a clip-on tie and the Parisian night suit, and, in maybe the funniest (and/or creepiest) thing Samm Levine ever did on the show, Neal emerges from his bathroom in a smoking jacket, holding a brandy snifter and trying to act all Hugh Hefner for the benefit of Morty the ventriliquist's dummy, whom he proceeds to kiss.

At Mona's party (after Neal removes his dickie so he and Bill won't both be wearing turtlenecks), Cindy welcomes them wearing a bright pink angora sweater (it's a fashion choice I haven't been able to take seriously since I saw "Ed Wood") and again takes charge in the relationship, saying nice things to Sam that are designed to make him return the compliment. Neal and Bill, meanwhile, enter the party basement and all of Neal's bravado vanishes, as he compares their situation to the opening scene in "Animal House" where Pinto and Flounder keep getting sent to the room with the Indian and the blind guy. (Bill: "Blind guys are cool. They have supersonic hearing.")

As Neal predicted, there's a Spin the Bottle game, and to Sam's dismay, the bottle keeps landing on Cindy, no matter who's spinning. One couple kisses a third time, and they have to go into the laundry room for Seven Minutes in Heaven (foreshadowing!). When Cindy takes a nervous Sam off for a walk, Neal and Bill take their places in the circle, and to the tune of Warren Zevon's brilliant "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," all of Neal's fingertip control disappears, as his bottle keeps landing on Bill, even after he forces Bill to change spots in the circle. Bill, meanwhile, keeps spinning the bottle at Neal's beloved Vicki Appleby, who responds with exactly the level of disdain Bill had feared. (First she makes him kiss her hand, then peck her cheek.) To Vicki's disgust, Bill's fear and the crowd's amusement, Vicki's bottle lands on Bill and they have to go for Seven Minutes in Heaven. Vicki barks at a miserable Bill that they should "just get this over with."

Cindy and Sam, meanwhile, are upstairs. Sam remains at Defcon 1, but he's trying his best, first suggesting they pick a bedroom to "talk or something," then putting on the radio in search of some good make-out music, and finally asking Cindy for permission to kiss her; she smiles and says, "Of course." (It's a move that also worked for Ken in "The Garage Door." Maybe Daniel shouldn't trash talk it so much.) They finally have a real kiss, and then Cindy once again establishes that she wears the pants in this relationship by shoving Sam down onto the bed and turning off the light. The last thing we see is an expression of pure terror on Sam's face. Poor Sam's built the idea of dating Cindy up so high that he can't enjoy it even at this early stage. (Also, Cindy's kinda scary like this.)

Things aren't going much better at first for poor Bill, who's trying to suffer through his time with Vicki by making pointless commentary about fabric softener, only to have Vicki continually bark warnings at him. Finally, he loses it and tells her, "You're a jerk! I was just trying to make small talk! I couldn't be less happy to be in here with you! So quit acting like I want to kiss you!" Vicki, like Alan before her, is revealed to be a bully (of a different stripe) who hasn't completely lost her humanity, and she can tell how badly she's hurt Bill. She apologizes, and when he asks her what it's like to be pretty, she laughs and says she's always looked like this, so she doesn't know. Bill suggests that people treat her nicer because she's pretty, "'Cause they're never nice to me."

Vicki's heart grows three sizes and she points out that Bill always seems to be having a good time when she notices him, and asks what he's always laughing about. "I watch movies in my head," Bill explains, and the next thing we know, she's laughing uproariously as he quotes the "He hates these cans!" scene from "The Jerk." (Keep this in mind when we get to "The Little Things.") As Seger's "You'll Accomp'ny Me" soars on the soundtrack, Vicki studies Bill and, now that they've bonded a little, decides to cut him a break. She swears him to silence and then moves in on him for some serious make-out action. These McKinley cheerleaders are surprisingly aggressive, as well as geek-friendly, aren't they? (Speaking of the Vicki-Alan thing, I bought her willingness to kiss Bill in secret more than I bought Alan's closeted geekdom; given the reaction the last time, I imagine I'm going to get a few dozen comments calling this scene lame wish-fulfillment.)

While Sam is finally getting together with the object of his heart's desire (whether he's enjoying it or not), Lindsay has to deal with Nick -- who very clearly still desires her -- taking up semi-permanent residence on the Weir couch.

Nick comes home from a garage sale with Ken and discovers that his father has sold nearly all of his 29-piece drum kit (the stool and a few cymbals are lying askew on the basement floor), having grown tired of both the noise pollution and what he felt was a drain on Nick's schoolwork. Nick tries to stand up to the old man, but Mr. Andopolis shuts him down repeatedly (if you thought Kevin Tighe sounded contemptuous of Locke and Sawyer on "Lost," wait'll you hear him say "End of conversation" to Nick over and over), and when it becomes clear that his dad won't at least give him the money from the sale, Nick moves out.

