PROPOSAL

When you're trying to sell a series, you have to do a lot of persuading. And
one of the things you have to persuade is the network. And there's a lot of
people in the network who have to consider a lot of potential series. And so
you're always looking for neat, concise ways to make their jobs easier and to
make your show sound like a series that their network can't possibly live
without. And that's what this proposal is all about. I got a call one day from the
network asking me for a two or three page document that could get the
executives and stockholders excited about our show. Did it work? Well, we
were on the air for 18 episodes, so I must have done something right! But
then we got canceled. Well, don't blame it on my poor little proposal, you big
meanie! Sorry. Enjoy!

"FREAKS AND GEEKS"

A One Hour Series
Freaks. Geeks. Jocks. Preppies. Farmers. Motorheads. Brains.
Every school has them. Everybody has been one of them.
So ... which group did you belong to?
"Freaks & Geeks" is a new one hour comedy/drama series that follows the
very realistic, very funny and often very touching lives of Lindsay and Sam
Weir -- a sister and brother who are trying, like all teenagers in this world, to
get through high school and into adulthood as happily as possible.
It's a series for kids that tells them that all the seemingly insurmountable
moments they're going through day to day are just the way it's always been
when you stick a group of teenagers together in a large cinderblock building
and hope they'll socialize. It's a series that says it's not so bad to be a
teenager -- there is life beyond high school.
And it's a series for adults, who will see their former selves in the characters
of the show and remember just what it was like to be a teen. Its universal
stories and the nostalgia it brings will make them both laugh and long for a
slightly more innocent time.
Each week, "Freaks and Geeks" will follow two parallel stories -- one from
Lindsay and the "freaks" (a "freak," -- AKA "burn-out" -- for those of you not
from the Midwest, is a student who is more into rebellion and skipping class
than getting good grades) and one from Sam and the "geeks" (not necessarily
"nerds," but teens who are a little backwards when in comes to the social side
of life):
For Lindsay Weir, life has just become much more confused and complicated.
Jolted by the death of her grandmother, Lindsay has found herself unsure of
the life plan of which she thought she was so certain. Her goals of college and
career now seem unimportant.
This has driven her away from her old "brain" friends and into the lives of the
freaks -- the only other people in the school who seem to seek answers to the
bigger questions in life. They are the outsiders by choice, kids who could be
popular if they chose to but instead reject the superficiality that is the high
school caste system. They are happily outside of the mainstream, which is
right where Lindsay suddenly longs to be.
For her younger brother Sam, his new life as a high school freshman has
brought a host of problems, the biggest problem being that Sam suddenly has
to face the fact that, like it or not, he's growing up.
He has arrived at high school far less mature -- both physically and
emotionally. It's that terrible period when you think you're still a little kid but

nobody's treating you like one anymore. Between the bullies, his teachers and
the social pressures of high school, Sam will desperately try to keep himself in
the safety of the geek world as much as he possibly can as he learns about
life.
The first season of this series will introduce us to the real world of high school
teenagers -- a world not often shown honestly on television. To mention just a
few of the stories we'll see:
Lindsay will rally the freaks to enter their band in the school talent show, only
to find out that the band's not that good and, what's more, they all have bad
cases of stage fright.
Sam and the geeks decide to camp out overnight in order to get great tickets
to an ELO concert and so concoct stories that they're each sleeping over
each other's houses in order to spend the night on the street. However, they
end up camping out at the wrong ticket booth and are forced to spend the
night wandering the streets, unable to go home.
Lindsay will deal with Kim Kelly, Daniel's tough girlfriend, who seems to have
an endless resentment for Lindsay, and will slowly befriend her, having a
minor breakthrough in the second episode. This will lead them into an onagain, off-again friendship, in which Lindsay will slowly gain Kim's trust and
help Kim deal with her very ill mother and her very abusive father.
Sam decides he wants to go trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Everyone
tries to convince him that he's too old but he doesn't want to admit it. He and
the geeks end up having the worst night of their life, being asked "aren't you
boys a little old for this" at every house and getting egged and having their
candy stolen by older kids. The evening will culminate in Sam being playfully
harassed by Lindsay and the freaks, who don't recognize him in his costume.
Lindsay and the freaks are forced to take a career aptitude test, which tells
each freak that he has a less than stellar future ahead, by test standards.
Who ends up scoring the highest? Lindsay, of course. But Kim Kelly
outscores them all and couldn't be more embarrassed about it.
Lindsay will ask her freak friend Daniel to drive Sam home from school one
day. The two end up getting arrested for shoplifting, a skill Daniel tries to
teach Sam. Sam ends up in huge trouble with his father, who also owns a
store, and Lindsay suddenly finds her parents meddling in her life, wanting to
get her away from the "bad element."
Sam will have to face a nightmare situation -- his mom gets her teaching
license and becomes a substitute teacher in one of his classes. Sam then
finds himself caught between two worlds -- the fun world of torturing substitute
teachers and the horrible world of having to stick up for your mom.

