Freaks and Geeks
“Discos and Dragons”, Season 1 Episode 18
Requested By
EdwinSorrow on our Discord server
What do I know about this series going into it?
I saw commercials for it when it first aired, but other than the genre (high school comedy) I remember nothing about it.
Recap
A teenager deejays for other teenagers in a bowling alley. Two boys and two girls approach, with the blonde girl trying to dissuade the boys from doing something stupid. Are they planning a bit of vandalism? Streaking?
The camera focuses on one of the teenagers on the dance floor who looks particularly horrified: clearly a friend of theirs, and they’ve just discovered his secret shame.
The opening credits have some big names in them: James Franco! Seth Rogen! Jason Segel!
A trio of geeks discuss their chagrin that girls don’t find them sexy; to add injury to insult, some jocks run up behind them and knock their books out of their hands. “What makes us geeks?” one complains. On cue, a friend of theirs rushes up to show them the newest D&D handbook.
Meanwhile, the two Disco Haters, Disco Lover, and Disco Lover’s girlfriend Sara talk about the upcoming final exams. Disco Hater 1, played by James Franco, brags that he’s paying “Dave Fleury” to help him cheat. Another girl watches the conversation from afar, clearly jealous of Disco Lover and Sara.
While in class with a “Mr. Fleck”, the geeks continue to lament their lot in life. He attempts to reassure them in terms they can understand: by drawing a graph of the life of a jock (peaking in high school, busting their knee, working as a car salesman) vs. that of a geek (get into college, chicks dig smart guys, running a Fortune 500 company, mocking the jock when you’re both adults).
This doesn’t really comfort them: we’re suffering right now! That’s okay, says Mr. Fleck. There are good things at this point in your life too, like watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s a 16mm print of the movie, which raises my eyebrow. Between that and the presence (albeit unpopularity) of disco in the opening scene, I’m starting to suspect that this show doesn’t take place when it first aired in the 2000s.
Meanwhile, James Franco sits for the exam - and Dave Fleury isn’t there, having broken his arm in gym class that morning. Out of desperation he heads out into the hallway, breaks the glass on the fire alarm… and is caught by the principal just before he can pull it. But the principal (I think) catches him in the act befeore he can pull it. The principal gives him a talking-to, during which I learn Franco’s character’s name (Daniel Desario). And as punishment Franco is forced to join the AV club for the rest of the year1.
The next day, a teacher announces that one of the students in the class, “Lindsay Weir”, has been chosen to participate in an “academic summit” at the University of Michigan. There will be debates! Tests! Competitions! The more he bubbles over with excitement, the lower Lindsay sinks into her chair with embarrassment. This obviously isn’t the kind of school where intelligence (even non-geeky intelligence) is considered attractive or cool, and joining such a program will destroy her social life.
She goes to meet the principal - who, now that I get a glimpse of the plaque on his desk, is actually a guidance counselor named Jeff Rosso. He can’t understand why she isn’t absolutely thrilled about the academic summit. And the conversation somehow segues into him lending her a Grateful Dead album, which she isn’t too thrilled about either.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fleck (who it seems is not a teacher but the AV club’s faculty advisor) tells the assembled geeks about Desario’s impending arrival. The geeks are not happy: not only is their pastime is considered by others to be a punishment, but Desario’s presence encroaches upon the only refuge they have with like-minded people.
At lunch, another teacher congratulates Lindsay on the academic summit. “I was [in] one back in 1956,” he says, which helps me narrow down the timeline a bit. Is this late 70s? Early eighties? As she goes to find a seat, still carrying the Grateful Dead album, two other high2 school students comment on it and tell her it’s one of the greatest albums of all time.
At another table, Disco Lover (identified as “Nick”) and his girlfriend Sara try to convince “Kenny” to come to a disco competition to cheer Nick on. Kenny has no interest, and privately tells Nick two things: I know you don’t actually like disco, and I know you’re only going out with Sara to make Lindsay jealous. Nick leaves in a huff of denial. When Lindsay sits down in his place, Kenny begs her to go out with Nick again.
That evening, Lindsay plays the album at home, gradually liking it more and more until she is dancing in a reverie by the end.3
At dinner, her parents congratulate her on the academic summit. She says she thinks it’s “kinda dumb”, which is a mistake: her parents immediately start piling on the pressure, ordering her to go no matter what. Her protests that she never said she wasn’t going fall on deaf ears.
The next day, Daniel Desario, newest member of the AV club, is sent to handle the film projector when Nick and Lindsay’s teacher decides to screen Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Nick does the old coughgeekcough thing, while Lindsay merely stares in shock. Daniel struggles with the projector and needs frequent help from one of the other students, which makes him feel stupid.