Thus begins his odyssey in moocher-dom. First he crashes on Daniel's floor, but he gets a crick in his neck and, besides, Mrs. Desario bans him after Nick neglects to flush the toilet. (Maybe Nick got confused on the whole "If it's yellow, keep it mellow..." theory of conservation.) Ken's dad is too uptight to allow guests ("He doesn't even let my grandma stay over"), Kim's haunted house is clearly out of the question, and Lindsay tries to cut off any suggestion of him staying with her family. (Ken: "Nice try, though, Nick. What you should have done was, you should have pretended to cry.")

But if there's one thing all the freaks have learned by now, it's that the Weirs, together and individually, are such nice people that you can manipulate them to get what you want, especially in an emergency, and so Nick shows up at dinnertime and praises Jean's cooking until she invites him to join them. After faking (or maybe not) a major food orgasm over Jean's pot roast, Nick gets back to wheedling his way into the Weir's hearth and home by asking if Harold's store sells sleeping bags, since, you know, he's homeless right now. Lindsay tries to interrupt the pity party by noting that Nick moved out, and when Nick explains that his dad sold his drums because he felt they were interfering with his schoolwork, Harold begins to look at his daughter's goofy ex-boyfriend in a new light. "How are you doing at school?" he asks. "Terrible," Nick admits. To Lindsay's shock and dismay, Harold invites Nick to sleep on their couch.

After another scene, ala "The Garage Door," where Daniel and Kim respectively tell Nick and Lindsay how to either get back together or stay apart (Kim: "If he tries to give you a foot massage, run"), we return to the Weir house for Quiet Homework Hour, which Nick proceeds to disrupt by blasting "Tom Sawyer" at full volume on Lindsay's stereo. Harold complains that Nick ought to be doing his homework, and in a way that manages to be both strict and yet fair (I hope I'm half this good when my daughter becomes a teenager), cuts through all of Nick's excuses and says he should be working harder. (It's maybe the most persuasive "In my day..." speech I've ever heard.) He calls Nick smart -- clearly the first such compliment he's gotten from an authority figure in years, if ever -- and, as an aside, says that the drummer from Rush is terrible. Nick, as you'd expect, rises to the defense of Mr. Neal Peart, but Harold counters that he has some real drumming Nick can listen to.

Cut to one of my favorite scenes from the show ever: Nick having a sonic orgasm (it's good this guy's enjoying so much non-sexual activity, because he's definitely not going to get any from Lindsay) while listening to one of Harold's Gene Krupa albums. "How do they do that?" he asks, riveted. "Maybe they took a lesson?" Harold counters, and Nick suggests maybe it's time he took one. (Ya think? Knowing that Nick never had any training before explains so much.) Lindsay and Sam have been in the kitchen discussing his Cindy kissing problem, and they emerge to find Nick swing-dancing with Jean as Harold does some kind of jazz-hands freestyle. Lindsay is once again dismayed, and Sam says, "I don't think Nick's in love with you. I think he's in love with Mom and Dad."

Lindsay has trouble sleeping, too aware that her stalker ex is sleeping a few yards away on the couch, and Nick stays true to form by rapping on her door in the middle of the night, hoping to get in to, um, get in. Lindsay wisely refuses to open the door, but the camera cuts outside to show Nick wearing a pair of bikini briefs and looking as ridiculous as he has in every other episode combined. (In fairness to the ever-fearless Jason Segel, he's in decent shape, but any non-ripped guy is going to look dopey in those undies.) Nick insists he just wants to thank Lindsay for her parents' kindness, but she begs him to get back to the couch before he wakes Harold. Nick finally acquiesces, but just as Lindsay's head has hit the pillow again, she hears Nick groaning in pain. She goes out to investigate and has the appropriate reaction to his clothes (or lack thereof) while he explains that he stubbed his toe. (Making the wardrobe sight gag complete, Sam emerges from his room in a pair of Star Wars pajamas that Nick compliments.)

Nick is still an unofficial member of the family by the next dinnertime, and he raves about his first-ever drum lesson. Lindsay asks the obvious question of where Nick got the money to pay for it and is flabbergasted to hear that tight-fisted Harold loaned it to him, and is giving Nick a part-time job at A1 to help pay for the lessons. While Nick's helping Jean in the kitchen, Lindsay finally confronts her dad about why he's being so patient and generous with Nick, especially compared to her.

"That's because I expect more from you," he tells her. "Nick's father's a hard man. My father was the same way." Lindsay jokes that she has some idea, and Harold freezes her with the simple way he says, "Lindsay, trust me: you don't." (Boy, Joe Flaherty was good at the dramatic stuff. Someone want to take another stab at explaining why he doesn't work more on either side of the business?)

