Undeclared - The Complete Series

Recently rented Undeclared and was, as expected, happy to have done so. I had seen probably a good majority of the episodes when they originally aired, but this DVD set still featured a fair number of episodes I had never seen.

Undeclared was a natural next step for the Freaks and Geeks braintrust--their critically lauded, little-seen series about high school had hit the dust, so, as series creator Judd Apatow indicates in a Museum of Television & Radio panel included in the DVD set, it just seemed to make sense to move on to a series about the next step after high school--college. The Freaks and Geeks imprint can be seen primarily in the painfully realistically awkward and geeky Stephen, played winningly by Jay Baruchel, who could with slight adjustments just be Freaks and Geeks' Sam three years later. But Apatow was smart to surround his new Sam character with not the equally nerdy friends Sam had but with a random grouping of new, different friends--a very real dynamic that's repeated in colleges around the country every September as normally unlikely friendships are forged between roommates. So geeky Steven gets as new friends the almost-pretty English exchange student Lloyd; the witty Ron; and the cheerily sloppy slacker Marshall. To that core cast, he added across-the-hall roommates Lizzy and Rachel, who would provide romantic conflicts for the boys.

So far, so good. The setup was simple but real-feeling, the casting was perfect, and the writing was as sharp as it had been on Freaks and Geeks (if a bit less deep), with episodes just completely nailing that strange feeling of freedom college freshman feel, the let down of actual classes, the dynamics of dorm politics, and others. This series certainly stands on its own as an often painfully funny, real look at college. I recommend it. But where I think Apatow may have erred somewhat (and this is probably not at all the reason for the show's demise, just a fault I found in going through all the episodes one by one), was in his unflagging loyalty to his old Freaks and Geeks mates.

F&G regular Seth Rogen played Ron and was a regular writer for the show. That seemed to work, especially as Ron was demonstrably different from Ken, his old F&G character. But already in the first episode we were introduced to Lizzie's boyfriend-from-home, Eric, played by old F&G hand Jason Segel. And Jason would return for no less than six episodes--out of only 16 or so total. This clubby, junior brat pack atmosphere would extend throughout the show's run--with almost the entire F&G cast, save feature film-starring Linda Cardellini and James Franco, appearing in at least one episode. The result was that the show at times could almost feel like a club we the audience weren't really a part of. Segel's appearances, especially, seemed less an organic outshoot of the stories the series wanted to tell us, but a result of Apatow and the gang just loving hanging out with Segel and letting him go nuts on his goofy stalking boyfriend character. As I watched the episodes, I kind of wished Apatow had kept more of a firewall between the two projects, and let Undeclared be more of its own beast. It might not have saved it, but it might have let it develop--even in its short existence--as its own classic series, equal to, and different from, the classic F&G.

Sure, it's relatively a minor quibble, and the series is still well, well, well worth checking out. But that faint smell of what might have been permeates these episodes, at least for me.

Until Whenever