Judd Apatow's beloved show about nerds got canceled too soon. Fourteen years later, a Freaks and Geeks actor triumphantly returns to dorkdom. Here's how he did it--and what that says about tech culture today.
It's official: The geeks have inherited the tube. From TV's top-rated sitcom The Big Bang Theory to TBS's game show King of the Nerds, former outcasts are now totally au courant. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the rise of Martin Starr. Once the geekiest of the geeks on Judd Apatow's short-lived but much-loved 1999-2000 NBC dramedy Freaks and Geeks, he's now starring in the highly-buzzed-about new HBO comedy (debuting Sunday, April 6 at 10:30 p.m. ET). As Gilfoyle, Starr is now "the coolest guy in the house," as he puts it, in this look at up-and-coming tech-heads created by Office Space mastermind Mike Judge.