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Mike White

 Mike White has his fingerprints all over the penultimate episode of "Freaks and Geeks"; it's an hour about money, sex, and power.


The part that feels the most like a rehearsal for "The White Lotus" is a subplot concerning little Sam. After months of longing, Sam has landed a few dates with his crush, Cindy. Unfortunately, Cindy's special glow is only skin-deep; she reluctantly joins Sam for a screening of "The Jerk," and she delivers a lecture about poor people. "If they really want security, they should just get jobs." A classic Mike White moment occurs when Sam gives Cindy a family heirloom: "Well, how much did it cost? .....I won't wear it now, because the metal would be cold on my neck...." (The discussion of cost takes me right back to the "Pineapple Suite," and the ensuing credit card arguments, in the first season of "The White Lotus.")

An odd misstep for White is his "sex" plot. He has Ken dating a compelling tuba player who reveals, with some discomfort, that she is intersex. My understanding is that surgery involving intersex infants is an extremely fraught subject; people who survive forcible surgery sometimes carry decades of psychic scars, and feel intense anger about the change that was forced upon them. White discusses none of this--and his focus isn't on the tuba player, but on Ken. (The choice would not stand up to editorial scrutiny in 2023.) In any case, Ken's identity crisis ("Does this make me gay?") feels authentic--and it's a refreshing and weird path for a nineties show to take. (It also anticipates "The White Lotus"; when a middle-aged man learns that his father was secretly gay, the knowledge causes similar soul searching. What do *I* think about sex with men?)

The hour already feels overstuffed, but there's also time for a visit from George Bush, Sr. I love this vignette--in which the Bush people reject Lindsay's scripted question and demand that she inquire about Bush's favorite kind of food. (Lindsay was going to chat about trickle-down economics.) In a wonderful twist, Lindsay wanders off-script and just asks this: "Why did you nix what I wrote? Are you uncomfortable speaking about real subjects with teenagers?" This is a delightful and plausible moment of heroism; it's a kind of climactic scene for Lindsay's series-long journey. It's also something I could imagine happening to little Mike White, when he was in high school.

One hour left. How strange that this show ended when it did!
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