If “Freaks and Geeks” Made It One More Season

A television thought experiment.

The 18 episodes that make up the entirety of “Freaks and Geeks” represent one of the most heartbreaking show cancellations in memory. (You can find the detailed write-ups of each episode Matt Singer and I did here.) While the creators and cast hardly dropped from the face of the earth after the show ended, it’s fun to imagine what would have happened if they’d been given the chance for a second season. Which is just what Joshua Kurp at Splitsider does. His take on Jason Segel’s Nick:

Nick becomes fed up with both disco and Sara, and wishes he still had Lindsay. He slightly re-works the lyrics to “Lady L,” changing “Is your green army jacket keeping you warm tonight?” to “Is your tennis racket keeping you warm tonight?” believing both that she actually went to the academic summit at the University of Michigan and that smart people play tennis. Nick records the track in his basement, and gives the single to a local DJ, who likes what she hears and adds “Lady L” to her radio station’s playlist. It becomes a minor hit, and for an entire week, with the world needing a new question after the riddle of who shot JR was solved, the only words out of anyone’s mouth were: “Who is Lady L?”

Of course, creator Paul Feig and executive producer Judd Apatow had their own ideas about what would have become of their characters. Alan Sepinwall posed this question to Apatow, who wrote:

I wanted to write about Lindsay having a real drug problem. Bill’s mom would marry the gym teacher and Bill would be forced by his step dad to play on the school basketball team. And I would have explored Neal’s parents’ divorce trial and his life as he lived with his mom and saw dad on Sundays.

Catching the show on TV last week, Apatow shared his own reminiscences on Twitter:

[H/T to Fimoculous for the Splitsider link]