The James Logan Courier

By Aaron Barnhart
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

—"Aliens in America"
8:30 p.m. EDT, the CW



I will confess to something that no self-respecting TV critic should admit: I never cared for "Freaks and Geeks."

Oh, yes, it's easy now to say I saw the future brilliance of Judd Apatow in the Peabody Award-winning sitcom he produced about the kids who get picked on at high school in the year 1980.

Not only did I not see a great future in Hollywood for Apatow, who would go on to write "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," I found "Freaks and Geeks" actually painful to watch. In hindsight, I guess that was a good sign that Apatow had hit his mark, but reliving scenes from my own years in prime time was definitely not my idea of entertainment.