"Go Without Him": Lindsay Weir as Single at Heart

I spent a lot of time on the New Jersey Transit in my early 20s, as I commuted from Suffern, NY to Manhattan for my first post-college job.  It was here that I became familiar with the short-lived show, Freaks and Geeks, through an advertisement on the New Jersey Transit. The title was intriguing, and since I was a bit of both in high school, it seemed like it could speak to me.  But I didn’t bother searching for it on TV; I was too busy carousing with my friends.

But it found me one Tuesday night; I caught the tail end of the episode, “The Diary,” where Bill makes prank phone calls to his physical education teacher.  A few nights later, I watched the “geeks” race around a go-cart track and the “freaks” party before a Who concert in “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers.”  I gradually made my way toward watching the episodes, and I came to see myself in most of the characters, especially Nick and Lindsay.

This was in my early 20s. When the DVD collection was released in the format of a high school yearbook, I scooped it up immediately.  I’ve watched it many times over the years, and I’ve introduced it to quite a few friends, who got hooked (save for Shari, a lady I was dating; our relationship didn’t last much longer after she revealed she hated it).

I recently came across a video yearbook of a high school near where I grew up (not my own; we didn’t have the budget or manpower for such a luxury).  I have a habit on scrolling on YouTube during the summer, when I don’t have to be up super-early to get to campus.  And as I watched it, I wondered, what it would be like if I went there?  And I thought back to my own high school years where I explored as both freak and geek.


I always identified with Lindsay on many levels, and as I’ve delved into the worlds of Singles Studies and singles advocacy, I started to see Lindsay as a potential single at heart.  So I figured, an excuse to watch Freaks and Geeks again, and an excuse to write.


I wasn’t popular in elementary or middle school; my braces, skinny figure, short temper, and habit of spacing out in class did not make for a good experience.  By high school, I found my tribes through theater and video production (including a failed attempt to get a video yearbook going).  And, by 10th grade, the repressed anger I felt at being ostracized let itself out through banging my head to thrash metal, as well as sporting shirts the likes of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and White Zombie.  As I was discovering my creative side through making videos, those shirts gave way to a long brown coat and Ivy League hat worn backwards.  And a lot of coffee and cigarettes.  I took a painting class my senior year; one of them likened our school principal to Adolf Hitler.  I questioned school policies I found to be silly.


Nearly thirty years later, those two characters still exist within me.  I do own one Iron Maiden T-shirt and an Ivy League hat, though I’ve spun it around to the front.  And I’ve “kinda” joined the system, having gotten tenure at my university and started paying a mortgage in the past year.  I no longer smoke, and my coffee intake is limited to one cup in the morning.  But I still question a lot of things, most notably the notion that one must be “coupled up.”  I never thought I’d build a brand around it (and, at 17, I had girlfriends and crushes; the last thing I thought I’d be was happily single).


Lindsay goes through quite an arc during the show, and it saddens me NBC didn’t see fit to give it a fair shot (a Saturday night slot?  Really?).  But her romantic experiences make me see her as a single at heart.


When she first joins up with the freaks, she’s crushing on Daniel, the leader of the group and overall “bad boy.”  His girlfriend, Kim, is initially threatened by her, but eventually warms up to her, and they’re best friends by series’ end.  However, in “Tests and Breasts,” she tries to help him cheat on a math test; at the end of the episode, she discovers how he’d been manipulating her throughout.  They stay friends, but any hope for romance is dashed there.  Some girls would’ve continued to go along.  But not Lindsay.


In “I’m with the Band,” the following episode, Lindsay encourages Nick, an aspiring dummer, to audition for a professional rock band in order to avoid getting sent to the army.  He becomes despondent when it bombs, and out of concern, Lindsay kisses him.  This leads to a short romance during which Nick becomes clingy and needy.  A more codependent type might lean into that, but Lindsay needs her space.  I’ve said that so many times in my life.  This doesn’t necessarily make her single at heart; clinginess is a turnoff for most people.  But I didn’t think Lindsay was that into it to begin with; the way she invites Nick to see The Elephant Man seems labored and compulsory.


She does feel attraction, though.  In “Noshing and Moshing,” she’s even more disillusioned with high school after getting detention for defending a girl from a male harasser.  She soon links up with Barry, the older brother of Neil, one of her brother Sam’s friends (did you follow that?).  Barry’s gone onto college and regales Lindsay with the idea that in college, you can reinvent himself.  Lindsay locks lips with Barry, and there’s the potential for, at the very least, a summer fling when Barry returns.  And I enjoyed their connection.  For Lindsay, Barry’s more than just a potential romantic partner; he represents her desire for something beyond her small town.  I felt the same thing; whereas most of my classmates have stayed in my hometown, I’ve moved around the country; academe is a nomadic field.


A final revelation of Lindsay’s potential single at heartedness: in the finale, “Discos and Dragons,” Lindsay’s found out she’s been invited to an “academic summit,” where the smartest kids in the state of Michigan get together to match wits.  At 47, I’d find this exciting, but not so sure at 17.  In her venting to Kim, her friend reveals she’d like to get out of town too, but “Daniel never wants to go anywhere.”  “Go without him,” is Lindsay’s instinctive response.  That is something a Single at Heart would say.  The last scene of the series has Lindsay and Kim linking up with a pair of hippie classmates to follow the Grateful Dead; for me, it was Phish, and that didn’t happen until college.


An interesting side note: Kim and Daniel’s relationship is toxic, even by high school standards; I counted three breakups through the course of the eighteen episodes, and according to Nick, they break up every week.  Their latest one provides Kim with the opportunity to explore Deadhead culture (and the country) with Lindsay.  Similarly, Daniel ventures out of freak world to play Dungeons & Dragons with the geeks, and he has a good time doing so.  They’re better off without each other.


In addition to being single at heart, Lindsay is a true rebel, something I really admire and have taken with me into adulthood.  Going back to Lindsay’s questioning of what’s accepted, she stands up for anybody being picked on.  In the pilot, she stands up for Eli, a kid with a disability, twice, soon after defending Sam from Alan, the geeks’ #1 bully.  During her stint in detention, she fights against the policy that “you can’t do homework during detention” by insisting that she’s doing her homework.  In “The Little Things,” Mr. Rosso, her hippie guidance counselor, selects her to ask VP George H.W. Bush a question during his visit to school.  When her insightful question is rejected in favor of the softball “What is your favorite place to eat in the state of Michigan,” she fights back by asking Bush why his staff rejected her original question.  Her fellow freaks, along with Mr. Rosso, could not look more proud.


Throughout life, we all go through different stages and phases, which is why Lindsay is such a relatable character.  No matter who we were as teenagers (or are as adults), we go through different stages and explore different things.  But Lindsay’s potential single at heartedness resonates deeply with me, given my own exploration of that world, through my writing and living.  And I think the reason most people were turned on by the show is that it’s just so relatable.  Single at heart or not, everyone should observe Lindsay for those eighteen episodes.     It’ll be different for every person, but there’s something about her that will resonate with everyone.


Unless you’re Shari.