Fandom pimp: Eerie Indiana
To whom it may concern: if you’re reading this document, it means you are about to learn of the greatest kids show ever made.
I am talking, of course, about Eerie, Indiana, a show aimed at roughly the nine-to-fourteen year old market, which aired nineteen episodes between 1991 and 1992 before being stolen by aliens because it was too good for this world. Or maybe it was cancelled because the idiot network didn't know a good thing when they saw it.
If you liked Twin Peaks, if you liked Carnivale or American Gothic, or if you liked the movie The 'Burbs (and seriously, why would you not like The 'Burbs?) you will like Eerie, Indiana.
The premise of Eerie, Indiana revolves around 13-year-old Marshall Teller and his nine-year-old best friend Simon Holmes. Prior to the start of the show, Marshall lived in New Jersey, “just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it. But my parents wanted a better live for my sister and me, so we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky-clean, you could only find it on TV.”
Are you intrigued yet? You should be. Shortly arriving in Eerie, Marshall begins to notice that his new home town is… different.
“What’s wrong with this picture? The American Dream come true, right? Wrong. Nobody believes me, but Eerie is the centre of weirdness for the entire planet.”
The Characters
Marshall Teller
Played by Omri Katz of Hocus Pocus and… um, nothing else that I recognised, fame, Marshall is the new kid in a strange town. He thinks of himself as a scientist and “professional weirdness investigator” and is constantly trying to get proof to convince the rest of the world that something is amiss in Eerie.
Simon Holmes
Marshall’s best friend. Simon is… adorable, there isn’t another word for it. He accompanies Mars on most of their missions. It’s implied pretty heavily in the show that he has a lousy home life - you never see his parents, but you hear them screeching at each other while Simon stands outside his house, and his dad is messing around. No, I didn’t just make that up.
The Tellers
Marshall’s parents, Marilyn and Edgar, and older sister Syndi.
Edgar works for a product testing company called Things Incorporated - he often brings home experimental projects, such as petroleum-based banana flavouring (it’s ditched in the end as Things Incorporated couldn’t get rid of the diesel aftertaste) and a coffee cake with the consistency of English toffee.
Marilyn apparently owns a party-planning business, but we never see her working there. She’s basically just in the show to act as Marshall’s mom and be lovely to Simon. I kind of love Marilyn.
Syndi enjoys investigative journalism, talking about boys and watching a Days of Our Lives-esque TV show called “Todd and Donna”. She’s kind of embarrassed by what she sees as Marshall’s ‘weirdness’ and is generally sneery about his scientific investigations. However, she does get ridiculously and adorably excited when Mars gets a girlfriend, so I think she’s kind of lovely in an older-sister kind of way.
Mayor Chisel
Mayor Chisel is, as you may have guessed, the Mayor. He insists that Eerie is “an all-American, normal town” and aims to keep it that way, whether it’s by chasing paranormal researchers out of town or sacrificing one of its citizens to a werewolf for low taxes and a good harvest. He’s utterly dishonest, completely unapologetic and kind of smug about it. I love him.
Mister Radford 1:
He runs the World o’ Stuff, “the place that invented one-stop shopping”. In addition to being the towns’ general store, it has an ice-cream/milkshake/sandwich counter. Mister Radford wears a different disguise in every episode and usually insists on being called by a different name. Later on, you find out that he isn’t really Mister Radford, but in fact is “Fred Suggs, compulsive imposter.”
Mister Radford 2:
Mister Radford 2 is John Austin. He was tied up in the basement of the World o’ Stuff while Fred Suggs was running his store. However, he elects not to press charges as Fred Suggs was an impressive salesman who moved a lot of merchandise. He pretty much goes around being John Austin and being worshipped by the audience for his greatness.
Dash X
OH, DASH X. Was there a thirteen year old girl out there whose heart didn’t beat for ‘that sneaky kid with the hair’? Dash shows up in the last six episodes of the show. He doesn’t know where he came from, who his parents are, why his hair is grey or even his own name. He has a PLUS sign on one hand and a MINUS sign on the other, which is what eventually inspires him to choose Dash-X as his interim-name. He’s pretty much the antagonist of the last six episodes, stealing stuff, almost getting everyone in Eerie sent to Hell, feeding Marshall to a werewolf, generally making trouble while being snarky and beautiful.
THE SHOW:
Each episode involves Mars and Simon investigating some form of “weirdness” in Eerie - I’m not going to ruin the whole series for you, but a brief selection of weirdness can be found here:
THE FINALE
This is technically an episode summary, but this episode rocks SO HARD, it needs to have its own section.
