Despite being the main protagonist, Lindsay Weir is not as lost as Freaks and Geeks characters come. In a show fundamentally about the search for identity in a high school setting, there’s one character that seems more lost at sea than the rest: James Franco’s Daniel Desario. At the beginning of the series, he’s everything a freak should be. However, it becomes clear after a while that he feels unfulfilled with the life he’s been living. This would be further explored in later episodes such as “Noshing and Moshing” and the finale “Discos and Dragons,” but “Tests and Breasts” is the episode that first hints at Daniel’s dissatisfaction.
It begins when he’s told that he must pass the next math test or else he’ll be forced to repeat the class. Lindsay offers to tutor him in the ways of algebra, but he proves less than receptive. Daniel decides to take a bit of a shortcut, and he steals all the answers. Lindsay is initially reluctant to be Daniel’s enabler, but after the math teacher Mr. Kowchevski insults Daniel she decides to allow the cheating, hoping to prove Kowchevski wrong.
Daniel, obviously, gets an ‘A’ on the test. Yet Kowchevski is skeptical, accusing Lindsay and Daniel of cheating without an ounce of proof. Lindsay considers giving in, but Daniel, a compulsive liar, talks her out of it. He delivers a grand speech about tracking in public schools which sounds as if it’s been rehearsed a thousand times (it later turns out it likely was) and they decide to go forward with their dishonest agenda. This all leads to a final scene which ends well, thanks in large part to Joe Flaherty as Lindsay’s dad, who can elevate any seemingly normal scene into the sublime.
Meanwhile, in Geekland, Sam is showing his naiveté once more. It begins in health class, where Coach Biff (as I call him) is teaching the boys about the female reproductive system. Sam is called to the front of the class where he is exposed to his classmates as a kid who can’t tell a cervix from an ovary. He immediately goes searching for answers to his questions, until Daniel provides him with an item that will make everything clearer, albeit in the unhealthiest way possible: a pornographic film.
Sam, along with Neal and Bill, decide to set up the projector and check the movie out, but instead of an informative experience it is a disturbing one. Neal is fascinated by every frame, while Bill is never quite sure exactly what he’s looking at. Sam, meanwhile, knows what he’s seeing but he doesn’t like it. Until this moment he has seen females merely as dudes with long hair that may be slightly more attractive. Suddenly, the female sex is a lot less appealing to him. The next day when he goes to school, he is no longer excited to talk to his crush Cindy. Instead, in his mind, she becomes a satanic sex monster.
Leave it to Coach Biff to right the ship. The next day in health class he is… disturbed by Sam’s sex question, which could only be horrifying. He sits him down for a talk about the fact that pornographic film is often not so committed to verisimilitude, and Sam leaves feeling much more comfortable about life. Within minutes he’s sitting down for a conversation with Cindy that is infinitely less awkward than before.
“Tests and Breasts” represents a key moment in the series for Sam Weir. This conversation with Coach Biff is no less than a first step into adulthood, moving him in a more mature direction than before. If the Halloween episode aired after “Tests and Breasts,” it’s likely Sam would have opted out of trick-or-treating. He has long been insistent on staying a child forever, but at the end of this episode he’s more content with moving on.
Meanwhile, for the first time Daniel is beginning to doubt his current way of life. For now, he is only slightly disconcerted, but eventually he will be searching for new identities. It’s a testament to the acting of James Franco that Daniel’s emotions are conveyed so clearly without a great deal of obvious dialogue, the only exception the intentionally artificial “tracking” speech. Lindsay, despite all her desires to escape from her past, is still a really smart girl, and she truly wants Daniel to do well. It’s only in the final scene she realizes it’s all futile. In the words of her father, she’s a track one girl. Daniel’s not.
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