Trader Crack's Card Blog: Build Your Own Set: Freaks and Geeks Autographs

It'd be great if you could have a good idea for a set and print it on demand. But that's not going to happen. There's tons of shows and movies out there that simply put will never have a card set made of them. The result is that I build my own collection from a variety of other sets, usually of autographs, but maybe some other bits and pieces. The first subject is of a show that lasted just one season yet it's still one of the best I've ever seen.

If you've never seen Freaks and Geeks, then you ~~should~~ must. Every skeptical soul, young and not-so-young, that I've shown it to has not just liked but loved it. If my word isn't convincing, then here's some of the case who weren't big then but have since gone on to become stars:

Creator Judd Apatow: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up
Seth Rogen: Pineapple Express, Superbad, Knocked Up, Kung Fu Panda, Zach and Miri Make a Porno
James Franco: Spider-man, Spider-man 2, Spider-man 3, Pineapple Express, a couple of crappy dramas
Linda Cardellini: E.R., Velma in the Scooby-Doo movies
Jason Segel: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Freaks and Geeks is set in 1980 and focuses on siblings Sam and Lindsay Weir as they go through the trials of high school. Sounds familiar. It is, but not in the Hollywood sense. The heart of Freaks and Geeks is authentic. Usually shows about high school focus on the "cool" crowd, which usually translates into the jocks and the cheerleaders. Sam is an outsider. He's not a nerd, but he's definitely not popular either. He's an ant in a colony that likely won't get noticed. Lindsay is a former "nerd" who's tired of the image and ends up hanging with the burnouts.

When you're talking high school shows and movies, it's easy to make labels, but Freaks and Geeks doesn't really do that. Sure Sam and Lindsay are part of certain crowds but the show is so good because it simply makes them human. But enough editorializing. If I wanted to review a show or a movie, I'd write elsewhere.

No matter how big the cult following, no TV show lasting one season is going to have a set based on it more than five years after the fact - unless that show was named Firefly. So I've gone out and made a Freaks and Geeks autograph collection of my own. Thus far, there's only three cards, but seeing as how another cast member emerges as a star each year, I suspect the list will continue to expand.

James Franco - Daniel Desario

Spider-man 3 (Rittenhouse Archives, 2007)