Eerie, Indiana - Foreverware

I’d seen some strange things since coming to Eerie, but nothing prepared me for what I saw next…

I’ll tell dad. Dad was a reasonable guy. He’d believe that mom was being lured into a mind-sucking cult of housewife zombies who preserve themselves in giant rubber kitchenware. He’d believe me. He’d know what to do…

You don’t know what it’s like to be in the seventh grade for thirty years…it’s a living hell.

Remember foreverware will last you a lifetime…maybe even longer.

Somebody had to help the twins graduate from the seventh grade and that somebody was me.

Thirty years in the seventh grade…now that’s scary.

A kid’s gotta grow up fast in Eerie, or he might not grow up at all…

The inaugural episode of Eerie, Indiana (1991-1992), hits the right tone the short-lived series maintained throughout its run, as Omri Katz, a kid in a small town he considered an underbelly of weird although few others seemed to see (especially his clueless, wonderfully square family) what he and buddy, Simon (Justin Shenkarow), does all the time. It is that he is always aware of the surroundings and recognizes the bizarre behavior and idiosyncrasies many in the town exhibit. In Foreverware, a Tupperware type saleswoman right out of the 60s (literally!) welcomes Katz’ Marshall’s family to the neighborhood, wanting his mom, Marilyn (Mary-Margaret Humes), to attend a vacuum-seal party (similar to something like Avon except those in attendance had last names like Crocker and Swanson!). Marshall is introduced to the twins of Betty Wilson (Louan Gideon), providing a note for him to investigate: Yearbook 1964. Curious to what this might mean, Marshall scales the wall and takes a peek inside Betty’s home, watching her vacuum seal her sons in Tupperware beds! She also does this. It seems that not only does she have the ability to maintain freshness for food in her magical containers but that human-size ones exist as well! The twins are tired of being seventh grade age and wish for Marshall to help them usurp their mom's stranglehold on their current age situation. He'll have to be covert and ninja in his movements in order to help them finally transport to the proper age. As expected, this show is shot (directed by Joe Dante, this episode) in ways to enhance the town’s aura of odd, with Marshall seemingly this narrative voice of Eerie’s underlying strangeness, always investigating any characters or situations that strike him as potentially dangerous or scary. This episode just works as an absurd farce, with Betty so amazingly plucked out of a different time, that no one in Eerie could realize something was off about her tells you how seemingly naïve the town’s locals really are…and perhaps that is because most in the town have quirks as well, identifying this present, abundant surreal environment that isn’t just conducive to one home and one family. As the show would often tell us during Marshall and Simon’s afterschool jaunts all over Eerie…