As it would happen, Freaks and Geeks didn't really have to make this choice. There were only two episodes aired after "Smooching and Mooching", and with a little helpful rearranging this episode could have easily been the happy ending that would tie a neat bow on the series. This is an episode in which multiple characters have their fantasies fulfilled: Sam gets to make out with Cindy Sanders, Nick finds a supportive family, and Bill gets treated like a human being by the popular kids. In fact, some of the later scenes come off like a male fantasy. In the sixteenth episode of the first season, this is a bold bolt-from-the-blue moment.
The news in the episode's first act that Cindy has dumped the personality-less Todd and is now interested in Sam as more than a friend is rather sudden, perhaps justified by the fact that we never really know Cindy as a character in her own right. Cindy's gradual disenchantment with Todd has been going on somewhere else while Sam has been taken up by other things (mostly sliding into the role of a secondary character in his own show). For all his fixation on her, Sam really has little understanding of Cindy's life and her psychology, and needs to be coached on what she wants and how to approach her. We're told that Sam and Cindy have an hours-long phone conversation, but they don't really seem to share much at all -- which leads to Sam's disappointment in the next episode.
Part of this is Sam's immaturity, but I think part of it is also the writers' lack of interest in Cindy as a character. Paul Feig, Judd Apatow and the other writers (including Steve Bannos, who plays Mr. Kowcheski and is credited as the writer for this episode) are certainly capable of portraying realistic and three-dimensional female characters, with Lindsey and Kim being the least easily-stereotyped characters on the show. But when women appear as the objects of desire in the male protagonist's storyline, this depth seems to go away. Cindy's behaviour appears arbitrary and unpredictable, which is probably exactly how Sam would see it, but unlike so many of the series' other secondary characters it's hard to imagine her interior life. This will in turn make the episode's conclusion a little unconvincing.
With Sam temporarily elevated to the status of desirability, Neil and Bill become the underdogs of the story, torn between envy and trying to ride on Sam's coattails. One of the more interesting character dynamics throughout Freaks and Geeks is the fluctuating element of power within the geeks' friendship. Talkative and bossy Neil is usually in control, while Bill is the one that the other two clearly consider even more of a loser than they are. (You also have Gordon and Harris orbiting on the edges of this group, who both have fairly nebulous places in the hierarchy.) This stands in contrast to the freaks, who despite their frequent fights all seem to be on a more or less even playing field. While the geeks also exist on the hated fringes of high school life, Freaks and Geeks suggests -- correctly, at least as far as my experiences with nerd culture go --that those on the outside can also be as status-conscious as those on the inside. The female geeks in "Looks and Books" also have a clear hierarchy, suggesting that in the view of Feig there's something insidious or at the very least paradoxical about the geeks that their own self-pity prevents them from realizing. Whereas the freaks willfully reject the society of the popular kids, the geeks desperately dream of entering it.
It's a small and pathetic world, but Neil enjoys being at the top of it. When Neil's control of the world around him is undermined, as in "The Garage Door", it creates a kind of social vacuum that all parties involved are obviously uneasy with. In this episode, Sam's success with Cindy destroys Neil's self-appointed position as the worldly ladies' man of the group, the one who can dispatch advice about girls even if this advice is only based off sitcoms and magazine articles. He frantically invites himself to the popular kids' make-out party, and doubles down on his attempts to systematically master the world of romance. In one scene he displays his apparent mastery of spin-the-bottle, confident that this will win him the heart (or at least the lips) of Vickie Appleby. Like the classic (perhaps stereotypical) geek, Neil can only think in systems and is not aware how his straightforward logical thinking will collapse in the realm of emotion.
Speaking of spin-the-bottle: I don't think I had quite realized before this episode just how cruel that game is [1]. At best, it conceals teenage sexual desire beneath an element of chance, allowing someone to kiss who they want (especially if it's someone, or multiple someones, they're not supposed to want to kiss) without taking responsibility for it. At worst, it's a group denial of consent with results from humiliation to sexual assault.
Bill nicely points out the element of pain for the undesired: "What if they don't want to kiss us? [...] I just don't want to see the expression on their face after the bottle lands on me". Neil, on the other hand, is thrilled with the chance to compel girls to kiss him: "That's the genius part of the game. They have to kiss us. Who cares [about their expression]?" Neil's callousness would be extremely creepy if it weren't obviously covering up for deep-seated insecurity. And so the trio of geeks prepare for the make-out party with their usual reaction to any milestone of adulthood they encounter: Sam with apprehension, Neil with fake bravado and expertise, and Bill with full-throttle resistance. There's a great scene set in the cafeteria where Bill details the physical acts of French kissing in a way that makes them disgusting, focusing on all of the germs and detritus that gather on the tongue. "Do you lick the inside of the mouth? Do you lick the inside of her tongue?" Up until the episode's final moments, the prospect of making out with a girl is more horrifying than erotic. "Smooching and Mooching" clearly suggests by the end that Bill's resistance is fueled by immaturity, but it's also worth noting that Gordon and Harris are completely uninterested in the party, undermining Neil's idea that getting to make out with a cheerleader against her will is an obvious goal.
