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Eli
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Actor
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Gender
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Male
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Occupation
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Student
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First appearance
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"Pilot"
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Last seen
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Eli is an autistic student at William McKinley High School. He is in the special education program, since he has speech issues, struggles with learning due to his developmental disability, and sensory sensitivities. He is portrayed by Ben Foster.
Biography[]
In the "Pilot", while other students call Eli a slurred insult as a form of bullying, he calls himself otherwise. Lindsay sees the students making fun of him from across the hall and feels bad, so she walks over and asks him to the homecoming dance (the bullying was, in that instance, because of him going around asking random girls to the dance and consistently being rejected). He accepts the offer. However, later, he angrily refuses at the football field, after she unintentionally insulted him when she is trying to defend him from two boys, who, unbeknownst to Eli, were bullying him. He runs off in anger, only to fall, which causes him to break his arm, scream and cry. Later at the Homecoming dance, Lindsey sees Eli in a cast and decides to dance with him in an attempt to apologize to him, which does work and the two dance.
In "Carded and Discarded", in the school's hallway, Vicki Appleby is first shown persuading Maureen to defect from the Geeks to join the cheerleading squad. Fearing that the Geeks will lose Maureen to the popular crowd, the Geeks tell Eli to distract Vicki for them. In the meantime, the Geeks pull Maureen away from Vicki to lose her focus on Vicki, and to make her hang out with them more.
Trivia[]
- Eli is a huge fan of the TV sitcom Three's Company.
- He is the only well-known neurodivergent character in the show.
Behind The Scenes[]
In the early drafts of the Pilot script, Eli was secretly the son of Mr. Guyevski, an auto shop teacher at William McKinley High School.
Actor, Ben Foster, was a fierce defender of Freaks and Geeks in the press wanting NBC to keep the TV series on the air. SOURCE:EW.com
Images[]
