Holiday Buying Guide 2008

This high-school series — a.k.a., "What Judd Apatow was doing before making every comedy movie in Hollywood" — ran only one season (1999-2000), but what a season it was. Set among the nerds and burnouts of a Michigan school in 1980, Freaks captured all that was sweet and unbearable about high school: the popularity rankings, the relentless pigeonholing and the agony of gym class. The 80-page yearbook package — crammed with photos and exhaustively completist references — packs in extras including table reads, auditions, interviews and a script for a never-shot episode. (Bargain hunters, however, may want to buy the non-yearbook-encased set, which offers many of the same video features much cheaper.) It may have lasted only 18 episodes, but it was an advanced-placement class in realistic teen comedy.

—James Poniewozik

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