TTH 7/13/26

Freaks and Geeks Rewatch - Smooching and Mooching

The end of Freaks and Geeks is quickly approaching, and episode #16 brought us the Kevin Tighe/Joe Flaherty we did not think we needed, as well as a major change in a prominent plot point which had originated in the very first episode. Without any further ado, let us proceed.

This week begins with Nick & Ken attending a garage sale. Ken makes his usual sarcastic comments about the items which are up for sale, until Nick discovers a pair of bongo drums. He excitedly says that this means that their band can now add Evil Ways to the set list, and it would also expand the size of his drum kit to 31 pieces. His happiness comes to an abrupt halt when he enters his basement only to discover that his drum set is gone.

Nick’s dad has finally dropped the hammer; he sold the drums because his grades were failing. This is an instance where both parties were right and wrong at the same time. We have seen enough instances of Nick being a f***-up. He needed some tough love. But, did Mr. Andopolis have the right to sell his son’s personal belongings and keep the money for himself? When Nick tries to appeal his case by stating that he paid for his drums himself, the response was brutal. “What do you pay for drums, and what do you pay for drugs?” Nick storms out of the house, vowing to never return.

Back at school, Cindy asks to speak to Sam alone. She confides that she has broken up with Todd. Sam is unsure what to make of this, but Cindy later pulls Bill aside before chemistry class to tell him that she like likes Sam and would like him to ask her to a big party that weekend. Sam needs convincing that Bill is not messing with him, but he does eventually strike up the courage. He makes the long, slow walk to the other end of the locker room and asks Cindy to the party, an invitation which she gladly accepts.

Nick has got a bad crimp in his neck, which he suffered from crashing on Daniel’s floor. He tries to ask the other freaks if he can stay at their house, but they all offer excuses. Lindsay uses the classic “if it was up to me, I’d say yes, but my parents…” Nick claims that he understands, but for the moment he has no place to go. That is, until he rings the Weir doorbell just as they were sitting down to dinner. Sly as a fox, that Nick. Jean invites him to stay for dinner, and his compliments on the quality of the meal were heavily over the top.

Now it’s time for the kill. He asks Harold if he sells sleeping bags at the sporting goods store, explaining that he needs to find a comfortable way to sleep because he is no longer staying at home. Showing sympathy for his plight - I have to imagine that Mr. Andropolis’s reputation as a big ol’ meanie precedes him - Jean tells Nick that he can temporarily stay with the Weirs. To his credit, Nick does not try anything funny with Lindsay. The closest he comes is that he knocks on her bedroom door in the middle of the night to thank her. Later that night she hears a noise after he had stumbled into furniture and when she goes to investigate she finds him in his sleep clothes - bikini-cut underwear. They share a moment of embarrassment, but nothing beyond that.

Sam learns to his horror that the party he is taking Cindy to is not an ordinary one, it is a make out party. What is he gonna do? In addition, he was able to finagle invites for Bill and Neal so now all of the geeks will attend a party that they probably aren’t quite ready for yet. Bill is insistent that he will never French kiss, claiming that it is unhygienic. Neal of course pretends that he is a smooth operator, and in a funny scene he is shown rehearsing in his bedroom, holding a brandy snifter while wearing a smoking jacket. He practices kissing on his ventriloquism dummy. Sorry, his figure.

Back at the Weir house, Sam and Lindsay are shown doing their homework, Harold and Jean are sitting in their chairs reading. All is not quiet, however, as the sounds of Tom Sawyer are emanating from the basement. Harold goes down to remind Nick that this is quiet hour, for which Nick apologizes. Harold then asks if he has homework to do, but Nick tries to explain that listening to music is his homework. Harold knows that he has to tiptoe around someone who is not his son, so he says that the drummer on Tom Sawyer isn’t all that good. Nick responds in disbelief, telling Harold that Neil Peart is the greatest drummer on the planet. Harold then says he will introduce Nick to something entirely different.

He puts on a Gene Krupa record, which blows Nick’s mind. He explains to Harold that he has never been able to master jazz technique, try as he might. Hearing this music has opened his eyes, and before too long he is dancing with Jean. Nick clearly sees in the Weir family what he has been missing in his own life, parents who show unconditional love and support for their children. Which is a notion that Lindsay is unable to grasp. Harold hires Nick to work part time at the store so that he can afford to pay for drum lessons. Lindsay is jealous that he has never done anything similar for her. His explanation is that Nick needs some guidance.

Neal and Bill are continuing their preparations for the party. Neal informs Bill that he has perfected the technique required to “win” spin the bottle. He is confident that he knows the precise spin he can use to insure that it will always land pointed towards which girl he most wants to kiss. As a demonstration he spins 3 times, each time it lands precisely pointed towards Bill. Neal is ready to go.

