Freaks And Geeks' Showrunner Was Most Upset About Not Finishing One Character's Story

Over two decades after its cancellation, "Freaks and Geeks" showrunner Paul Feig still thinks about the unexplored fate of Sam Weir.

The final episodes of the cult classic teen dramedy "Freaks and Geeks" saw the lovable nerd Sam (John Francis Daley) bid farewell to his sister Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and split up with his superficial girlfriend Cindy (Natasha Melnick.) But according to a 2012 piece Paul Feig wrote for Vanity Fair, these moments were far from the end of his plans for the character. "Sam's future was going to be drama club ... That was the storyline I was most excited about, because I was going to portray what actually happened to me," Feig explained, adding that a "Freaks and Geeks" Season 2 would have explored an intriguing dynamic between Sam and his new drama instructor.

"[M]y drama teacher, who was one of the biggest influences on my life creatively, was an alcoholic, and over the course of my sophomore through senior year, she got worse and worse and started depending on me," Feig elaborated. The showrunner of the 1999 series recollected the specific memories from his drama club career that would have influenced Sam's Season 2 arc: Audiences might have seen, for example, Sam leave school to pick up his drama teacher after learning she left her car at a bar the night before. "I was really excited to get that going, this weird kind of taking-care-of-an-adult relationship, while [Sam is] still learning amazing stuff from her, this tortured drama-teacher soul," Feig mused. "That bummed me out the most, not getting to play that story out."

Perhaps it's no surprise that — out of all the characters in the ill-fated "Freaks and Geeks" — Sam Weir's unaddressed future haunts Paul Feig the most. "Sam Weir is the closest to who I was," Feig said in an archived interview with the former Freaks and Geeks Web, a now-defunct fansite dedicated to the show. Just as Sam's lost Season 2 arc would have replicated Feig's experiences in drama club, many of Sam's experiences in Season 1 of "Freaks and Geeks" also took inspiration from Feig's real-life teenaged misadventures: Feig, like Sam, "[wore] a disco jumpsuit to school" and nursed a crush on "an unattainable cheerleader." 

Feig might have initially identified the most with Sam. But over the course of his career as the "Freaks and Geeks" showrunner, Feig eventually discovered parts of himself in "every one" of the series' memorable characters. Perhaps the most surprising development for Feig was learning that, outside of Sam, he found himself relating the most to Sam's cynical sister Lindsay. "Sam is who I was ... [a]nd I've always felt that Lindsay is who I became, as far as her fears and ideology and questioning of things in her life goes," Feig divulged. "[T]o be honest, Lindsay is my favorite character that I've ever come up with in my writing."