At lunch, Lindsay decide to sit with the Deadheads, identified in captions as Victor and Laurie. They spend every summer following the Grateful Dead around and going to all of their concerts; she laments the academic summit. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” they tell her. I can already tell she’s going to end up skipping the summit and hanging out with these two instead.
Outside the cafeteria, Daniel vents to his girlfriend Kim about how stupid he felt with both the exam and the projector: I suck at math, I suck at everything. He’s not happy when she points out he dug his own grave.
In response, he lashes out at her for being unsupportive: “I always listen to your stupid problems”. Kim, of course, walks right off.
Sam, one of the geeks, has begun to question whether being a geek is worth it. He wants to stop playing D&D, even though he enjoys it, because it’s a “geeky game”. Later he encounters Daniel reading the film projector instructions trying to understand it.
Lindsay laments to Kim about the summit, but Kim points out that there is a significant benefit: You get to leave this small town and do something interesting. I can’t, I have no money and even if I did Daniel never wants to go anywhere.
That afternoon, Nick and Sara are practicing for the dance contest when he makes the mistake of mentioning Lindsay. Sara is miffed: Do you still like her? Nick reassures Sara that he likes her; she is a little bit too quick to accept this.
Meanwhile, the geeks talk about D&D in AV club. Daniel asks a few questions about it, and the geeks immediately latch onto this: you should come! It takes a bit of cajoling but they finally convince him - which reassures Sam that he can continue playing as well.
That night, Ken and Lindsay go to the bowling alley on a mission: to snap Nick out of his disco brainwashing. But they barely enter the room when the DJ spots them, stops the music, and gets into a yelling match with Ken4. Finally a security guard drags Ken off.
Meanwhile Daniel starts creating his first D&D character. He ends up with a dwarf, which of course does not make him happy5.
Back at the disco, Nick tells Lindsay that he’s happy with Sara now: She’s opened him up to new things and he’s even stopped smoking pot. Lindsay wishes him good luck on the dance contest, and seems to genuinely mean it. But it’s clear he still likes her, as he watches her walk away. Unexpectedly, she too looks like she has regrets, as she visible restrains herself from looking back at him. Sara arrives to pull Nick onto the dance floor, and despite his misgivings he really gets into it.
During the dance montage we flip back to the D&D game, where Daniel is (of course) enjoying himself6.
Sara is sure Nick will win the contest, but the next entrant - “Eugene” - does a magic show that involves almost no actual dancing. The crowd is enthralled, and even Sara seems to have completely forgotten about Nick.
Daniel enjoyed D&D enough that he wants to play again the following night.
After he leaves, the geeks wonder: does this mean he’s becoming a geek, or we’re becoming cool? They decide they prefer the former interpretation. It doesn’t occur to them that one can be both; that particular societal shift is still a few decades down the line.
A few days later, with the school year over, Lindsay’s parents and her brother Sam (who was one of the geeks) see her off on the bus to the academic summit. Two of the other geeks, Neal and Bill, also show up to give her some chocolates; they get a goodbye kiss on the cheek each for their trouble.
As Lindsay boards the bus, she tells her mother - but not her father - that she’ll see her again soon. Ten bucks says she’s not going to U of M.
I win ten bucks. Lindsay gets off the bus at the wrong stop, where Kim and the two Deadheads are waiting. She changes into hippie gear, gets into their Mysterymobile, and they drive off.
Unresolved questions
What will happen to Nick and Sara’s relationship? To Nick and Lindsay’s?
What happens when Lindsay’s parents inevitably discover that she skipped out on the academic summit?
Is Daniel going to become a geek? Will he join the AV club permanently?
Ratings
These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.
The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
Story: 6/10. Slightly above average for television.
Strictly speaking, the episode should have scored a lot higher: it had three different coherent plotlines, each with its own beginning, middle, and end. That’s usually worth a 7 or an 8. After all, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how much they managed to fit in a single episode.
You have three classic high school plotlines: the Too-Cool-For-School forced to hang out with the geeks who will ultimately learn to appreciate one another; the student whose secret and socially unacceptable hobby who gets exposed; the girl who unexpectedly gets an academic scholarship that she doesn’t want.
Any one of these could have filled an episode on its own. But the three of them together? At several points I felt less like I was watching a series finale and more like I was watching a standalone movie, with only the lack of an orderly introduction to everybody’s names marking the difference.
