‘Freaks and Geeks’ Turns 20: Celebrate With This Behind-the-Scenes Documentary on Hulu

There’s no shortage of great TV shows canceled after one season in this day and age, but perhaps there are none as revered as Freaks and Geeks. After all, what other one-and-done show got its own documentary featuring all of its now-famous stars nearly two decades later?

That documentary is called Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary, it originally aired in 2018 on A&E as part of the network’s docuseries, Cultureshock, and it’s available to stream right now on Hulu or Amazon Prime. (Frustratingly, the actual series itself is not currently available to stream anywhere, after leaving Netflix last year.) It’s also the perfect way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this beloved show, which aired its pilot episode on NBC on September 25, 1999.  Directed by Brent Hodge, and featuring interviews with the creators and cast, Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary is a funny, fascinating, big-hearted doc that tells the story of how the Freaks and Geeks, improbably, managed to get its first season made—only to have it ripped away.

The doc makes clear that creation of Freaks and Geeks was improbable not because it was a teen comedy-drama—there were plenty of those on network TV in the late ’90s—but because it was a weird, realistic, often depressing teen comedy-drama about a group of losers. These days the show is known not just a cult hit, but as a pioneer of modern single-camera TV that launched the careers of some of comedy’s biggest names. Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, James Franco, and Busy Phillips were all teen actors on the series, and big-time directors/producers Paul Feig and Judd Apatow were the creative minds behind it. Like Wet Hot American Summer, a big draw of re-watching Freaks and Geeks in 2019 is seeing those stars with their baby faces—all that young talent clustered together on one humble network show.

Hodge leans into that in his documentary with gem after gem of archived behind-the-scene footage and photos from the Freaks and Geeks set. He starts with photos of co-creators Feig and Apatow in the ’90s, living together, drinking, and playing poker in a ranch house. A present-day Feig explains he wrote the pilot based on his own experience growing up in rural Michigan—like Sam Weir, the principal “geek,” he asked a cheerleader to come to homecoming with him on the day of the dance and was politely turned down. He called up Apatow, who at the time had a deal with Dreamworks, and had told Feig to send him pitches if he had them, though, as he says in the doc, “not necessarily thinking he would.” Feig sent him the script, Apatow loved it, bought it, and the pilot was on its way.

You can thank casting director extraordinaire Allison Jones (who has cast some of your favorite shows, like The Good Place, The Office, and Arrested Development to name a few) for discovering stars like Franco, Rogen, and Segel, and you can thank this documentary for providing the audition tapes of all of those stars. “I seem to be drawn to shows where I don’t have to cast beautiful people. Not interesting,” Jones says in the doc. The exception, of course, was Franco, though both Apatow and Feig insist that neither thought Franco was traditionally handsome.

Segel recalls in his interview that he and Franco were told they were cast at the same meeting. “We were walking back to the parking lot together, and I was so excited but I was trying to figure out how it was going to work. I said, ‘Well, I guess maybe I’ll be like the goofy one and you’ll be the cool one?’ And he went, ‘Yeah.'”

Then you’ve got Seth Rogen, a high school dropout with a thick Canadian accent; Linda Cardellini, straddling the line between the good girl and stoner girl as the iconic Lindsay Weir; Busy Phillips in her cool leather jacket; John Francis Daley, the heart of the show but one of the last additions to the cast; and Martin Starr, a total dork in huge glasses. But by far the best audition tape this documentary gives us is Samm Levine, who played Neal Schweiber, doing a terrible but terribly enthusiastic impression of William Shatner. Producer/director Jake Kasdan calls it “the worst audition ever,” but he and Feig were so charmed by the corny impression that they cast him as a geek.

There’s plenty of other behind-the-scenes stories, videos, and photos to be found in this documentary, which is a must-watch for fans of the show. It’s also a fascinating watch for TV in general, mostly because Apatow has nothing short of a production empire these days—what’s he got to lose by being frank about network notes and cancellation?

As fans know, the ending of this story isn’t exactly happy. But also, it sort of is! Hodge makes clear that the story of Freaks and Geeks doesn’t end with its NBC cancellation. It’s simply the first chapter in a story that includes Undeclared, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Superbad, Blades of Glory, Arrested Development, Bridesmaids, and many more. Just don’t expect a Freaks and Geeks reboot. Says Feig in his final line in the doc, “I miss it, and yet I don’t want to do any more of them.”

Watch Cultureshock: Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary on Hulu