In the final episode, Mars finds a script in his mailbox. Once he reads it, he is transported to an alternate reality where Eerie, Indiana is a TV show and everyone addresses him as Omri Katz, a washed-up teen star who is about to get killed off the show so that the new star, Dash X, can take over.
You guys, it is absolutely amazing and hilarious and beautiful, and it has Joe Dante. What more could you ask??
There was a spin-off series, Eerie Indiana: the Other Dimension, as well as some books, but I’ve not seen all of the spin-off or read any of the books so I won’t comment on them here.
THE FANDOM
As you might imagine for a show that only ran for one season and was cancelled nearly twenty years ago, the fandom for Eerie is pretty small, but it does exist.
The Eerie Indiana LJ comm is where most of us hang out - there’s icons, fanart, fanfiction, and of course general squeeing to be found here.
FF.net and A03 both have EI sections - they’re tiny, but hey, they exist!
DeviantArt has The Centre of Weirdness, an EI comm with some particularly nice anime-inspired artwork by animegirlmarron.
FIC RECS
When it comes to fic for any fandom, my tastes are pretty simple - I just want porn, the filthier the better.
So when I tell you that The Kid Who Shot Marshall Teller by deifire is my absolute favourite Eerie fic of all time, and it’s rated G, you know it must have impressed me. In less than ten thousand words, Deifire creates a coda for the aftermath of Reality Takes a Holiday, and she does it by using only elements that were already introduced in the show itself. It’s freaking amazing, and you all need to go and read it.
Life With Mars is another deifire masterpiece, also beautifully written and completely true to the characters. I wasn’t able to find any other Eerie fic by her, but if it exists and someone wants to drop me a comment or a PM with the link, you’ll pretty much be my hero for life.
Three Conversations About Dash-X by Ravenbell also needs to go here, because it was the first Dash/Mars fic I ever read, after about two years trying to find some. Also, it has Mars getting relationship advice from Elvis Presley. And yes, that is actually canon in the show (sadly, it was not about Dash though).
Silverkat1620 wrote two wonderful (porny!) Dash/Mars fictions: It's Black and Tawny and Typical.
This one has actually already been mentioned in this comm, but it can't hurt to link to it again - solarbaby's beautifully-observed Dash/Mars fic, I've Got The Time (While He's Got The Freedom).
chibimarchy is the world’s leading provider of Dash/Mars fanfiction, and as such has the thanks of a grateful nation. Of Eerie fans. You know, if there were enough of us to have our own nation. Whatever.
I’m not going to link to everything she's done in this fandom that I think you should read - I’d be here all day, and frankly I think I might run out of room. But I will give you links to two series of six-word Eerie fics here and here she wrote, and frankly if she can be that impressive with six words, you can probably imagine what she can do with more.
Her ongoing fanfiction series The Eerie Project is well worth a look too, and as far as I'm concerned you could do worse than to spend a few hours checking out any entry she’s marked with an eerie indiana tag.
Years ago, dancinbutterfly wrote a Supernatural/Eerie crossover fic featuring Marshall/Dean. Yes, you read that right, and yes, it ruled. I can only find up to Part 7, so again, if there’s more and I missed it, can someone let me know?
Evil Insane Monkey also wrote a super-cute Mars/Dash piece that, as well as pandering to my OTP, had Simon being lovely and adorable too: Simon Always Knows
And, just to prove that I am not simply a one-pairing pony, here is a deliciously sweet Simon/Dash piece (dudes, obviously they are WAAAAY older in this) by shadowrider which not only sells me on the idea of Simon/Dash in a non-creepy way, but also deals with the fact that while Mars is all about the fight against weirdness, he also seems to be the only kid in Eerie without a depressing backstory of neglect and abandonment, and how Simon and Dash could bond over their crappy lots in life together.
Eerie, Indiana is out on DVD in the States and the UK, and is also available for streaming on Hulu and Netflix in America. Check it out - I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
I am talking, of course, about Eerie, Indiana, a show aimed at roughly the nine-to-fourteen year old market, which aired nineteen episodes between 1991 and 1992 before being stolen by aliens because it was too good for this world. Or maybe it was cancelled because the idiot network didn't know a good thing when they saw it.
If you liked Twin Peaks, if you liked Carnivale or American Gothic, or if you liked the movie The 'Burbs (and seriously, why would you not like The 'Burbs?) you will like Eerie, Indiana.
The premise of Eerie, Indiana revolves around 13-year-old Marshall Teller and his nine-year-old best friend Simon Holmes. Prior to the start of the show, Marshall lived in New Jersey, “just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it. But my parents wanted a better live for my sister and me, so we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky-clean, you could only find it on TV.”