The Nick plot ends with his father coming to the Weirs so that he can tell Nick that it is time to come home. Harold asks to speak to Mr. Andopolis privately where he assures him that Nick is a good kid and that he doesn’t need to be so harsh in order to reach him. Kevin Tighe gives him the Kevin Tighe death stare and asks Harold how old his own son is. When Harold says that Sam is 14, the response is “come back to me when he’s 16.” After Nick leaves the house, Lindsay confronts her dad about her disappointment that he was mentoring a stranger in a way that he never had for her. He awkwardly tried to articulate himself, stating that he is terribly worried any moment where he doesn’t know where she is or what she is doing. There are some gender based double standards in play here, but this whole scene is a great example of the way in which Judd Apatow and Paul Feig are practically the anti-John Hughes. The adults in Hughes movies were too often broad caricatures; the adults in this show were anything but.

As for the party, Neal was not as good of a bottle spinner as he claimed to be. Every time he spun, the bottle pointed right at Bill. He finally asked Bill to switch seats. Didn’t work, he landed on Bill yet again. Bill must have been carrying a bottle magnet in his pocket. Vicki’s first spin landed on Bill. She had a look of disgust on her face, but she offered up her hand for Bill to kiss. Second spin, Bill again. This time she leans in so that he can give her a peck on the cheek. Third time, you guessed it. A third point towards Bill means they go into the closet for Seven Minutes In Heaven.

As they sat in the closet she warns him not to try anything, and he assures her that he has no intentions of doing so. After a couple of minutes of awkward silence he accuses her of being a jerk. She was a little shocked to realize that is how people perceive her, and she then asks him why he is so happy all the time. He explains that he is always thinking of funny movies in his head. He winds up explaining the plot of The Jerk to her, and she finally says what the hell. Before warning him to never tell anyone about this, she and Bill begin to make out. Shortly thereafter Neal is pounding on the closet door, telling Bill that they have long passed the 7 minute mark. He and Vicki are still going to town.

Sam, meanwhile, continues to be very nervous about what to do. He and Cindy are alone in a bedroom, where they are slowly dancing around each other. That is, until Cindy pushes Sam down unto the bed and then shuts the light. Sam has finally gotten what he has wanted for years, but has he really? Tune in next week to find out more.

One final note on this episode. In the cafeteria we briefly see a couple of Deadheads. Ken mentions that the music of The Grateful Dead sucks, but they have the hottest fans. Think of that as a bit of foreshadowing for the season and series finale. In the meantime, next week we reach the penultimate episode, and my goodness was that an all-timer of an episode.

Looking At Some Numbers

I am going to make a slight change to this feature. Now that we are above #50, there are fewer and fewer players who have worn each number. Higher numbers have traditionally been reserved for coaches - when I think of 54, I picture Rube Walker - or young players in spring training who are fated to be sent to the minor leagues during the first cut. There are occasional significant players who continued to wear high numbers even after they established themselves as major leaguers (that Aaron Judge guy who wears #99 is pretty good), but in many cases there are going to be slim pickings going forward. Therefore I will cease naming runners-up the rest of the way. Here are the next set of names for the greatest Met to wear each uniform number.

52 - Of course I would come up with a big name following that lengthy preamble. Yoenis Céspedes personified the Mets’ surprising run to the 2015 World Series, both good and bad. After the Mets acquired him in a trade deadline deal, he went on an insane home run spree, a major reason why they marched to the pennant. And then his outfield misplay on the very first play of that WS led to an inside the park home run which gave the Royals an immediate lead. The back half of his Mets career was adventurous; if there were ever to be a team which would lose one of its big power hitters to an injury caused by a wild boar, of course it would be the Mets.

53 - NOW we are in “who ya gonna choose?” territory. Jeremy Hefner was a solid enough relief pitcher, whose greater contributions to the team were as a pitching coach. So, instead I will award this to an underappreciated reliever from the 2006 team, the submariner Chad Bradford. The aesthetics of his pitching motion add something to the mix.

54 - The Mets famously went almost 50 years before their first no-hitter, this despite the fact that several of the most dominant starting pitchers of their eras had played for the Mets at one point, and Shea Stadium was an extreme pitcher’s park to boot. I used to joke that it would be fitting if the first no-hitter would come from a Mark Clark type. Clark was a guy who would give you a professional outing each time; a #3 type starter who generally went 6 innings, scattered 7 hits and 3 runs while keeping the team in the game. There is value to that, at least enough to be named the Mets top #54. Not to worry, the pitcher who finally threw a no-hitter was significantly better than a Mark Clark type. We can discuss that guy next time.

55 - There is only one choice here, and that is Pedro Feliciano. A classic LOOGY, Gary Cohen gave him the affectionate nickname of Perpetual Pedro, because he pitched seemingly every day. He led the NL in appearances 3 consecutive years, and in the years before MLB instituted the 3 batter minimum rule, he was often asked to face only 1 left handed hitter or two before passing the ball to the next man in line. A very popular player, he died tragically young.

