ABSTRACT
Freaks and Geeks was produced for NBC's 1999–2000 season, appearing on a television landscape where teen-oriented television drama was enjoying a resurgence. Freaks and Geeks is, in many ways, a program on the cusp. This chapter examines Freaks and Geeks' negotiation of space in relation to adolescence, with a focus on the "geeks" of the title: freshmen Sam Weir, Neal Schweiber, and Bill Haverchuck, whose close friendship is often the only barrier to the bullying, humiliation, and disappointment that high school offers. It explores the spaces between boyhood and adolescence that these characters occupy, against the backdrop of a program that itself is also on the cusp: of the millennium, of the 1980s, and of nostalgia. The chapter considers how the cultural uncertainties of the new millennium are reflected in the representation of the boys in Freaks and Geeks, whose own cultural milieu is similarly fraught with anxiety.
