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The Top 5 Holliston Episodes

January 8, 2021 | Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz

The Top 5 Holliston Episodes

Holliston is a sitcom that originally aired on the now very defunct horror themed cable TV channel Fearnet for two seasons and 17 episodes, from 2012-2013. Created by Adam Green, the man behind the Victor Crowley/Hatchet horror movie franchise, Holliston is a sort of reworked version of a sitcom that was based on Green’s first movie, the romantic comedy Coffee and Donuts. The show stars Green and fellow horror movie director Joe Lynch as best friends/aspiring horror movie makers who work at a local cable company in Holliston, Massachusetts, making low budget local commercials and hosting a horror movie show called “The Movie Crypt.” The show also stars Corri English as Corri, Adam’s ex-girlfriend, ongoing friend, and aspiring singer/musician, Laura Ortiz as burgeoning artist Laura, Joe’s girlfriend, Dee Snider as Lance Rockett, Adam and Joe’s boss at the cable company and hard rocker, and Dave Brockie as Oderus Urungus, Adam’s imaginary friend who lives in Adam’s bedroom closet.

Holliston can best be described as wacky. While it’s ostensibly about artists trying to achieve their life goals while also living their day to day lives to the fullest, pretty much anything could happen and typically did. Characters often broke the fourth wall, characters could die only to be very much alive in the next episode (which is what happens between seasons), there’s a “found footage” episode, an animated episode, and zombie attacks were not uncommon (that happened in the last episode of the second season). You could almost call it a kind of live action Family Guy, at least in terms of messing with the conventions of sitcoms while also using them (and before anyone starts complaining about the Family Guy comparison, that’s what comes to my mind when I watch Holliston. There are likely other sitcoms that Holliston resembles/homages but I can’t think of another one at the moment. I would also say that Holliston also has a kind of Monty Python’s Flying Circus vibe to it in that, again, seemingly anything can happen on the show). Holliston is also chock full of modern horror movie icon guest spots from people like Bill Moseley, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Danielle Harris, Derek Mears, Sid Haig, David Naughton, and pop culture icons like James Gunn, John Landis, and Ray Wise.

The show was one of Fearnet’s biggest hits and a third season was expected, but when Fearnet went out of business the proposed third season was “delayed.” There was slight hope for a return of the show via something called GeekNation, but that was back in 2016 and I don’t think that website exists anymore. But then the show’s two seasons were picked up by Shudder and started running on the streaming service in September 2020 and, suddenly, there was talk again of a third season. So far, as of me writing this, that’s all there’s been. Talk. Rumors. Will we finally get a third season of the show? Who knows? I certainly hope so but, again, who knows?

And am I the only one who wants to see both the trailer for and the short film of Shinpads?

And now, without any further what have you, what are the Top 5 Holliston episodes?

Honorable Mentions

–”Cursed”- Season 2 Episode 9: This episode is a kind of parody of The Ring, where Ada, Joe, Corri, and Laura end up accidentally watching a “cursed” video tape sent to Laura from a mysterious address in the UK. After watching the tape, the gang has seven days to get someone else to watch the tape and pass the “curse” along to another person. At the same time, Adam starts dating Rachael (Caite Upton), a racist but mega hot woman he met on a dating website. It’s great watching the friends try to figure out who they should curse with the tape next and Adam figure out what he should do: dump Rachael or continue to date her? The gang’s solution to their curse problem coincides nicely with Adam’s issue. And the way the episode ends is a hoot.

5- “The Christmas Special”- “Season 2 Episode 1 : : This episode, which serves as a kind of bridge between the events of the last episode of season 1 and the start of season 2, shows us how Adam and Joe met, how Adam and Joe originally met Lance Rockett, how Adam and Corri met, and then how Joe and Laura met. The episode also sees Adam and Corri reconnect then break up again. When that happens it almost seems like the episode is going to end on a downer. It doesn’t, though, as Adam finds out what Corri got him for Christmas and Corri finds out what Adam got her for Christmas. The final five minutes or so may make you cry or, at least, tear up a bit. There’s also a very funny subplot involving a local power failure and an escaped serial killer from a mental institution. At an hour long, “The Christmas Special” is the longest episode of the series so far and works quite well. Now with the show available on Shudder and, presumably, an even higher profile than before, I can totally see watching this episode becoming an annual Christmas season tradition for horror movie and Holliston nerds.