Are you intrigued yet? You should be. Shortly arriving in Eerie, Marshall begins to notice that his new home town is… different.
“What’s wrong with this picture? The American Dream come true, right? Wrong. Nobody believes me, but Eerie is the centre of weirdness for the entire planet.”
The Characters
Marshall Teller
Played by Omri Katz of Hocus Pocus and… um, nothing else that I recognised, fame, Marshall is the new kid in a strange town. He thinks of himself as a scientist and “professional weirdness investigator” and is constantly trying to get proof to convince the rest of the world that something is amiss in Eerie.
Simon Holmes
Marshall’s best friend. Simon is… adorable, there isn’t another word for it. He accompanies Mars on most of their missions. It’s implied pretty heavily in the show that he has a lousy home life - you never see his parents, but you hear them screeching at each other while Simon stands outside his house, and his dad is messing around. No, I didn’t just make that up.
The Tellers
Marshall’s parents, Marilyn and Edgar, and older sister Syndi.
Edgar works for a product testing company called Things Incorporated - he often brings home experimental projects, such as petroleum-based banana flavouring (it’s ditched in the end as Things Incorporated couldn’t get rid of the diesel aftertaste) and a coffee cake with the consistency of English toffee.
Marilyn apparently owns a party-planning business, but we never see her working there. She’s basically just in the show to act as Marshall’s mom and be lovely to Simon. I kind of love Marilyn.
Syndi enjoys investigative journalism, talking about boys and watching a Days of Our Lives-esque TV show called “Todd and Donna”. She’s kind of embarrassed by what she sees as Marshall’s ‘weirdness’ and is generally sneery about his scientific investigations. However, she does get ridiculously and adorably excited when Mars gets a girlfriend, so I think she’s kind of lovely in an older-sister kind of way.
Mayor Chisel
Mayor Chisel is, as you may have guessed, the Mayor. He insists that Eerie is “an all-American, normal town” and aims to keep it that way, whether it’s by chasing paranormal researchers out of town or sacrificing one of its citizens to a werewolf for low taxes and a good harvest. He’s utterly dishonest, completely unapologetic and kind of smug about it. I love him.
Mister Radford 1:
He runs the World o’ Stuff, “the place that invented one-stop shopping”. In addition to being the towns’ general store, it has an ice-cream/milkshake/sandwich counter. Mister Radford wears a different disguise in every episode and usually insists on being called by a different name. Later on, you find out that he isn’t really Mister Radford, but in fact is “Fred Suggs, compulsive imposter.”
Mister Radford 2:
Mister Radford 2 is John Austin. He was tied up in the basement of the World o’ Stuff while Fred Suggs was running his store. However, he elects not to press charges as Fred Suggs was an impressive salesman who moved a lot of merchandise. He pretty much goes around being John Austin and being worshipped by the audience for his greatness.
Dash X
OH, DASH X. Was there a thirteen year old girl out there whose heart didn’t beat for ‘that sneaky kid with the hair’? Dash shows up in the last six episodes of the show. He doesn’t know where he came from, who his parents are, why his hair is grey or even his own name. He has a PLUS sign on one hand and a MINUS sign on the other, which is what eventually inspires him to choose Dash-X as his interim-name. He’s pretty much the antagonist of the last six episodes, stealing stuff, almost getting everyone in Eerie sent to Hell, feeding Marshall to a werewolf, generally making trouble while being snarky and beautiful.
THE SHOW:
Each episode involves Mars and Simon investigating some form of “weirdness” in Eerie - I’m not going to ruin the whole series for you, but a brief selection of weirdness can be found here:
- A Stepford-esque housewife uses airtight rubber kitchenware to preserve herself and her teenage sons. It’s called Foreverware, and is guaranteed, “when used as directed, to keep anything fresh… forever!” Oh, and it has a theme song. No, really.
- A kid gets fitted for a super-complicated set of braces that allow him to hear what dogs are thinking. Turns out what they’re thinking is, “take over the world.”
- Marshall’s dad designs a new kind of ATM, which develops sentience and a personality of its own, and adopts Simon as its new best friend.
- The Loyal Order of Corn, a local Masonic lodge, is using wacky hats to mind-control its members into building an intergalactic portal. They also have a Lodge song, “Hail to Thee, O Ears of Splendour”, and the leader of their Order is called the Kernel.
