Freaks and Geeks Episode 12
"The Garage Door"
Original airdate: March 13, 2000
Writer: Gabe Sachs, Jeff Judah, Patty Lin
Director: Bryan Gordon
Cast: Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, James Franco, Samm Levine, Seth Rogen, Jason Segal, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Becky Ann Baker, Joe Flaherty
"Your dad is the coolest," Sam says about Dr. Schweiber. Call that a jinx, a statement that creates a void for the inevitable dose of reality the geeks will have to reckon with. It's something kids often go through with adults they admire.
When I was a child, I had an uncle (my mom's sister's husband), who I thought was the coolest adult in the world. He played video games, was in a band, liked comic books and movies, and he was funny and energetic and just plain fun. When I got a little older, he didn't seem as cool. He was a heavy drinker, a misogynist and homophobe and racist who expressed common ground with Nazis, and when he was drunk he'd say weird shit to me that made me uncomfortable. Later, he also cheated on my aunt.
When you're a kid, the grown ups who seem the coolest are the ones who are the closest to your maturity level. You don't talk about politics, because you're too young for it, and you aren't a witness to the things they do behind closed doors. So all you see is someone who likes the same things as you. But then, when you're older, it becomes clear how wrong you had it. "The Garage Door" is all about that moment, when reality creeps in and you discover that someone you looked up to is actually a creep.
Dr. Dick Schweiber, Neal's dentist father, is charming, charismatic, funny, and able to relate to the geeks on a level other adults can't. He loves Saturday Night Live, and can discuss the merits of Joe Piscopo with them. He's also a sleazeball, which Sam discovers when he sees Dr. Schweiber at the mall, hugging a woman who is not Neal's mom.
When the man realizes he's been found out, he gives Sam a desperate excuse — she's an old high school friend he just happened to run into. He asks that Sam not tell Neal about what he saw, and then he starts doing damage control. He buys Neal an Atari, and in maybe the creepiest moment of the entire series, he arranges a dentist appointment for Sam, so he can interrogate him — Marathon Man style — about what he thinks he saw and how much he's told Neal about it.
While initially not believing that his dad is cheating on his mom, Neal does some sleuthing and finds a garage door clicker that isn't for the garage at his house. Bill suggests that maybe it's for a secret love nest. And so the geeks go on a long bike ride, from neighborhood after neighborhood, as Neal tries the clicker out on house after house. (The Cars' "Let the Good Times Roll" scores the scene, a particularly ironic choice for maybe the most painful experience of Neal Schweiber's young life).
To balance out the turmoil of Neal's storyline (I assume), it's all pure sweetness on the freaks' side. Ken gets his first real story, in which he falls in love with Amy (a.k.a., Tuba Girl). After he makes fun of her for being in the marching band, she fires back, her insults matching (possibly even topping) his. And suddenly, he's smitten. From Daniel's stating he's been waiting since third grade for Ken to like someone, it seems he's been looking for someone who's just as much of a smartass as he is. So now, he's head over heels, watching Amy as she sits with her tuba in band class, and asking Lindsay (who knows Amy) to ask her out for him. Amy thinks Ken is cute, and agrees to go with them to the Laser Dome, despite her dislike of the place.
As Ken thinks about his potential future relationship with Amy, the other freaks are dealing with relationships of the past and present. Kim is sparring with Daniel, because he hooked up with a girl named Wendy Franklin at the Laser Dome. Daniel refuses to argue with Kim, which infuriates her more. And Nick and Lindsay, realizing how hard it is to maintain the same friend group as your ex, are given the same advice by their friends — with Daniel telling Nick to be cold to Lindsay, so she'll want him more, and Kim telling Lindsay to treat Nick coldly to avoid leading him on ("Don't be mean. Just be a bitch!" — a meme waiting to happen).
So these three groups of past, present, and future romantic couples all end up at the laser show, which ends up not being Pink Floyd's The Wall, like they thought, but southern rock night, featuring "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," "Amy," and "Free Bird." Daniel tells Ken not to ask Amy to kiss, but to just look at her, until she has no choice but to kiss him. But because he's not Daniel, but himself, Ken tells her he wants to kiss anyway. And they kiss, forming the most stable partnership in the Freaks and Geeks canon. Kim and Daniel make out too, leaving Nick and Lindsay as the outliers. "I'd be lying if I didn't say this was painful," Nick says. At least he and her start talking to each other again. If this episode proves anything, it's that you shouldn't take romantic advice from people way more dysfunctional than you.
Meanwhile, the geeks ride for as long as they can before Sam and Bill have to go home, which infuriates Neal — if it was their dads, they wouldn't stop looking so quickly, after all. Alone, he continues riding, using the remote on who knows how many houses. Then, at a random house, the clicker works. The garage opens, and there's Dr. Schweiber's car — insufferable I FLOSSEM license plate and all. Neal's perception of his father, and the relationships between his entire family, are broken in a single moment.
Somehow, Neal doesn't even get the most heartbreaking moment here. Sam returns home, and finds his parents waiting for him. It seems like he's in trouble, until Harold reveals a surprise: they've bought him an Atari. Harold has been resistant to the idea of buying the video game console, saying that it's a waste of money and time (and that the welfare line is filled with gamers). But after learning that Dr. Schweiber bought Neal one, they decide that Sam deserves it. "Maybe sometimes it's okay to spend a little extra money on such a good kid," Jean says. And Sam falls to pieces. He runs up and hugs his parents, sobbing his eyes out. They think this is just his intense response to getting a toy he really wanted. They think he's still just a kid. But he's seen too much now. He's terrified, having come face to face with how messy and unpredictable family life can become, seemingly out of nowhere. He's also more grateful to have the parents he has than they can fathom.
Grade: A+
