Once upon a time, before Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jason Segal and über –director Judd Apatow ruled the box office, there was a little show called Freaks and Geeks. A slice of teenage life with the tagline “What high school was like for the rest of us”, the show found its way to NBC in 1999. Centered around siblings Sam and Lindsay Weir, Freaks and Geeks offered an accurate, honest, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking portrayal of growing up in the early ‘80s.

Sam (John Francis Daley) and his Dungeons and Dragons, Steve Martin-loving geek friends (Samm Levin and the sublime Martin Starr) navigate the halls of freshman year with a sweet awkwardness and 14-year old wonder. As they experience everything from questionable fashion choices and dodge ball games to first dates and parental divorce, it’s hard not to cheer for them.

Good girl Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) has issues of her own. Searching for her place in the world, she falls in with the freak crowd (Rogan, Franco, Segal and Busy Philipps), a group of kids with a penchant for skipping school and getting into trouble. As she pulls away from her Mathlete friends and becomes closer to the freaks, we watch her deal with humorous but real situations, all while developing into a young woman.

Rounding out the cast is a roster of stellar supporting characters. Some of the shows funniest moments come from Joe Flaherty (SCTV) and Becky Ann Baker, the deliciously suburban and somewhat repressed Mr. and Mrs. Weir. Dave Allen is spot-on as the hippie burnout turned uncomfortably involved guidance counselor and Thomas Wilson (Back to the Future) is the big jock gym teacher we all remember.

Sadly, even though eighteen episodes of the show were shot, only twelve made it on air during the first season before the series was canceled. An outpouring of fan support prompted NBC to run three more of the episodes in 2000; the last three were shown when Freaks and Geeks was briefly picked up in syndication by Fox Family.

Fortunately this critical darling’s first and only season found a second life on DVD in 2004, and the box set is a dream for new and old fans alike. It contains all of the music originally used in the series, from classics like The Who to late ‘70s staple Styx. The DVDs also include a ton of bonus features, with several episode commentaries and deleted scenes.

It’s hard to say whether or not the hilarity and warmth of a show like Freaks and Geeks will ever be recreated, but thus far it hasn’t. In the bittersweet style of The Wonder Years, the program stripped away any pretense of being cool. It paid homage to the kids growing up in the ‘80s with its realism and heart, and remained true to the decade itself by not selling out or going for cheap, costumey laughs. That alone, in its own quiet way, made Freaks and Geeks cool.