Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 18, 1980
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Jason Segel’s acting career has blossomed in ways I never would have expected in the last 15 years. And while he’s more than established himself as a movie star (have you seen him in The End of the Tour? You should), in many ways I will always think of Segel first via the lens of the TV shows he’s starred on. How I Met Your Mother, yes, that was certainly the longest-running of his TV series. But the ones closest to my heart are Freaks and Geeks — where he played the intense Nick Andopolis — and Undeclared. Segel wasn’t even part of the main cast on Undeclared, but his character may well have been the most memorable on the short-lived series.
On Freaks and Geeks, Segel played Nick as a nice guy whose enthusiasm and open-heartedness, combined with his overall physical frame, made him a kind of overbearing comedic figure. On some level or another, Segel is always playing great big labrador retrievers, and he’s great at it. On Undeclared, Judd Apatow took those qualities that Nick Andopolis had and wondered what they would look like on a college freshman’s townie ex-boyfriend. Undeclared is a comedy, so the danger — “DANGER!” — that Eric represents is cartoonish, but it definitely calls upon the tropes of the bad boyfriend. And Jay Baruchel is such a skinny little child as Steven. It’s no wonder that Undeclared‘s most memorable moment involves an epic, Mortal Kombat-scored campus chase.