- When Marshall sets his watch back for Daylight Savings Time, which Indiana doesn’t adhere to (this was actually true, up until 2006 - I’m kind of mad with Indiana about this, because I was planning on going there and trying this experiment myself) he gets sucked into a time-pocket where everyone else is an hour ahead of him.
- In one of my personal favourites, Mars and his new friend, adorably thirteen-year-old-badass Devon Wilde, fight over the affections of Melanie, a shy young girl with a heart condition. When Devon gets hit by a milk truck (a recurring image throughout the series) he is killed and Melanie gets his heart. Not only does she start acting like him, but her new heart starts breaking whenever she and Mars get close. And yes, in a kids show.
THE FINALE
This is technically an episode summary, but this episode rocks SO HARD, it needs to have its own section.
In the final episode, Mars finds a script in his mailbox. Once he reads it, he is transported to an alternate reality where Eerie, Indiana is a TV show and everyone addresses him as Omri Katz, a washed-up teen star who is about to get killed off the show so that the new star, Dash X, can take over.
You guys, it is absolutely amazing and hilarious and beautiful, and it has Joe Dante. What more could you ask??
There was a spin-off series, Eerie Indiana: the Other Dimension, as well as some books, but I’ve not seen all of the spin-off or read any of the books so I won’t comment on them here.
THE FANDOM
As you might imagine for a show that only ran for one season and was cancelled nearly twenty years ago, the fandom for Eerie is pretty small, but it does exist.
The Eerie Indiana LJ comm is where most of us hang out - there’s icons, fanart, fanfiction, and of course general squeeing to be found here.
FF.net and A03 both have EI sections - they’re tiny, but hey, they exist!
DeviantArt has The Centre of Weirdness, an EI comm with some particularly nice anime-inspired artwork by animegirlmarron.
FIC RECS
When it comes to fic for any fandom, my tastes are pretty simple - I just want porn, the filthier the better.
So when I tell you that The Kid Who Shot Marshall Teller by deifire is my absolute favourite Eerie fic of all time, and it’s rated G, you know it must have impressed me. In less than ten thousand words, Deifire creates a coda for the aftermath of Reality Takes a Holiday, and she does it by using only elements that were already introduced in the show itself. It’s freaking amazing, and you all need to go and read it.
Life With Mars is another deifire masterpiece, also beautifully written and completely true to the characters. I wasn’t able to find any other Eerie fic by her, but if it exists and someone wants to drop me a comment or a PM with the link, you’ll pretty much be my hero for life.
Three Conversations About Dash-X by Ravenbell also needs to go here, because it was the first Dash/Mars fic I ever read, after about two years trying to find some. Also, it has Mars getting relationship advice from Elvis Presley. And yes, that is actually canon in the show (sadly, it was not about Dash though).
Silverkat1620 wrote two wonderful (porny!) Dash/Mars fictions: It's Black and Tawny and Typical.
This one has actually already been mentioned in this comm, but it can't hurt to link to it again - solarbaby's beautifully-observed Dash/Mars fic, I've Got The Time (While He's Got The Freedom).
chibimarchy is the world’s leading provider of Dash/Mars fanfiction, and as such has the thanks of a grateful nation. Of Eerie fans. You know, if there were enough of us to have our own nation. Whatever.
I’m not going to link to everything she's done in this fandom that I think you should read - I’d be here all day, and frankly I think I might run out of room. But I will give you links to two series of six-word Eerie fics here and here she wrote, and frankly if she can be that impressive with six words, you can probably imagine what she can do with more.
Her ongoing fanfiction series The Eerie Project is well worth a look too, and as far as I'm concerned you could do worse than to spend a few hours checking out any entry she’s marked with an eerie indiana tag.
Years ago, dancinbutterfly wrote a Supernatural/Eerie crossover fic featuring Marshall/Dean. Yes, you read that right, and yes, it ruled. I can only find up to Part 7, so again, if there’s more and I missed it, can someone let me know?
Evil Insane Monkey also wrote a super-cute Mars/Dash piece that, as well as pandering to my OTP, had Simon being lovely and adorable too: Simon Always Knows
And, just to prove that I am not simply a one-pairing pony, here is a deliciously sweet Simon/Dash piece (dudes, obviously they are WAAAAY older in this) by shadowrider which not only sells me on the idea of Simon/Dash in a non-creepy way, but also deals with the fact that while Mars is all about the fight against weirdness, he also seems to be the only kid in Eerie without a depressing backstory of neglect and abandonment, and how Simon and Dash could bond over their crappy lots in life together.
Eerie, Indiana is out on DVD in the States and the UK, and is also available for streaming on Hulu and Netflix in America. Check it out - I guarantee you will not be disappointed.