4. “Halloween Girl”- Season 2 Episode 3: In this episode, modern horror icon Danielle Harris shows up after fellow modern horror icon Kane Hodder, who is living with Adam and Joe after getting him out of the hospital in the second episode of season 2, convinces her to star in the guys’ short film “Shinpads.” When Harris arrives in Holliston, she essentially uses and seduces Adam, taking his money and dental surgery pain medication. Adam is totally okay with being used by Harris until Corri convinces him that Harris is up to no good. Well, there’s that and the aftermath of the big sex scene that starts out with Adam and Harris making out Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers style, and then ends with Harris demanding Adam wear a Michael Myers mask adorned with a ball gag and Hodder wanting to join in on a kind of three-way orgy (the horror convention orgy story Hodder and Harris share is disturbingly hilarious). This episode also introduces us to Nicolo (Paul Solet), a local Holliston guy who starred in the hilarious Jack Chop commercial parody that Adam Green made for Halloween back in 2010. This is probably the best episode to show modern horror icons acting in a part you don’t expect to see them doing.

3- “Weekend of Horrors”- Season 1 Episode 6: This episode, which starts out with a very funny Scream parody, has Adam and Joe going to a horror convention where they hope to meet An American Werewolf in London director John Landis, who is doing a book signing at the convention, and give him a copy of their trailer for their potential short film “Shinpads.” This episode parodies brilliantly the horror convention experience (all of the people Adam and Joe and Corri and Laura meet at the show are people everyone who has gone a horror convention has met at one time or another). I mean, the whole “standing in line to meet John Landis” section of the episode is exactly what it’s like when standing in line to meet a big celebrity guest at a convention (Bill Sarkisian’s horror fan, who questions Joe about An American Werewolf in London trivia, is so great that he should have appeared again in a later episode). The boys eventually manage to get Landis a copy of “Shinpads,” and his eventual response to the trailer is brutal and heartbreaking. But the way Adam and Joe agree to persevere despite being trashed by a prominent horror director will make you cheer. The way the episode ends is funny as hell, and sets up a cliffhanger that the show just completely ignores in the Christmas episode. The GWAR concert sequence is awesome, as is the Raiders of the Lost Ark parody. And am I seeing things, or does the guy who played Brian in Office Space make an uncredited appearance on the convention floor when the gang arrives at the show?

2-. “Farm Festival”- Season 2 Episode 11: This is the second season finale and has Adam and Joe staging their own film festival in order to show case their short film “Shinpads.” Unfortunately for Adam and Joe, they put Nicolo in charge of putting up signs for the festival and he inexplicably labeled the film festival a “farm festival,” which causes loads of farmers to show up. Horror icon Sid Haig shows up, too, expecting to get something cool out of a gifting lounge thing. While all of that is going on, Joe tries to figure out how to keep Laura from going to art school in Germany (it doesn’t end well). Corri drops a major bombshell on Adam at the end. And there’s a zombie attack. There’s all sorts of genuine emotion in this episode, lots of heartbreak (the Joe and Laura stuff could very well make you cry), while the Adam and Corri stuff will make you wonder how the hell a third season will deal with Corri’s big revelation (and what will happen to Adam’s girlfriend Dana, as played by Green’s then real life wife Rileah Vanderbilt). This episode manages to pack so much into 22 minutes it’s amazing. I love this episode. And Adam’s big moment, when he talks to Oderus about how he wants to quit being an aspiring horror movie maker because it’s so hard and he keeps failing, is probably something all creative people have experienced. And Oderus’ admonishment to Adam is brilliantly offensive. I loved it.

1- “Hobgoblin”- Season 2 Episode 4 : This episode is a great parody of the “found footage” genre. Adam and Joe decide to make a found footage horror movie about the “Holliston Hobgoblin,” which is meant to be similar to “The Blair Witch” from The Blair Witch Project. The boys enlist the help of Corri and Laura, and they all go out into the woods to make the movie. The making of the potential movie does not go well and we see all of it and it’s all just so goddamn funny. There are just so many great moments. The whole “Adam trying to make out with Corri because it’s in the script outline” bit, the “dick and balls” bit, the whole section where everyone is in the tent, and the way the potential movie ends is just so well done I don’t know how this isn’t everyone’s favorite episode of the show. Everything about the episode works. Everything. I can’t get enough of it.

We need a third season of Holliston! Please, Shudder, please!