Good, bad or indifferent, the pilot of this short-lived series assigns responsibility for the new weirdness in Eerie to the breakdown of social traditions and the mind control brought on by the power of media, specifically cable TV with no less than 2000 channels. (Mitchell: "Are you sure it's the same Golf Channel"? Stanley, incredulous: "There's more than one?") On one level, the show seeks to entertain kids and teens with the usual "kids on a crusade to rid the world of evil" plot lines, the evil cleverly twisted into seemingly innocuous weirdness, an element that is immediately relevant to young people beginning to encounter the world outside their homes. On another level, the script of the pilot mercilessly skewers the contemporary (1998) obsession with media-delivered entertainment and the accompanying breakdown of communication within families and between friends; conformity (five identical cheerleaders all drinking Black Cows in exactly the same way at the World o' Stuff soda counter); and the marketing manipulation, in the person of cable-TV salesman for the Eerie region, Ted Tanner. Through the expressed concerns of our heroes, Mitchell and Stanley, and their counterparts from the earlier series, Marshall and Simon, Eerie and the world are warned that "Eerie . . . will cease to exist . . . it wasn't just normality on the line - it was to be our very existence." With nearly two decades of hindsight (as of 2017) the dominance of "reality" TV, obvious and hidden marketing, and several forms of social media not even invented yet as this show ran its course, makes "Eerie . . . The Other Dimension" prophetic beyond its modest satirical intentions.
Not Quite Orwell, but Insightful Comment on Media's Transformation of Society
2 January 2017
Warning: Spoilers