The Science Fiction Movie Pantheon - Star Wars

First off, GTFO with any of this “A New Hope” nonsense. This movie was officially retitled as Episode IV: A New Hope in one of its theatrical reissues to maintain titling consistency among all of the Star Wars flicks - sort of like how you now see a certain movie listed on streaming services as Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of the Lost Ark. I don’t care. The movie I knew I needed to see from the very moment I saw a TV ad was called Star Wars. The movie that I collected trading cards for was called Star Wars. The movie that I collected poorly constructed action figures for was called Star Wars. It will always be Star Wars to me. I am not a crackpot. Oh, & Han shot first!

With that out of the way, it remains as thrilling to this day as it was when George Lucas initially introduced us to a saga which took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. He spectacularly repurposed standard archetypes and created several of the most iconic characters in film history. While it is true that too many of the later chapters in the Skywalker Saga devoted an inordinate amount of time to fan service and to the incredible coincidence that every major event in a vast galaxy somehow involves the members of one specific family, the first 2 movies released in the series are enduring classics.

The basic framework of the story is well known to everyone. A rebel alliance has obtained the secret plans to a “Death Star” that the evil empire is constructing. Before being captured Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) loads those plans into an R2 unit droid. R2-D2, accompanied by fellow droid C-3PO escapes to the planet Tattoine, where the uncle of young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) purchases the two droids. It is then that Luke discovers a secret message Leia has recorded for Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness). Might this Obi-Wan fellow be related to Ben Kenobi, a local hermit? Well, Ben & Obi-Wan are one and the same. Kenobi had been secretly observing Luke for years because He. Is. Important.

Obi-Wan rescues Luke after he had been attacked by sand people. Luke learns that the man whom he had long known as Ben Kenobi was in fact the legendary Jedi master Obi-Wan, who had gone into hiding after the empire had wiped out the Jedis years earlier. While searching for the droids, empire forces murder Luke’s Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Our heroes flee; Luke must now train in the ways of The Force so that he can become a Jedi while they search for a pilot who has a fast enough ship from which they can rescue the princess, return to the rebel stronghold, decode the Death Star plans, and launch an attack against the empire.

Enter Han Solo (Harrison Ford), pilot of the Millenium Falcon. He is in need of cash so that he can pay his debt to Jabba the Hutt, so he, aided by his trusted co-pilot Chewbacca, agrees to assist Luke & Obi-Wan. Have I left any main character out? Oh yeah, Darth Vader, the fearsome enforcer of the empire, who hides behind a black mask and speaks with the imposing voice of James Earl Jones.

Vader consistently ranks at the top of any listing of film’s greatest villains. Brutally ruthless, he will stop at nothing. His back story is that he was once Obi-Wan’s greatest prodigy before turning to the dark side. He was also the man who murdered Luke’s father years ago. Or did he? Without getting into spoilers - although by now everyone must know the directions the story takes in later movies - it is fascinating to see the extent to which the stunning plot turn which comes up in The Empire Strikes Back is foreshadowed. Look at the expression every character makes when the subject of Luke’s father is brought up.

One of the reasons why this movie stands out from many other science fiction movies is the strength of the characters. On paper, Han could have very easily been nothing more than a charming rogue who veers between bravery and cowardice. Ford is so effective in playing up that charm that he is not an anti-hero, he is a true hero. Darth Vader is absolutely chilling; the all-black uniform, the pained breathing, no antagonist stood out quite as much. Even the characters whose language we could not understand were special. R2’s beeps and Chewbacca’s roars were never translated for the audience, but we still kind of understood what they were saying.

The movie also contains some wonderful homages to Hollywood past. The moment when Luke discovers the dead bodies of his aunt and uncle is staged exactly like the scene in The Searchers in which Ethan Edwards discovers similar carnage. And the lightsaber fight between Vader and Obi-Wan played out precisely like a fencing battle in an Errol Flynn swashbuckler.

It must also be mentioned that Lucas has an irritating tendency to tinker with his work. In subsequent reissues he has taken advantage of improvements in special effects and CGI to re-edit the movie so that it looks more like what he had envisioned in his head if only the current technology had allowed him to. As a result, some of the shots look a little busy. He fills the scene with too much superfluous background action which becomes distracting.

There was no need for that. Why mess with perfection? The movies which last the longest are not the ones with the most spectacular special effects, they are the ones with the most compelling stories which are then supplemented by great effects. The cantina scene, the first space battle on the Millennium Falcon, the final attack against the Death Star. Yes, they all looked great because of the effects, but we had to care about these people first. That is why Star Wars is a classic.

Closing Laughs

It’s time for a new week, let’s make this a good one. Or not. It’s still a free country. Thanks for tuning in, & we will speak again on Wednesday.