Parallels in the Freaks and Geeks Bible to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye

These are some quotes from the F&G Series Bible (broken link) that, in my humble opinion, parallel Holden and offer insight about him.

"Lindsay Weir is a modern day, female Holden Caulfield."

"She's 16 .. her grandmother died .. It sent her into a personal crisis, far deeper than the normal teenage, Sylvia Plath-reading malaise. It really rocked everything she ever believed in and set her on a course of questioning everything she encounters.

"The problem is, deep down she longs to be the person she once was. But she knows that to go back to would be to step backwards, to deny the answers to the questions she's already uncovered. It would mean she was going back to blind faith, something she is no longer able to do. She feels a profound loss of innocence and this makes her questioning of the world all the more bitter."

"But Lindsay is in it for the long haul, and it's the knowledge that she's been forced by the world and herself to start her quest for the truth earlier and more intensely than most of the population ever will .. that makes her search all the more consuming.

"Is it good or bad to be like Lindsay? We don't know, but the person who knows least of all is Lindsay herself.

"Lindsay is always looking for something meaningful to get involved in. Any kind of humanistic endeavor is her favorite thing, although she is still a 16 year old girl and is susceptible to teenage judgments and fears. This keeps her in a state of fluctuation and anger .."

".. unlike the kids on TV, we rarely if ever confided in our parents or came to them for help. We never even really bothered to confront them if we were mad at something they'd done. We just tried to get through life as best we could, usually in the face of overwhelming adult, parent and peer pressure."

"[Sam Weir, Lindsay's brother] doesn't want to be in charge of anything. .. He's afraid of being in charge because being in charge means the possibility of people getting mad at you or yelling at you or you having to yell at them."

Note: Check the listings at FOX Family to see if and when they are airing F&G these days. It was an NBC show and Fox Family picked up the reruns.