Freaks and Geeks Season 1 Episode 5

Sam, Neil, and Bill start their sex education class. Sam wants to learn more so Daniel gives Sam and his friends a porno. This ends up confusing them. Meanwhile Daniel isn't doing so well in his Algebra class so Lindsay agrees to tutor him. After trying and failing to understand what Lindsay is teaching him, he steals a copy to the test. Daniel does really well on his test. Daniels teacher, knowing that Lindsay had been tutoring Daniel, accused the pair of cheating. When Lindsay starts freaking out, Daniel says they should deny everything. This is an excellent episode with a hilarious ending!

This was yet another great episode. So far, all of the episodes have been absolutely fantastic. I'm wondering if I'll end up rating any of them below a 9 at this point. So far it looks like the show will only get better, and I hope I'm right.





Lindsey discovers that Daniel can be very manipulative in this episode - when he faces failing his algebra class, she tries to help him study. He gives up and steals a test from the classroom, and after the teacher openly insults Daniel, she helps him fill out the test. The teacher is suspicious and accuses the duo of cheating. Daniel further manipulatives Lindsey in order to keep her from admitting the truth.





Sam and his friends, meanwhile, are taking sex ed. They don't know much about the subject at all. They later hear a sexual joke but don't understand it, and set out to discover the meaning. Daniel loans Sam a pornographic movie and he and his friends watch it together - by the end of it they are sickened, and they all lose their appetites for a couple of days and even are nervous in the presence of girls. The coach teaching sex ed eventually talks to Sam and explains to him how sex is in real life, which makes Sam much more comfortable.





With this episode, it becomes clearer than ever that this is not your standard high school drama. Lindsey will surely be uncomfortable around Daniel now that she knows his manipulative ways. Sam's akwardness is also well played and completely believable and realistic.





Praise goes to James Franco. This guy is a great actor, he's better here even than in Spider-man (where his character's lines can be pretty corny). Although Franco has been good all four episodes, he stood out in this episode...he just played his character really well. He and Linda Cardellini have great chemistry together, even in a non-romantic way.

It definitely doesn't seem as if Freaks and Geeks will produce any truly bad episode, but this was definitely one of the lesser episodes the show produced. The show took two plots that were certainly interesting enough and ended up not living up to its promise. I actually liked the geeks plot a bit more than the freaks this episode, mostly because it had the perfect level of awkwardness and drama. Also because Bill (played great by Martin Starr) is the perfect deadpan actor.





I thought that the plot where Daniel attempts to pass his algebra test was extremely under-developed and it wasted a lot of possible funny moments. The last two episodes haven't been as funny as the first three, although that's not exactly detrimental to the show. Instead, it gives an interesting tilt of drama to a show that was at first just comedy driven. I did like how James Franco told the same story about being a dumb kid in school to two different groups of people and makes Lindsey laugh hysterically.





As I mentioned, I loved the way they used Tom Wilson in this episode.. the guy who played Biff in Back to the Future seems to have finally found another role that allows him to be irritating yet somewhat likable at times.. okay, perhaps Biff was never likable, but at least this was good. And watching Sam, Neil and Bill watch porn was hilarious.





Overall, the episode definitely wasn't bad, but to me, I thought it was a bit heavy on the drama without making up for it with any substantial humor.