Before Jason Segel was the loveable goofball Marshall Eriksen in How I Met Your Mother, he was the loveable goofball Nick in Judd Apatow’s cult classic Freaks and Geeks.
Though the show only lasted for one season, there was a lot of exploration when it came to Nick’s character, and though audiences never got to see his end, Segel actually thought that Nick Andopolis would actually have a pretty tragic story.
For context, Freaks and Geeks was a period setting that took place in 1980, and talking to GQ, Segel explains that he believes that Nick will die in the war as a soldier (specifically the Iraq War based on the timeline of the show). Segel explains:
“The sad answer to where I think Nick is now, in my mind, he gets sent off to war and doesn’t make it. That was always like the threat looming for Nick, and that’s what happens to a lot of men of that generation and socioeconomic statuses. That’s how I was always thinking of playing him. It was like, for Nick, the desperation in his character is that the alternative is not making it. That’s how he felt. He’s like, ‘I’m gonna drum my way out of this.’ How sad, ‘cause you’re not gonna drum your way out of it.”
In Freaks and Geeks, Nick is part of the Freaks group, and eventually gets into a relationship with the series lead Lindsay (Linda Cardellini). Nick is arguably the nicest person of the bunch, but he does get into a story arc where he gets addicted to weed. He eventually cleans himself up, but he does end up losing Lindsay by the end of the show.
For now, there are really no plans to follow-up to Freaks and Geeks, but the one season is still considered by a lot of fans to be definitive when it comes to Apatow’s brand of comedy. Maybe there could be a reunion down the line, but seeing that James Franco is cancelled, it’s probably never going to happen any time soon.
