Adolescents in the TV Show Freaks and Geeks

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Recommended: Perspective on how teens are represented in media

The media portrays adolescents in television shows as being rebellious, sex crazed, and unreasonable people. Freaks and Geeks, created by Paul Feig and produced by Feig, himself, and Judd Apatow, is a one hour TV show that aired on NBC from 1999-2000. The show centers around the siblings, Sam and Lindsay Weir, and their friends while they all attend McKinley High School. Freaks and Geeks is a show that portray adolescents in a way that the media doesn’t because of the lessons the characters have to learn , the choices that they choose to take, and the struggles they have to endure.
Many adolescent have to learn many things from the events in their lives. Freaks and Geeks show characters adapting to the changes in their life and learn to adjust them. Neal Schweiber, a freshman at McKinley High School and friends with Sam Weir in episode 12, learns that his father is having an affair with his mother. He reacts to this situation by lashing out at his friends and other family members. Neal finally comes to terms with the fact that his father cheating and adjust to life with it. This shows the changes in Neal family life and he learns to adapt to it. He develops into a mature adult and learn the lesson of life. This lesson is of people, like his father, who have a mid-life crisis and they tried many things to avoid the feeling of it. Another example is Sam Weir, in episode 17, breaks up with his long time crush, Cindy Sanders. Sam learns that Cindy is actually very shallow and boring and that isn’t what he is looking for. This strays from the stereotype of having the popular person always break up with less popular person and having people always think that adolescent always have true love in high school. Sam in particular learns t...

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... struggle of not being a failure in life. He endures until he finally succeeds in Dungeon & Dragons. This probably gave him the motivation from what he did not possibly receive in his childhood. Successfulness in an adolescent life is something that gives the desire to achieve it again.
Freaks and Geeks gives a new and realistic portrayal of adolescence in a nice small package of a television show. It strays from the media stereotype of adolescent by showing adolescent life in a new light. It reveals the lesson that many adolescents have to learn to become a mature adult, the choices they have to make that will affect their life in a major or minor way, and the struggles many endured that makes them take rash decision or lost in what they do. Freaks and Geeks is a show that I recommend to many who are sick of stereotypical shows that media broadcast on television.

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