Now I understand why so many people raved about this show. Well acted, well-written, with a believable high school setting, really ugly 1980s clothes, and great old rock and roll tunes. One of my favorite scenes had to be the final one where Lindsey blew off the Academic Summit to go on a Grateful Dead tour. Man, her dad is gonna kill her when he finds out! I also loved it when Secret Service agent Ben Stiller vented to the guidance counselor about how boring his job is, because nobody cares about killing the Vice President.
So far I love it. Two timeline issues bug me though. The first episode says the shows takes place in 1980, but later that episode the one geek kid talks about “how Han Solo handled Jabba The Hut”. Jabba was only referenced (in passing) in Star Wars, again (in passing) in The Empire Strikes Back but wasn’t seen (or given any weight in the story) until Return of the Jedi in 1983.
Then in the Hallowe’en episode Lindsay suggests they go to the movies because “a new Friday the 13th just opened”. Except that the FIRST Friday the 13th was released in 1980, so there couldn’t have been a “new” one.
Now, once you finish watching and re-watching F&G, hiw thyself to Undeclared, Judd Apatow & Seth Rogen’s next project. It’s definitely a sitcom, but with much of the same charm (and cast) as F&G.
And don’t forget Kick Me! and Superstud by Paul Feig.
One of the funniest moments on television ever is when Nick invited Lindsay over for a “big date” and he starts singing Styx’s “Lady” to her. I just about bust a gut on that one!
Nick drumming to Rush is pretty awesome, too.
The whole damn show is just funny. Funny funny funny!!!
I love the show as a whole (although I slightly prefer the more sober, generally less funny, My So Called Life), but the very ending, your favorite scene, actually really pisses me off. Maybe it’s because I still (at age 33) identify too strongly with my days as a nerd in high school, but the way that whole situation is presented really bugs me. Lindsey has a chance to go to this leadership camp or whatever it is, or else she can go follow the Grateful Dead around. Now, it strikes me as quite plausible that someone in that situation would in fact go follow the Dead. BUT, it really irritates me that it’s presented as such a foregone conclusion that the academic option is just automatically utterly and totally uninteresting in all ways. The way the choices are presented to the audience, it’s clear that we are supposed to be cheering for her to make the right choice, where the right choice is the cool awesome band road trip, not the stuffy pencilneckgeek academic camp.
And of course, let’s ignore entirely how freaked out poor Lindsey’s parents are going to be when she suddenly vanishes off the face of the earth. But it’s OK! Because it’s The Dead.
Let me restate my case more clearly… it doesn’t bother me that Lindsey made the choice that she made. That is quite consistent with her character. It bothers me that this is presented to us as a happy, triumphant ending, and as an automatic no-brainer choice.
I remember a scene when Nick auditioned to be the drummer in a rock band. I still remember how excited he was about it and then how disappointed he was when they rejected him. And then there was the Halloween episode where Sam got pelted by the egg.
It was a great show. And as someone mentioned, Undeclared is also a great show. I hope that with his movie success behind him Judd Apatow might create another series.
The best part about *Come Sail Away * is that Sam took so long to walk Cindy Sanders to the middle of the dance floor, that the song had already gotten to the fast part by then. The look of shock on Sam’s face was priceless.
PS I have Undeclared in my Netflix queue. Can’t wait to see it.
Something to be aware of. When they put together the DVD set for Undeclared they inadvertently ordered them by air date, not the actual order they had intended they be shown in. So according to Apatow, they should run:
Prototype
2A. Oh, So You Have a Boyfriend?
2B. Full Bluntal Nugety
Sorry for the semi-hijack, but really?! Does he have a big role? The only reason I want to see “Knocked Up” is because of the familiar F&G faces, but I didn’t realize he was in it. I loved him!
He has a supporting role as one of Seth Rogen’s friends/roommates. It’s not a huge part, but it is an amusing one. F & G alumnus Jason Segel plays another one. In fact Seth Rogen’s buddies are all apparently played by…Seth Rogen’s buddies.
Edited to add: And of course Starr and Rogen were in fact once real roommates. Frostilicus, if you haven’t you should definitely listen to some of the F & G commentaries. Highly entertaining IMHO.
Does Undeclared get better near the end of the series? It lost me mid-season when they air a 3rd(!!) episode that centered around the jealous boyfriend wanting to beat up the main character. I just assumed they had run out of plot ideas and I shouldn’t waste my time. If it gets better, though, I might give it another shot.
I could almost see kids thinking that Greedo was Jabba’s representative, and thus handling Greedo = handling Jabba the Hutt. I would agree that most people wouldn’t have put it that way, simply because Jabba wasn’t seen as a major character. I think that’s where the future knowledge slips in.
MaxTheVool, I felt the same way about the ending. It wasn’t so much what she did, but the way it was portrayed.
In a similar vein, there’s a scene where Sam and his pals are at school discussing the “Dukes of Hazzard” episode they saw last night. The error there, of course, as nearly anyone who was an adolescent boy in 1980 can immediately recognize, is that DoH was a mainstay of CBS’ Friday night line-up (along with “Dallas”). And though I’ve never lived in Michigan, somehow I doubt that they were sending kids to public school on Saturdays in 1980.
The thing is, the only reason I remember that gaff is because it stood out so starkly from the feeling of total immersion in the time period that characterizes the rest of the show. A great show. I saw it for the first time last year, and was immediately hooked.
<<SPOILERS>>
I’m probably forgetting another great episode, but the two that stood out for me were the episodes where Bill’s mom is dating the gym teacher, and the one where Neal catches his dad cheating on his mom (great Atari 2600 references in that one).
It is a happy ending because Lindsey does what she wants, and not what everyone else expects her to do. The camp is portrayed as a bad option because much of the show is from Lindsay’s perspective. For her the camp, while academic, is not how she wants to spend her summer.
Plus, I find it hard to believe that any educational opportunity that comes from High School is anything but pencilneckgeeky and life suffocating.
I just finished watching this show because of this thread. It’s a shame that it only aired for one season. I guess no one wants to hear that High School really sucks.
Yeah, SHE is happy. That doesn’t mean that we as the audience should be happy for her. She’s struggling throughout the show to gain some independence and self-definition other than the roles she’s had, by default, since childhood. But growing up doesn’t just mean becoming independent, it also means accepting responsibility and recognizing the consequences of one’s actions.
Lindsey at the end of F&G does an incredibly short sighted thing, not to mention one that is unbelievably cruel to her poor parents, who love her and treat her extremely well. Furthermore, the whole situation is presented in this extraordinarily one-sided fashion… it’s not like “wow, Lindsey has a tough choice to make… this is really a difficult situation, I hoenstly don’t know what she will do. what a dilemma. I can see arguments either way”, it’s more like “dude! She blew off the nerd camp and her stuffed shirt parents to go around with THE DEAD! DUDE! SWEET!”.
At least, that’s how it always comes off to me.
Of course, I was a mathlete in high school who did NOT rebel and start hanging out with the freaks, so it’s likely, bordering on certain, that I’m far from objective.
That would be an interesting topic for a thread, actually… Certainly I have a fairly high-paying, extremely fun, job right now that I primarily have because of my puzzle-solving mathematical/computer abilities, which were certainly constantly being exercised and stretched by my time participating in high school contests.
Actions have consequences, and F&G cheats by ending with an action, not its consequences.