SURREALESTATE – Season 1 Episode 4 – SPOILERS

On the way back from placating some rich and fussy clients (Duncan and Sophie, played by Patrick Kwok-Choon and Laci J. Mailey), Susan (Sarah Levy) swerves to avoid a man on horseback and ends up in a ditch. She is uninjured, but her car is put temporarily out of service. Meanwhile, back at the office, Luke (Tim Rozon) is contacted by Greg Chisolm (Colin Furlong), an old acquaintance (nemesis?) whose development seems to be supernaturally afflicted.

The developer, it turns out, ripped off one of his home designs from a former partner (now deceased). The dead architect spends his ghostly time hanging out in his ex-wife’s favourite spot in the original home and whenever he has a temper tantrum, the effects of it are felt in all the duplicate constructions.

The notion of working for a cookie-cutter developer causes Augie (Maurice Dean Wint) to quote Francis Bacon: “Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.” Interestingly enough, as Augie and Father Phil (Adam Korson) scan for the paranormal amid the horrific normality of the place, the one location where they find it seems to be near a very atypical house for the neighbourhood. And they do not even remark on that. All the houses in the development are named after American forts and the ones affected are all Delawares. Fort Delaware is alleged by some to be one of the most haunted forts in the world. (There are paranormal tours of the place.)

The developer wants Luke to kill whatever is causing his problems and Augie provides a device that will “instantly render the entity to irreparable particles. Death beyond death.” Luke, however, decides that the ghost has more merit than the developer, a decision that may or may not have been influenced by his previous dealings with said developer at a place called Balmoral Farms. (We get no details on this.) Note that while the LRG in Episode 2 was destroyed “at a molecular level”, the ghost would be converted to “irreparable particles” perhaps because the ghost is composed of energy, while the LRG was made of matter, phased out of the visibility range of most people (like the Ophidians in the STTNG episode “Time’s Arrow“.)

Father Phil’s research uncovers a tragic history for Duncan and Sophie’s house. That horseman that ran Susan off the road was the ghost of a lighthouse keeper who overslept and failed to light the light in time to prevent a shipwreck and the house stands where the lighthouse once did. (Did the lighthouse keeper’s horse die at the same time he did, or is it just a random ghost horse that he is riding?)

After being warned of an impending spectral shipwreck, Susan uses her pyrokenetic powers to create a fireball simulating the effect of a lighthouse, steering the ghostly ship away from the rocks and satisfying (somehow) the anger of the long-ago drowned. How Susan’s pyrotechnics work is a matter of conjecture. Possibly she teleports flaming gasses from fires already burning elsewhere and forms them into a fireball. (There is nothing available locally for her to combust.)

After Zooey is forced to be Susan’s chauffeur while her car is in the shop (Zooey drives a Jeep. The make and model of Susan’s car is still unclear), the two women bond, and we do get some of Zooey’s personal history. We do not get an explanation of all the rings she wears, and that would be interesting.

Luke and Megan (Tennille Read) finally kiss after he explains that he doesn’t want to see her at her house because of his mother’s ghost being there. Apparently, the building where Luke resides, Wollstonecraft Lofts, is less haunted than the Donovan place (so far), despite its name.

next episode Ft. Ghost Child

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Season 3 of SURREALESTATE premiered 3 April on SyFy in the US, and on CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. New episodes drop Thursdays. Seasons 1 & 2 are available from HULU in the US, and from Crave TV in Canada.