But unfortunately it was just too predictable. Had you paused the episode at the halfway mark, I could have told you (with moderate accuracy) what was going to happen for the rest of the runtime.
Writing: 7/10. There were a few cliches, like when Lindsay’s teachers wax exuberant about the greatness of her academic opportunity, oblivious to how she and her peers would view such a thing. But there were several more subtle examples of the disconnect between adults and teenagers, and I appreciated those a lot more:
The guidance counselor gives Daniel a “punishment” that, to his credit, is actually painful for Daniel - but doesn’t consider the broader impact on the other members of the AV club, nor the fact that there’s only a week left of school n which the punishment can take place.
The guidance counselor’s attempt to connect with Lindsay not only fails to reassure her about the academic summit but actively causes her to ditch it.
Lindsay’s father goes from 0 to 60 in trying to force her to go to the academic summit the moment she reveals the slightest hesitation, rather than engaging with her doubts honestly.
Likely in part because of that attitude, Lindsay says goodbye to her mother but not her father as she boards the bus. If one of my children did something like that to me, I’d do some serious soul-searching as to where our relationship went wrong; it doesn’t look like Lindsay’s father has that in him, though.
Another interesting note - not strictly relevant to the rating, but this is the best place to discuss it - is that the writers didn’t know just how much of a period piece they were writing. The intention had been to use the early 80s as a metaphor for high school in the 2000s. But at the time the episode aired, the era of the put-upon geek that it depicted was already coming to an end.
D&D had recently gone mainstream, having been purchased by Hasbro. The first three Harry Potter books had come out and were already a worldwide phenomenon. Just one week after this episode aired, the first vanguard of the modern era of spectacularly successful comic book movies would be released in the form of X-Men. And even if none of those appealed to you, any social outcast can find refuge in an online group of like-minded people. (Which of course causes a whole host of other problems.)
While there are obviously still cliques and hierarchies, geek angst is mostly a thing of the past. There are still bullies7, but the bullied can almost always find a place where they belong.
Production: 4/10. The production values of the show - set dressing, music, acting - were pretty standard. But there were two very noticeable problems. First, I haven’t seen ADR done this badly since Burn Notice (one of my favorite shows, but my God did every redubbed line stand out). Second - partially related - the actor who played Harris was very obviously reading all of his ADR’d lines directly from the script and did a terrible job of it. How bad must his original line readings have been if those were considered an improvement?
Characterization: 6/10. The actress playing Lindsay is phenomenal. She’s clearly the main character and carries the episode extremely well. By the end you care about her and wonder where life took her from here. Where is she now? Does she look back with fondness on that summer with the Grateful Dead, or does she regret skipping the opportunities that the summit would have afforded her? Did she end up getting back together with Nick? How is her relationship with her father? It’s actually kind of painful that we’ll never know.
I also liked the hapless guidance counselor. He’s trying his best, bless him.
Most of the other characters were cookie-cutter: the teachers were all equally oblivious; the geeks were a copy-pasted group of geeks; the other group (who I assume are the titular freaks, but I don’t know what makes them freaky) were a copy-pasted group of generic teenagers.
Accessibility: 8/10. It took much longer than usual to learn the characters’ names, especially since they were all in their cliques and therefore didn’t really differentiate themselves from one another. (I still don’t know half of the geeks’ names.) But the plot was easy to follow.
Closure: 4/10. Probably a bit less closure than your average TV show. Yes, the year’s end is a natural stopping point - but the actress playing Lindsay did too good a job making me want to know what happens next with her. I’ve never before had to consider that a boost to the Characterization rating might adversely affect the Closure rating, but that’s what’s happened here.
We also don’t know what happens between Nick and Sara.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I think I’ve grown out of it. But I’m definitely regretting not having watched it when it first aired. I think I would have enjoyed it a great deal.
Is there a series finale you’d like me to review? Join our Discord or leave a comment below.
Is this really that much of a punishment, given it’s the last week of the school year?
in both senses
I personally don’t see the appeal.
A bit of a continuity error here: earlier Ken and Daniel referred to their shouting “Disco sucks” as a “tradition”, but the DJ acts as if this is only the second time he’s met Ken.
I suspect the geeks were trolling him or getting some kind of revenge. There was no edition of D&D where you could be forced to play a dwarf.
Where are his other friends? Why didn’t he go on the rescue mission with Ken and Lindsay?
See, for example, the reimagining of Peter Parker’s bully, Flash Thompson, in the MCU. The classic “jock who shoves Peter around” can’t be taken seriously anymore, so they rewrote Flash as a fellow geek who bullies Peter verbally.