#Mathlete outfit help tv

If there’s one thing Lindsay wasn’t at the start of the series, it was assertive, but here she is, speaking her mind without compromise. Look, I know you don’t care about being smart or going to school or anything else, but just because your lives are such lost causes don’t keep assuming that mine is.” “You’re the most selfish people I’ve ever met in my life. Lindsay can pretend her time with the Freaks never happened, but it did, and when she chews out Daniel and Kim the day after the crash, we start seeing just how much the Freaks have rubbed off on her: But this version of Lindsay is only a costume that girl died along with her Grandmother, and the real Lindsay has grown and changed too much over the last few months to ever make such a dramatic regression. Rosso, and others, the person Lindsay she was before the Pilot, before her Grandmother died and she was thrown into her identity crisis. This is the Lindsay we’ve heard about from her parents, Millie, Mr. She dresses nicely, styles her hair, is extra respectful to her parents, and begins hanging out with her old, nerdy friends again. This is what Lindsay attempts, at least, by reverting to her old ‘mathletic’ persona.

She doesn’t need her father’s dark “I could send my own daughter to jail” speech to feel awful or scared, and being grounded doesn’t provide any extra motivation from the initial moment of the crash, Lindsay’s feels her life shatter apart, and the only way to pick up the pieces is to forget about the Freaks and make a fresh start. The car crash, though, is one step too far, a violent, nightmarish wake-up call that sends Lindsay running away from her “freak” identity at break-neck speed. At this point in the series, she’s already lost an awful lot, including the trust and confidence of the adults in her life. “Looks and Books” is a fascinating deconstruction and reconstruction of Lindsay’s relationships, behavior, and psyche, and it all begins with the most catastrophic moment of her life up to now: wrecking her parent’s car.īetween the disastrous kegger party, the heartbreaking Halloween egging, helping Daniel cheat on a math test, and dating and breaking up with Nick, we’ve seen that for all Lindsay gains hanging out with the Freaks, she always stands to lose so much more.

#Mathlete outfit help tv

Sam and Lindsay have tried all three over the course of the series, and none of their attempts have ever truly worked learning to find a comfortable identity instead of chasing after a fantastical self-image is the most significant breakthrough these characters have yet made, and that makes “Looks and Books” the most accomplished episode of Freaks and Geeks so far.Īs per usual, Lindsay’s arc is the richer of the hour’s two stories, for while I can’t say enough good things about John Francis Daley, Lindsay is inarguably the show’s finest character, one of the most realistically complex and relatable creations in TV history. In “Looks and Books,” one of the most subtextually rich and thematically layered episodes thus far, Lindsay and Sam question their own identities and the nature of ‘identity’ itself, and they both come to the same deceptively simple conclusion: identity is the feeling of being comfortable in one’s skin. How do we define ourselves? How do we define others? How do we want others to view us? What changes are we willing to make to craft an identity we can be proud of? What happens when our confidence in our own identity is shattered? How do we synthesize what we feel inside with the image we wish to project? Every episode asks these questions and many more, because discovering one’s identity is the most universal of all adolescent experiences. This is the question at the heart of Freaks and Geeks. Spoilers for Freaks and Geeks, Episode 11 – “Looks and Books” – coming after the jump… The review will be waiting patiently for you.) (And like all my TV reviews, I expect the reader has seen the episode in question, so if you haven’t, go track down the DVDs and return here when you’ve caught up.

Today, we’re looking at the best hour so far, Episode 11, “Looks and Books,” in which our characters learn some very important lessons. After a week off to discuss “The Hunger Games” and plagiarism, we’re back with weekly reviews of Freaks and Geeks, the short-lived TV classic from 1999 that I’m spending Wednesdays this Spring reviewing and analyzing.