Later that evening, Mr. Andopolis shows up and declares, without give, that it's time for Nick to come home. Nick immediately caves (he later tries to justify it by saying, "I mean, he came looking for me. I didn't think that was going to happen."), and while he's packing up his meager possessions, Harold tries to reason with Andopolis. He tells a story of how he used to get on his own taskmaster father's nerves by bringing dogs home and says, "Teenagers will try all sorts of things. Sometimes, you've just gotta let 'em be kids." Andopolis looks at Harold like he's the most naive man he's ever met and asks how old Harold's son is; told that Sam is 14, he replies, coldly, "You call me when he turns 16."

(What makes the scene work, I think, is that we have some knowledge that each man doesn't. We know that Nick's a lazy pothead who has justified at least some of his dad's scorn, just as we know that Nick genuinely responded to Harold's slightly gentler approach. At the same time, you could argue that Nick acts the way he does to rebel against his hardass dad, or that he would start slacking off and taking advantage of Harold within another week or two. The point is, it's not completely black and white, even as Harold sees Mr. Andopolis as a mirror image of his own brutal pop and Mr. Andopolis sees Harold as a sap. Because the series ended two episodes later, we never found out whether Nick stuck to the part-time job and drum lessons or just took his father's arrival as another excuse to lie in the basement and get high all day.)

After Nick leaves, Lindsay (who finally felt sympathy for Nick once he was leaving, and once she got a closer look at his dad) thanks Harold for helping out. Harold in turn apologizes for making her feel like he doesn't treat her fairly. She wishes he could talk to her the way he talks to Nick, and he tells her there's an obvious difference: "You're my daughter. Every second you're out of this house, every second that I can't see you or know what you're doing, it's absolute torture for me." She says she can't stay in the house all the time, and after he acknowledges that, he jokes, "Why not?" and they have a nice father-daughter hug.

It's a really sweet storyline all around, as much a Harold spotlight as it is a Nick subplot.

Some other thoughts on "Smooching and Mooching":

• This episode was written by Steve Bannos, better known to you all as Mr. Kowchevski. I always find it interesting that when actors write for the series they act on, they almost never write a lot for themselves (Michael Imperioli's "Sopranos," for instanced, tended to be much heavier on Paulie than Christopher), and there's no Kowchevski at all here.
• Blink and you'll miss Samaire Armstrong (later to play Anna on "The O.C." and now the Paris Hilton clone on "Dirty Sexy Money") borrowing a cafeteria chair from the freaks in the first of her two appearances as one of McKinley High's handful of Deadheads. And, yes, her appearance is entirely to set up the events of the finale.
• Great Moments in DVD Commentary: there's a very long (three-plus minutes) alternate version of the scene where Nick disrupts Quiet Homework Hour at the Weir house. Because he has nothing to say, Judd invites Martin Starr to help fill the time however he sees fit, and Martin begins quizzing Judd about the gory details of childbirth. It's really gross, really funny, and I'd like to think it helped inspire the climactic scene in "Knocked Up." (Also, one of the trio -- I think it's John Daley -- starts joking that no one could possibly be listening to this, so go and prove him wrong, okay?)
• More Great Moments in DVD Commentary: Samm Levine tells a story about how Natasha Melnick, who played Cindy, called him up after she shot her first kissing scene with John Daley to ask whether Daley was supposed to be using his tongue for their stage kisses. Daley (who, to be fair, was just entering puberty back in the day) denies having done this, but Melnick sheepishly confirms her side of the story.
• In the discussion of "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers," I suggested that the writers made Mark the frizzy-haired kid into Nick's new pot connection because Sean (the bass player in Creation) wasn't available to be on the show anymore. Whoops; he's at the makeout party, having himself a fine time mocking Neal's bad luck at Spin the Bottle.
• Speaking of which, I always wonder how old some of the recurring characters are supposed to be. Harris is clearly established as a year or two older than the main geeks (though he seems to only hang out with them). Vicki would seem to be older than Cindy and the other freshmen, by dint of being head cheerleader, but she has classes with them all and clearly knows what's what with Bill. Mark is in the geeks' freshman gym class in the pilot but is written as a contemporary of the freaks (all juniors) in later episodes. I guess the writers figured, correctly, that no one would notice or care about that stuff except the real anal-retentives like yours truly.
• And speaking of anal-retentiveness, great throwaway moment where the geeks debate the positions in the Comedy Pantheon for the likes of "The Jerk," "Caddyshack" and "Stripes." Sam challenges any of them to describe what happens in the second, much weaker half of "Stripes," and Neal rattles off a detailed plot synopsis. Based on what I know of Samm Levine, I'm guessing they didn't even have to script that part.
• More on Samm Levine: Bill and Sam's make-out sessions leave Neal as the only regular character to never get any on the show; in one of the commentaries, Feig admits it was karmic payback for the many, many, many young women Levine hit on (unsuccessfully) while they were in production. (Samm is, thankfully, a good sport about it.)

Up next: "The Little Things," the series' penultimate episode (sigh...) as well as the one that convinced Apatow that Seth Rogen could make him a lot of money.

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