There's no reason to pit two similar works against each other, especially when they're not mutually exclusive. Both can be enjoyed equally. Except sometimes a later work, if superior, can make the earlier one pale in comparison. (Obviously when the later work doesn't match the standards of the earlier one, we just ignore it.)

When Hill Street Blues first hit the airwaves in 1981, it was a revelation. This was edgy TV, featuring flawed cops and issues that weren't simplistically black and white. Twelve years later, Homicide: Life on the Street came out and its ambiguous protagonists and moral greyness made Hill Street look quaint and safe by comparison.

A similar fate befell My So-Called Life. This critically-acclaimed show was probably the best program about school in the first 45 years of TV (admittedly, that isn't saying much, since its only competition was The Wonder Years). But its flaws and weaknesses, previously hidden, became apparent after Freaks and Geeks premiered and topped it in every way. (Buffy is actually the best high school-related series, but it's too dissimilar in tone. Plus, Buffy graduated after the third season.)

My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks have many superficial similarities. In both shows the main character (Angela and Lindsay, respectively) is a girl in high school who has: a younger sibling; a parent who owns a business; a rough-around-the-edges female friend with a "slutty" reputation (it's in quotation marks because it's ultimately a meaningless word); an interest in a good-looking guy who's no genius; and a dorky English teacher (is there any other kind?). Both series even featured an episode that praised the Grateful Dead. And both shows were too good to get renewed for a second season.

But the shows are similar in more fundamental and important ways. They both centre on a girl in a transitional period, as she moves away from her childhood friends and gravitates towards a group of outsiders. In So-Called, Angela no longer has a connection with her friend Sharon and her neighbour Brian. In Freaks, these characters were collapsed into one: Millie is both Lindsay's former friend and neighbour. Interestingly, both Angela and Lindsay aren't entirely sure why they felt compelled to make these transitions (though Lindsay's was indirectly connected with the death of her grandmother). The other significant similarity was each show's goal: they both wanted to portray high school as realistically as TV would allow. That meant flawed characters, downbeat resolutions, and less melodrama.

But Freaks had the edge; coming later, it was able to build on what So-Called had accomplished without falling victim to its flaws (Freaks indirectly pointed them out simply by virtue of its quality, the same way that Babylon 5 showed up Star Trek for the inferior SF that it really was).

-- Sometimes you have to make allowances for certain plot devices, especially the use of coincidences to keep a story moving. But So-Called took this to almost absurd levels: Angela would walk in on two girls who were talking about her, Rickie would overhear a phone conversation in which he was the topic, and Brian would always ride by on his bike at just the right moment. The most extreme example occurred when Angela and Jordan held hands in public for the first time (it was an important symbolic gesture). All the major characters just happened to be standing in the hallway at that moment. I'm surprised the writers didn't contrive to have Angela's parents show up at the school right then as well.