Dungeons & Dragons movie stages Freaks And Geeks reunion sans Freaks
Like certain residents of the Overlook Hotel, Sam, Neil, and Bill have always been here.
The titular geeks of Freaks And Geeks, Paul Fieg and Judd Apatow’s seminal and culture-shifting coming-of-age dramedy, are still rolling the dice in Sam’s basement. Well, that is if a new video promoting Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is to be believed. Though their voices have dropped an octave or three and their beards are now as full as the day as long, Martin Starr, Samm Levine, and Honor Among Thieves co-director John Francis Daley slip back into their alter-egos with relative ease. Levine, for example, never lost that incredulous furrowed brow of someone hearing blasphemy about the third act of Stripes, and he isn’t afraid to use it.
Appropriately enough, this is sort of where we last saw them. While they left the basement to say goodbye to Sam’s sister Lindsay at the end of Freaks And Geeks’ only season, the rest of the episode deals with the boys starting a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps our Dungeon Master Harris, who is strangely absent from the check-in, placed a containment spell on the game, forcing them to remain at the board for the rest of eternity.
The last time the Freaks and the Geeks got together was a 2012 photo shoot for Judd Apatow’s comedy issue of Vanity Fair. Everyone showed up except creator Paul Feig, who Levine calls, and we’re taking this entirely sincerely and without irony, a “jerk.”
Feig, who doesn’t seem at all how Levine characterized him, commented in 2021 about a potential reunion, falling back on that old chestnut: “If suddenly this amazing idea hit me, then, sure, I would do it.” A fantastic idea like a minute-long promo for John Francis Daley’s Dungeons & Dragons movie? Probably not. “I’m just nervous about it,” Fieg continued. “Because you can count on your hand the number of reunions where you went like, ‘Oh, I’m so glad they did that.’ After you watch it, you’re almost always like, ‘Hmm, I kinda wish they didn’t do that.’”
Apatow also fell into the “never say never” camp but considers the finale “oddly perfect and magical.” “We didn’t quite understand why, but it seemed like a way to say goodbye to everyone,” he said. “So then, to open up that door and explain everything that happened always feels like too big a prospect. We also have always thought that a lot of their lives wouldn’t have gone that well, and who wants to see that?”
After this latest reunion, fans are probably okay with leaving the door closed on Freaks And Geeks. But, honestly, does anyone really want to see how badly Nick Andopolis’ life turned out?