Girlfriends and Boyfriends (Freaks and Geeks)

Few television clichés are as omnipresent as the will they/won’t they relationship. That’s because it tends to be quite effective, so long as it doesn’t feel overly contrived. It’s always good to give the audience something to latch onto from week to week, and creating two characters who could possibly hook up at any moment creates a bit of the necessary weekly suspense. Judd Apatow, in his two forays into television, decided to play with the old will they/won’t they formula each time. His second series, Undeclared (of which I’ve only seen the pilot), would kill the trope early by having his lead characters sleep together in the first episode. Meanwhile, the marquee relationship in Freaks and Geeks would eventually make the audience ask another question: When will it end?

At the end of the episode “I’m With the Band,” which was intended to precede “Girlfriends and Boyfriends” directly, Lindsay is already regretting her decision to begin a relationship with Nick. He’s far too needy and clingy, and she’s unhappy before she fully realizes what she’s getting into. “Girlfriends and Boyfriends” doesn’t end their relationship, but it further drags Lindsay into romantic purgatory. She likes Nick, and she wants to make it work, but it’s obvious that it won’t.

Above all, she’s intrigued by the prospect of having sex with Nick. She doesn’t want to, per se, but she’s willing to entertain the notion. Much like a famous world leader, she’s keeping all options on the table. The main motivation is her perception that, well, everybody’s doing it. The opening sequence of “Girlfriends and Boyfriends” perfectly captures Lindsay’s mental state without making her say a word. Walking in slow motion to the tune of the Allman Brothers Band is the best kind of storytelling. The lone flaw in this sequence is that the long-haired dude toward the end is at least thirty.

The problem with Nick is that he’s a little too… quick with everything. After he kisses Lindsay in “I’m With the Band” he immediately enters “You’re my girl” mode, but Lindsay still needs her space. Within seconds of seeing Nick at the beginning of the episode, he holds her like a long-lost teddy bear and grabs a piece of her derrière. Trust me, that was an unintentional rhyme, but I’m sticking with it. This is the rare will they/won’t they scenario where we want to scream “please don’t!” at the television.

This all leads up to a wonderfully painful climax where Lindsay goes over to Nick’s house with the intention sealing the proverbial deal, but she is instead greeted by a gentler man than she imagined. Nick leads her to the basement, which he has set up to as an appropriate environment for either love-making or an unplugged Nirvana concert. Turns out his intentions are more aligned with the latter, as he serenades Lindsay with the sounds of Styx’s “Lady” and settles down for a long, clothed cuddlefest. By the end of the episode, she is rather turned off by the whole ordeal, and her father doesn’t help with his disgustingly hilarious story about losing his virginity to a prostitute in Korea.

Nick’s problem is that he sees Lindsay as this unobtainable object which has finally landed in his lap, and as a result he treats her like a precious artifact: Keep her close, and let no one break her, not even yourself. His idealization of Lindsay is evident in a short scene where he brags to Daniel about the intellectual and emotional superiority of his girlfriend as opposed to Kim. It’s clear that Nick with girlfriend is a far more unpleasant person than Nick without girlfriend.

While this is all going on, Sam and the geeks find themselves in the midst of your classic “lab partners” plot, only Sam ends up with the fat, smelly Gordon instead of the infinitely more attractive Cindy. However, it turns out that Gordon is something of a Cindy-seduction wizard, and he helps create the playbook that will hopefully land Sam in the arms of his beloved. He begins by joining all the clubs that Cindy is involved in, including yearbook. Sam ends up going door-to-door selling ads for the yearbook in an attempt to bond, and he ends up making a good enough impression that she refers to him as “the nicest guy in school.”

This sounds all and well, until it becomes obvious that you don’t want to be described as merely “nice” when you’re trying to gain a woman’s affection. When Sam and Cindy go to a burger joint after school, she immediately places him in the infamous Friend Zone after revealing her crush for blond jock-type Todd. Yet Sam goes along with it so that he can continue to hang out with her. “Girlfriends and Boyfriends” beautifully sets up the cringe-worthy Sam/Cindy awkwardness that will ensue in the coming episodes.

“Girlfriends and Boyfriends” ends with one of my favorite scenes in the series’ entire run, and it’s the kind of scene I wish Freaks and Geeks did more. After their individual adventures in adolescent romance, Lindsay and Sam meet in the family kitchen for a brief heart-to-heart. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more believable pair of fictional siblings in any artistic medium, be it television, film, or interpretive dance, than the two Weirs in Freaks and Geeks. These two kids identify with each other in a way that few other characters in the series do, and the final scene is the kind of heartwarming that I could always use more of. Freaks and Geeks is a show that paints high school as an insensitive land that’s full of rejection, but it isn’t all bleak. Whether you’re stuck in a relationship like the Lindsay/Nick affair or trying to start one with the girl you like, you can always sit at a kitchen table and talk to someone who’s willing to listen.