Sam will try to help Neal deal with the breakup and eventual divorce of Neal's
parents. This will lead Neal into becoming the new brother Sam never wanted,
with Neal appearing at the Weir house more and more frequently.
Lindsay will see her former best friend Millie, in a desperate act to get
Lindsay back, try to become a freak. Millie, however, chooses a much less
intelligent and more dangerous group and ends up having to be saved by
Lindsay, Nick, Daniel and Ken.
Over the course of the first season, Sam will befriend a new girl in school,
Dawn, who is extremely overweight. In Dawn, he will find his perfect
intellectual partner. The only problem is, Sam just can't get past the fact that
she's ... well ... less than perfect by physical standards. At the same time,
Sam becomes just what he didn't want to be -- Cindy's platonic friend -- and is
forced listen to all her problems with other boys.
Sam's fellow geek friend Neal tries to reproduce the sensory-deprivation
experiment in "Altered States" by lying in the bathtub in the dark. His mom
walks in on him, thinks he's nuts and sends him to a psychiatrist.
Daniel lets an unlicensed Lindsay drive his Trans Am and eggs her on to
drive very fast. They get pulled over and the cop turns out to be her father's
best friend, who decides to try and pull a "scared straight" on Lindsay by
putting her in jail.
Sam, worried that Lindsay may be starting to experiment with alcohol, finds
out that Lindsay is planning on throwing a keg party. In order to save her, he
arranges to have Near Beer substituted for real beer. However, the placebo
effect goes into overdrive when the freaks think they're getting drunk anyway
and end up "drunkenly" trashing the Weir house.
Arcing over the first season, we will witness the slow break-up of Daniel and
Kim -- the school's "mature" couple -- and see a strange triangle develop
between Nick and Lindsay and Daniel and Kim, a drama that threatens to
break up the group.
Sam will help his friend Bill deal with the fact that Bill's hot divorced mother is
now dating Mr. Fredricks, the geeks' dreaded gym teacher. Bill will end up
trying to turn this to the geeks' advantage, using the relationship to lessen
their load in gym class.
Arcing over the first season, Lindsay and Nick, her best friend among the
freaks, will be in a back and forth battle of whether to be friends or something
more as she helps Nick deal with the fact that his life plan of becoming a
famous drummer very possibly isn't where his future lies.
The geeks will find their individual homes in the school -- Sam falling in with
the drama club, not as an actor but as a set and scenery builder (helped by
the fact that he has a huge crush on the pretty new alcoholic drama teacher),
Neal joining the swing choir and Bill finding his home with the A/V department.

Lindsay will attend her first ever "freak party," where a misunderstanding
leads to the rumor that she slept with one of the freaks. She's incensed by the
fact that this untruth is being spread and the fact that Nick and Daniel now
aren't speaking to each other because of it.
Sam will have to deal with the horrors of mandatory showers, being quite
embarrassed about his body and the idea of stripping down in front of others.
Sam's nightmare gets worse when the fire alarm goes off and he's forced to
run from the showers out to the football field in nothing but his towel (where
he is met by the love of his life, Cindy Sanders).
The geeks become obsessed with the new Pac-Man machine at the local
pizza parlor and it becomes their lives for a couple of days. They soon grow
tired of it except for Bill, who becomes addicted to it. The geeks have to stage
an intervention to get him away from it.
Sam asks a girl to the Christmas dance who he knows will make out with
him. The evening turns disastrous when the girl gets drunk on beer on the
way to the dance, throws up at the dance, and then forces Sam to French kiss
her after the dance.