How one short-lived NBC comedy about a group of high school stoners is still shaping comedy 20 years later.
WORDS BY Mark Healy
DESIGN BY MARTIN FLORES
BC cancelled Freaks and Geeks without even
airing all of the first season’s episodes, but the
1999 series and the people who made it, has had a lasting and outsized impact on the comedies that have come since then. And not only because the show’s producer, Judd Apatow, and showrunner Paul Feig, have had a steady stream of creative output over the past two decades. The actors who played the Freaks—Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Busy Philipps, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel—are something of a cultural force, producing, directing, writing, or appearing in hundreds of films, TV shows, and documentaries, writing novels, teaching college courses, and sparking international incidents. This month Busy Philipps will get her own talk show, called Busy Tonight, and it’s yet another example of how far inside these outsiders have come.
A new documentary about the now-beloved show, part of A&E’s Culture Shock series, which explores phenoms such as The Osbournes and The Rise of Trash TV, helps explain why. Brent Hodge, who directed the one-hour Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary (July 16th), attributes the cast and crews’ impressive output to what he calls, “a homegrown effort where everyone wore a lot of hats. Judd Apatow was the producer and Paul Feig was the showrunner," Hodges says, “but they both wrote and directed episodes. Seth Rogen was sixteen at the time and he was already writing Superbad. Those were his formative years!” In the course of filming the documentary, Hodge came to realize that cast and crews’ outsized impact on comedy has been “absolutely insane”. We decided to see if he was right.
N
Judd Apatow
Samm Levine
James Franco
Martin Starr
Linda Cardellini
Busy Philipps
Paul Feig
Seth Rogen
John Francis Daley
Jason Segel
How often these freaks and geeks have collaborated with other F&G alumni.
Have They Worked Together?
Busy
Philipps
Linda
Cardellini
James
Franco
Seth
Rogen
Jason Segel
A Stoner's Guide to World Domination
17 feature films
237 TV episodes
Incl.
4 feature films
5 feature films
Nick Andopolis
times
7
28
Jason Segel
Gulliver’s Travels, with a cool 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Wrote 4 songs for Get Him to the Greek, including “Bangers, Beans & Mash” and “Inside You”.
His role as writer David Foster Wallace in the film The End of the Tour won him a Best Male Lead nomination for the Independent Spirit Awards. He also co-wrote a YA novel, Otherworld.
Nine seasons with a starring role in a genuine cultural phenomenon How I Met Your Mother; resurrected the Muppet Show, single-handedly responsible for new heights of awkwardness for his naked scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
times
36 feature films
54 TV episodes
2 feature films
2 TV shows (7 episodes)
21 feature films
49 TV episodes
7 feature films
52 TV episodes
Ken Miller
11
45
Seth Rogen
The Green Hornet, Sausage Party, that road trip movie he made with Barbra Streisand.
Enraged North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and created an international stir while nearly undoing Sony in the email hacking scandal with The Interview. Played Steve Wozniak in Jobs. Makes Canada even cooler.
His reign as King of the Stoner Comedy—Superbad, Pineapple Express, Knocked Up, This is the End. The Comedy Central Roast of James Franco. His decade-long battle with Katherine Heigl.
87 feature films
120 TV episodes
12 feature films
4 TV episodes
14 feature films
4 TV episodes
14 feature films
Daniel Desario
4
32
James Franco
Apart from the sexual assault allegations and trying to pick up underage girls, he taught a course at NYU that was considered "easy". Tristan and Isolde.
Wrote a short story collection, Palo Alto Stories, which was later made into a film. He also holds MFAs from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design. His art has been shown at the Tate Modern in London and MoMA in New York and he has taught at UCLA, Columbia, and NYU. Has played a wide array of great Americans, from Allen Ginsberg, Hart Crane, James Dean, the Green Goblin, and of course, Tommy Wiseau. Appeared in 54 episodes of General Hospital, a project he described as “performance art”.
Franco won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV Mini-Series for 2002’s James Dean and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture for 2017’s The Disaster Artist (which he also directed). Spring Breakers. Currently stars as twin brothers in HBO’s The Deuce.
times
23 feature films
314 TV episodes (12 TV shows)
Incl.
Incl.
Incl.
Lindsay Weir
time
1
11
Linda Cardellini
Did anyone recognize her as Hawkeye’s bland wife in Avengers: Age of Ultron?
Her Velma in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies was a delicious Scooby Snack in a pile full of scraps.
It’s a tie between her Meg Rayburn, among the least damaged Rayburns on the Netflix family drama Bloodlines, and Park Avenue housewife/laundry room regular Sylvia Rosen, one of Don Draper’s greatest Mad Men co-conspirators.
15 feature films
226 TV episodes
1 TV shows (1 episode)
Incl.
1 feature film
Kim Kelly
time
1
28
Busy Philipps
She had a role in Amy Schumer’s disastrous I Feel Pretty. It wasn’t pretty.
Somehow parlayed her Instagram game, affability, and friendship with Dawson’s Creek co-star Michelle Williams into a late night talk show.
Her new talk shown on E!, Busy Tonight or her Drunk History with Tiffany Haddish? Who are we kidding, it was her white chick in White Chicks.
times
Lows
Miscellaneous
Brilliance
Highs
Judd Score
How often they have worked with Judd Apatow after Freaks & Geeks?
Number of times they have worked with any of the 10 F&G alum above.
Freaks & Geeks Collab Index
Choose Another Freak
Get more
stunning visual stories every week.