Showing Some Teen Spirit? That’s ‘So Weird’ From Disney

Fiona Phillips just wants to be a normal teenager, living aboard her mother’s rock ‘n’ roll tour bus, surfing the Net and squabbling with her older brother like any other kid. So why does she keep bumping into spirits, astral beings and other creepy things?

We’ll begin to understand why life’s so strange for Fiona when Disney Channel’s family adventure series “So Weird” returns Friday night for its new season.

Promptly dubbed “The X-Files” meets “Harriet the Spy” when it premiered in January, the show’s engagingly offbeat characters attracted a growing following of all ages (it drew an average of 950,000 viewers during its first season, according to Nielsen Media Research), prompting Disney to order 26 new episodes of the bittersweet saga of a girl (15-year-old Cara DeLizia) whose curiosity invariably leads to otherworldly realms.

Rich Ross, Disney Channel general manager and executive vice president of programming, said the show is designed to offer a distinctive mix of spookiness to chill younger viewers, along with plot twists and quirky comedy for the rest of the family. Much levity arises from the family-on-the-road situations, with Fiona and her skeptical sibling Jack (Patrick Levis) often trouncing on each other’s nerves.

Also along for the ride are beefy, gravel-voiced character actor Dave Ward as Ned the bus driver/teacher; Belinda Metz (“Kung Fu: The Legend Continues”) as Irene, the often-harried road manager; and Eric Lively (recently in “American Pie”) as their older son, Eric. Their younger son Clu is played by Erik Von Detten, who’s soon to move on to the lead role in ABC’s new sitcom “Odd Man Out.” Von Detten will be with the series for the first six episodes, when he’ll depart for school, with the option of occasional--or extended--return visits.

Mackenzie Phillips, however, gives the series its backbone, bringing a tone of sweet edginess to the role of Fi’s mother, Molly. Herself once a 15-year-old TV star (“One Day at a Time”), Phillips for two decades careened in and out of addiction and rehabilitation. She says she’s been clean and sober now for eight years, and indeed she appears quite radiant, in a haunted kind of way.

“The kids know what I’ve been through and I keep an open-door policy,” she says. “They can come any time and talk about anything they want--and they do.”

And if the show’s fantasy has an authentic ring--if such is possible--it’s because executive producer and show-runner Ali Mari Matheson is following in the footsteps of her famous father, Richard Matheson, legendary fantasy writer (“Omega Man,” “Somewhere in Time,” “What Dreams May Come” and the soon-to-be-released “Stir of Echoes”).

“We have a young strong female character who wants to learn and experience the world through the Internet, and she’s exploring all kinds of things,” says Matheson, whose career aspirations were formed early on when she got to watch “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling drop over to visit Dad.

“I love it that Fi is a strong, driving force in the show,” she adds.

DeLizia has been cast as a strong character before. She held a prime-time co-starring role for two seasons as feisty class brain Sarah in the WB’s “Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher,” and, more recently, drew attention as the teenage Mabel, Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt’s daughter--the adult Mabel was played by Janeane Garofalo--in May’s series finale of NBC’s “Mad About You.”

In “So Weird,” DeLizia projects an ingenuously curious girl with a leather-tough interior, often dashing off on adventures when big brother and adults are content to hang around the bus.

Executive producer Henry Winkler, who guest stars in the series’ Halloween episode, says DeLizia breezed through a 9 p.m. to 5:15 a.m. shooting schedule for a nighttime zombie sequence.

“She’s wise beyond her years, more professional than a lot of adults I’ve worked with,” Winkler says.

While a strong vein of comedy runs through the series, actress Phillips said that the show’s tone also reflects a more serious side, in many ways a metaphor for the yearning all of us feel at one time or another tied to our unfulfilled hopes and dreams.

Her Father Is a Clue to Strange Happenings

And thus, the new season will form its “X-Files”-like myth arc, revealing that the strange things happening to Fiona are connected to her mysterious father, Rick, who died when his daughter was 3.

“She doesn’t remember him, but always feels she is going to connect with him; she’s always searching,” DeLizia says. “She’s hoping that one day her father will come to her. She feels a big connection but she doesn’t know why.”

But one important part of the show’s new season--its move from Monday to Friday--is no mystery, said programming director Ross.

“Monday has become wrestling night on cable TV, and we just lost out to that tsunami,” Ross observed wryly. Instead “So Weird” will run new episodes on Fridays at 7 p.m. with a repeat at 11 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday, Disney will dip back into the first season for two additional episodes, one airing Saturday at 7 and 11 p.m., another on Sunday, also at 7 and 11 p.m. As the series progresses, all three weekend plays will be drawn from the second season.

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* “So Weird” airs three episodes each weekend on Disney Channel on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at 7, with a repeat at 11 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).