Freaks and Geeks was a short-lived teen comedy drama created for NBC. The series follows a group of teens and preteens experiencing the unintentional humor and frustrations that come with high school. It only lasted for one episode but was quickly forgotten, most likely because just about everyone in the show went on to massive careers, making the show feel more like a stepping stone than a forgotten gem.

By now, Freaks and Geeks is a quintessential example of a '90s cult classic, and while that term is a bit overused, Freaks and Geeks is an excellent example of this. With only 18 episodes, you would think there wasn't enough time for the show to get rolling, but with Apatow at the helm and actors like Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Linda Cardellini in the cast, it managed to become something special. Hilarious and a little bit before its time, Freaks and Greeks is a fantastic show, and there's another modern series with a similar vibe.

Pen15 Perfectly Captures The Awkwardness Of Your Early Teen Years

Not Many Comedy Shows Are Set In This Time Period

Pen15 is a teen comedy from creators Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, and Sam Zvibleman that premiered in February 2019 on Hulu. The show is even more awkward than Freaks and Geeks. It follows two 13-year-old social outcasts, Maya Ishii-Peters (Maya Erskine) and Anna Kone (Anna Konkle), going through the awkward year of seventh grade. The series takes its name from the crude middle school prank that points to how "Pen15" looks like a certain anatomical part when scrawled on something like, say, a bathroom stall.

It's that immature but undeniably funny level of humor that made Pen15 such a critical success, and also why it is such a realistic portrait of those years. Few shows aimed at older audiences deal with life in middle school. High school, sure, but the junior high years tend to be avoided, save for a few rare instances, like 8th Grade and Good Boys. Maybe not coincidentally, those two movies are also very good, and they and Pen15 suggest that this time of life is definitely worth exploring with a more mature eye.

Anna Konkle & Maya Erskine Playing Teenagers Totally Ups The Cringe Comedy

Every Other Character Is Played By An Actor Their Own Age

One of the funniest parts of Pen15 is that Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine were each 31 at the start of season 1, and yet they are playing characters who are supposed to be 13. Every other young character in the show is played by an actor who is actually that young. This creates so many funny and cringeworthy moments of the two, clearly older, girls, hitting on young boys, getting bullied by young girls, and having adults who look their own age reprimand them.

What makes it particularly cringeworthy is that when most people think back to their time as a young person, they probably don't imagine themselves as a little kid; they just see themselves as how they've always seen themselves. So Pen15 makes the awkwardness of that time period perfectly clear by showing how, when we think back to those cringy moments, we don't feel too different from how we feel in the present. It's not young girls making these awkward mistakes, it's adults.

Why Freaks & Greeks Fans Will Love Pen15

Both Shows Portray The Unserious Moments Of Middle School And High School

The characters in Pen15 are slightly younger than those found in Freaks and Geeks, but the shows have similar sensibilities. Fans of Apatow's series will definitely enjoy what Pen15 brings to the table, because both series are a more realistic portrait of middle school and high school than almost any other show. Despite how cringy this time of your life can be, and how awkward the characters can be, there's a mundaneity to both shows.

None of the main characters in either series are hugely unpopular, but neither are they the coolest kids in school. It's a social strate that a lot of people can relate to. A lot of time spent at these ages is time spent being invisible. Then, when you try to make yourself stand out, you often end up embarrassing yourself, living in that humiliation until you're invisible again. It's a relatable, tragic, and ultimately funny cycle that Pen15 and Freaks and Geeks capture so well, and why Pen15 could live on as a cult classic like Apatow's series.