The actual experience of the party is a reversal of expectations for both Neil and Bill, and a fulfillment of dreams for Sam. For the actually popular kids, the party is a way to fulfill their omnidirectional sexual desire without actually admitting a desire for anything outside of "going steady". Neil's mastery of bottle-spinning fails him, with his spins constantly landing on Bill. For Bill, who keeps landing on Vickie, he receives at first his expected humiliation. Vickie clearly finds the prospect of kissing him revolting (not entirely unfair) and only allows him to kiss her hand or forehead. The mutual discomfort is conveyed through body language, Vickie's desperate negotiating, and the soundtrack, "Poor Poor Pitiful Me".
The torturous recognition of Bill's status as undesirable culminates when he and Vickie are selected for "seven minutes in heaven", which they both react to with obvious pain. But this is a TV show, so they end up making out instead. It's not unbelievable per se, and it fits in nicely with Freaks and Geeks' continued interest in friendships and other connections which transgress the seemingly clear-cut boundaries of high school[2]. But it's hard to deny that this feels like a nerdy male fantasy, in which the loser's ability to recite lines from comedy movies attracts the head cheerleader to him (as reported in The Onion).
Spin-the-bottle is just as repulsive for Vickie as it is for Bill. While she may be interested in using the game as an excuse to make out consequence-free with members of the football team, it quickly becomes a forum for boys she isn't attracted to forcing their bodies on her. This is, if one stops to think about it, much worse than the humiliation Bill feels from her repeated rejections. But the (almost entirely male) writing staff doesn't focus on this side of the game. Bill asks Vickie what it's like to be pretty, assuming that it must be great, and there's no sense that being an attractive teenage girl can be incredibly hazardous. The montage of the two geeks making out with their dream girls is set to Bob Seger's "You'll Accomp'ny Me", a song whose chorus insists on an inevitable romantic future over unheard refusal or disinterest. In a roundabout way, Bill's happy ending proves that Neil was right: making out with an unfamiliar girl is in fact universally desirable, and it can be accomplished through compulsory games.
This problematic message is all the more surprising, since it is set in parallel to Cindy's straightforward and open desire for Sam. Despite the suggestion that she dumped Todd for only being interested in sex, Cindy is the most openly libidinous character in the episode. Instead of couching her desire in games, she all but tells Sam that she wants to make out with him, and tells him how she wants him to do it. In fact, as we find out in the next episode making out is just about all Cindy is interested in. Pairing this awkward but open courtship with the furtid compulsion that forces Vickie together in a softly-soundtracked montage that encourages us to think of both as part of the same magical moment feels like a betrayal. I'm not suggesting that Freaks and Geeks needs to be didactically sex-positive, but I would have preferred a tenuous connection and perhaps a budding friendship between Bill and Vickie that respects both of their initial refusals to kiss instead of brushing them aside [3].
The episode's Freak-centred plot is also about a teenage boy's fantasy coming true, although a less libidinous one. Nick briefly moves in with Lindsay and bonds with her parents, who provide the kind of loving and unconditional support he's been desperate for throughout the series. The last straw for Nick is when he comes home and finds that his father has sold his drum set. This could easily be presented as a goofy sitcom-father overreaction, but there are a number of factors that makes this incident seem like a chilling betrayal. One is that Nick's musical aspirations are well-established and have been the subject of previous episodes. Characters in Freaks and Geeks have a tendency to pick up interests for one episode and then never talk about them again, but this is not one of those instances. In addition to script continuity, the visual choices give this scene an aura of violence that make it seem like much more than a father-son squabble. Kevin Tighe remains seated and never raises his voice, projecting an air of cold-blooded menace. It would be one thing to get rid of his son's drums out of stubborn passion or tough love, but here it seems like a calculated act of violence, one of the thousand cuts by which Mr. Andopolos controls Nick. The confrontation is blocked so that Mr. Andopolos grows gradually more menacing. Nick is initially in an aggressive, physical posture, but as soon as his father stands up he visibly shrinks. Kevin Tighe is shorter than Jason Segel, but it sure doesn't look that way.
