Each is unique, and never to be repeated. We review obscure gems of TV shows that aired for one season (at most) before getting canceled.
This week, let us love… Freak and Geeks.
I thought I’d start with non-irony. This program is perhaps the poster child of Death by Suits. Debuting to enthusiastic critic reception in 1999 (yes, it’s been that long, and yes, people have been mad… for that long.)
It was a nice little dramedy set in the 80′s in Detroit, which… that busts the origino-meter right there. Set somewhere else than New York or California? In that horrid flyover territory? Shut up! Sadly, however, the program anticipated the ’80′s revival by nearly a decade, which means we can expect a greenlight on another ’80′s network show in, oh, five years or so, when we’ll all have moved on to “Hey, remember the Clinton administration?”
Freaks and Geeks didn’t break any enormous subject territory– it was about teenage angst, and we know that has no place on network television–but it quickly built a following.
What happened to that following has become the stuff of audience abuse legend. NBC shot 18 episodes, and aired twelve. Cancellation and much screaming, buoyed by the rapidly proliferating Internet, followed. NBC rolled its eyes and tossed the rabid advertising- watching dogs three more in the dead of July. The show bounced to the Fox Family Channel. It was nominated for three Emmys and won one– posthumously.
Fans of the cult- beloved Mystery Science Theater 300o joined the fight when creator and former host Joel Hodgson popped in for a cameo. Not surprisingly, when the possibility arose for the show to appear on DVD, Shout! Factory played a role. The same company has also played rescuer for several Mystery Science Theater projects.
It’s more of a watchword than a series, here in the shiny new millennium. Heed your online petitions well, TV execs. Your viewers might just have an idea of what they’d like to watch.
