>> demarco asked me if you were getting a sex change. >> exactly. i don't want to be a girl. i just want to hang with girls. >> ricky was out on the show eventually, and that was a story line treated with great sensitivity. >> and i belong nowhere. with no one. and i don't fit. >> i mean, it was -- it was so deeply felt. it was saying to the viewer, things that you have gone through, they matter. >> man, i hate high school. >> freaks and geeks really sympathized with the losers. it had great empathy. >> it was about the kinds of characters who tv didn't want to show you in their high school shows or treated them as the butt of the joke. and these were the people who the show put its sympathy