Nick's father's action doesn't really come across as a pointlessly cruel punishment: the series has frequently mocked Nick's delusions of musical genius and even hinted that this dream is keeping him from achieving greater things (a hint which is given greater nuance later in the episode). His father also references his drug use, which the series has presented as a problem before. So there is a logic to Mr. Andopolos's actions, and it's that framework of emotionless logic that he uses to justify himself, saying that Nick broke their deal. Nick sounds less angry and more frustrated. He can argue all day, but there's nothing he can do to change his father's actions. Here Freaks and Geeks fully draws out the agony of adolescence: not just coming to grips with bodily urges, as in the Geeks' plotline, but also the pain of being an adult-sized person whose world is completely controlled by another. Mr. Andopolos is a classic example of the disciplinairan, using his control of the environment and ability to act suddenly and arbitrarily to enforce his own allegedly fair rules and remind his subjects of their ultimate powerlessness. His power is precisely the ability to act without consent or justification -- he repeatedly tells Nick "end of conversation", emphasizing that he does not need or want Nick to understand, much less agree with, his actions. So of course, Nick revolts.
Lindsay is clearly reluctant to have Nick stay at her place. She sees this request as just another one of Nick's attempts to get close to her and try to sneak back into a relationship with her. Nick basically imposes himself on her, so it's easy to understand Lindsay's irritation, but at the same time it's an example of how people find it difficult to adjust between dealing with everyday personal issues and dealing with life crises like Nick leaving home. Lindsay's quickness to leap to the "well, I would, but my parents" line suggests, as "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers" did, that as much as she berates her square and unpermissive parents Lindsay also likes being able to go to a "straight" world that's divorced from her flirtation with the freaks. When Nick moves in, that space vanishes -- and Lindsay is even more horrified to see her parents actually getting along with him.
Lindsay is sort of right to suspect that Nick is using this crisis as an attempt to get back together with her. It may not be a conscious effort, but there's a scene where he wanders around half-naked and pesters Lindsay at the middle of the night. Then again, this could simply be the increased intimacy of actually living with a person -- an intimacy that Lindsay wants nothing to do with. She's also right to feel a little slighted by the fact that her parents, normally so critical of her, are so accepting of Nick. Her father's justification for this different treatment is that he expects more from her than he does of Nick, and that Nick has had a harder childhood than her.
I think there's a bit more to this, though. One of the major differences here is gender -- consider the way that the Weir parents generally encourage Sam's mischief with a boys-will-be-boys attitude, while restricting anything Lindsay wants to do. This is the old law of conventional parenting: encourage your sons' desires, and protect your daughters from theirs. But the Weir parents also probably sense that a disciplinarian approach is not what Nick needs right now. Strict discipline is in fact what he's fleeing from. Instead, Harold Weir sees through Nick's psychology in a way Mr. Andopolos doesn't try to, and calls him out on using his ambition to be a drummer as an excuse for laziness. This is, it turns out, the kind of chastisement that Nick needs: one that recognizes his ambitions, unlike his father, but one that treats them as serious work that needs to be done.
And so Nick goes from wanting to get closer to Lindsay to wanting to get closer to her parents, from wanting to be her boyfriend to wanting to be her brother. Lindsay is even more horrified by this turn of events. (Seriously, Linda Cardinelli's reaction shots are the best thing in the show, and if Freaks and Geeks was around today you wouldn't be able to visit a webpage without seeing a .gif of horrified Lindsay.) But as with Sam and Bill's fantasies, it can't last forever. Nick's father returns to take him home, and even makes a show of contrition. Nick seems stunned that his father even cared enough to make the trip. You can read this one of two ways -- as a sign that Mr. Andopolos cares about Nick more than he lets on, or a sign of the lack of affection he usually displays. We see so little of Nick's familiy life -- his father only appears in two episodes -- that it's hard to tell whether the relationship really is abusive, as some speculate, or whether it's a more benign case of over-strictness and a generational divide in expectations. But, as Nick's interactions with Harold show, there are ways to cross that divide and avoid the cold warfare of the Andopolos house.
But even if Nick eventually has to return to that frosty house, he still has those moments of connection, listening to Gene Krupa and dancing with Lindsay's mom. More than anything, Freaks and Geeks is a celebration of these brief and unlikely connections -- the cheerleader kissing the biggest dork in school before they both head back to their normal lives, the straight-laced Christian girl talking her freak friend down from a drug trip. The ostensible central narrative of the series, Lindsay turning from mathlete to freak, is another one of those moments of brief but powerful connection. Freaks and Geeks isn't utopian enough to suggest that these connections can persist and subvert the social world they exist within. In the two episodes after this, we see bonds that have existed throughout the whole series coming undone and the characters in the early stages of drifting apart. In a way it's a good thing that Freaks and Geeks only ran for one season, as having these characters be in constant and static social groups would seem increasingly contrived. As it stands it reminds us that our dreams can't come true forever, because then they would cease to be dreams. But it's those all-too-brief dreamlike moments that give us happiness.
[1]I hadn't given it much thought before because, well, let's just say that my teenhood did not involve very many make-out parties.
[2] In this, as in many other things, Freaks and Geeks follows its obvious influence Dazed and Confused.
[3] This ending also trivializes Bill's subtextual crush on Cindy, which makes many of the earlier scenes in this episode so heartbreaking at the same time they are miraculous from Sam's more explicit perspective.
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