I'm going to introduce them in the order in which we viewed them, but feel free to watch them in any order. I'm not gonna be upset if you tell me you watched the newest one first, and then watched the middle TV series backwards. If that's what you feel like doing, then do that.
A few months ago, I read somewhere on the net that two of the greatest TV shows were Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks. I hadn't heard of F&G and I had been completely uninterested in Undeclared when it was first broadcast on television, because of an irrational dislike of the main character. (The fact that my parents had initially recommended it to me didn't help either.) Nine years had passed since its release (and subsequent cancellation) so my emotions were sure to have dissipated.
So we started watching Undeclared. We immediately fell in love with the show: the quirky characters, the storyline, the music. The setting made me think of my sister's residence at U of T. (I think you'd like the show a lot, sis.) I didn't relate too much to this series, but I thought it was great.
I strongly related to the next show, Freaks and Geeks, which was released a year prior to Undeclared. The reason I suggest watching F&G second, is that some of the characters are slightly more unsavoury than in the other show. Undeclared lets you warm up to some of these actors before seeing them as Freaks in F&G. This show revolves around a brother and his older sister going to high school right around 1980. This is just a touch before my time, but I still felt a strong connection to the show. The sister is intelligent and gets good grades, but she starts hanging out with the Freaks. The brother is short and thin, and he and his friends are labelled Geeks. They play with chemistry sets and Dungeons & Dragons. Looking back at my high school experience, I was a composite of these two characters, moving away from my "geeky" self and getting in with a "different" crowd. The acting and writing are top-notch and I strongly recommend renting the DVDs. (The show might be a bit nostalgic to the former highschool teachers out there too.)
The last recommendation is the movie "Knocked Up". This is like Freaks and Geeks, but fast-forward 10 years into the real world. The Freaks are portrayed here as a bunch of morons trying to start a website indexing all of the nude scenes from every movie known to man. The Geeks are simply the typical 9 to 5'ers, trying to live a "normal" life. It's a fun film, perhaps not so realistic, but worth a rental.
