Freaks and Geeks: Melodrama in the High School Setting

The first episode of Freaks and Geeks establishes character roles with very clear stereotypes of high school students. We were introduced to the jocks, the cheerleaders, the bullies, the burnouts, and of course, the "freaks and geeks". Throughout the first episode, we are shown an initial persona for each of the main characters, but after only one episode, different sides to some of the characters are revealed. The first element of melodrama that I noticed was the use of music in the opening scene of the episode. It opens with a very vanilla, upbeat guitar song as we see the cheerleader and football player talking about their very complex and intense relationship problems, then there is a stark change in the music to the song "Running with the Devil" as the burnouts are introduced. After this, the geeks are introduced with the song "I'm Alright", a reflection of how they feel until the bullies arrive and the music is cut off completely.

In Francesca Polletta's "Limits of Plot", she explains how people respond to stories with different plots, and the results were as follows:

"If the main characters in the story matched dominant expectations about how people of that status typically behaved, then readers relied on a logic of genre in evaluating the characters, filling in missing parts of the story and extracting a moral from the story. If the main characters did not match those expectations, then readers interpreted the story in line with conventional beliefs about how people of that status behaved. In short, dominant status expectations did not preclude a genre-based reading, but they did set the conditions for one. As we show, this poses real difficulties for those who would use stories to challenge the status quo."

In terms of Freaks and Geeks, we are initially presented with highly stereotyped characters that match how we'd expect them to behave, so we continue to expect certain behaviors from them. We can begin to assume certain elements of this genre and think ok, it's another classic high school story of the studious girl who falls in love with the "bad boy". However, as the episode continues, we see some characters in a more complex sense. We are introduced to Nick's passion for his massive drum set, Kim snaps at her friend for making fun of Lindsay's dancing with Eli, and Cindy shares a dance with Sam. This is how the show pulls us in. We may have thought that these were your stereotypical high school characters, but as they reveal that there is more to them, we want to find out what else they may be hiding.