SURREALESTATE – Season 2 Episode 5 – SPOILERS

Susan (Sarah Levy) is on sabbatical, or so says her email to Luke (Tim Rozon) who as a consequence is a very busy realtor. Zooey (Savannah Basley) has taken on most of Susan’s clients, and it has fallen upon Father Phil (Adam Korson) to manage the office. With no alternative available, Phil has assigned Augie (Maurice Dean Wint) to handle new client, Aurora Nelgrave (Rhiannon Morgan), a painter whose house seems to be afflicted with either a “spoon bender” or a “hummel chucker“. (Objects are disappearing and changing position, seemingly on their own.)

On learning that Aurora was referred to the Agency by a prominent previous client, Luke takes over the listing personally, and arrives at the Nelgrave house just as Augie is leaving. Augie asks for a personal day, something he rarely does, and Luke, though overworked, does not object, but when Augie suggests purchasing a software patch that would help compensate for the loss of Luke’s paranormal abilities, Luke tells him that the budget’s “kind of tight this quarter.” The Roman Agency is overloaded with high-end properties to sell, and has minimal staff. They should be rolling in money, especially in the current housing market. It might be that their offices at Charon Plaza are overly expensive. (In Greek myth, Charon was the guy who ferried people across the River Styx to the Underworld.)

After Augie leaves, Aurora asks Luke: “I take it the big guy with the weird glasses is yours?” When Luke says yes, she continues “He quoted Plutarch and asked about cold spots.” We don’t get to hear the Plutarch quote, but it might have been “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks”.

The reason for Augie’s personal day is Rochelle Decker (Joy Tanner), who works for the research and development company ASDRA. Augie worked there some decades ago, and she has been calling him for weeks, because one of his projects, Erebuster, a program designed to gather data from the afterlife, has become active again.

(In Greek myth, Erebus was an area of darkness through which souls entering the Underworld were required to pass.) When Ms. Decker re-awakened the program, it sent emails asking for Professor Ripley.

Augie left the company because he feared his research would be put to military use. As he was packing up his desk, he called Ms. Decker “a willing grease girl for a corrupt war machine.” (Decker thought it was flattering.) As a consequence, Augie made Erebuster’s results difficult to get at, and its data can only be retrieved by direct download into Augie’s own brain using VR technology.

After the download, Augie seems evasive about what Erebuster revealed. “I saw life and what comes after from the cold, logical perspective of a machine that can never live nor die,” he explains. “In the end, Erebuster showed me there are no answers, only deeper, more wonderful questions – that the best we can do is stop worrying about death and focus on life, on living.” As Augie leaves, Decker intercepts him and offers him his old job back, but Augie declines. He does ask her to have dinner with him at the all-night diner down the road, a place they frequented years ago.

Why did Decker re-awaken the Erebuster program after so many years? (The computer housing it looks like something from the late 1970s.) What was it that Erebuster needed so urgently to tell its creator? Surely it wasn’t to spout vague justifications for YOLO philosophy. Augie wants to know the answer to the first question, and Decker wants the answer to the second. The lack of trust between the pair makes development of a relationship unlikely, but they do seem to genuinely like one another.

Meanwhile, Luke discovers that Aurora’s house is haunted by the ghost of Scarlett Warner, wife of Thomas Warner, who lived there from 1860 to 1890. Thomas was an artistic fraud who bribed critics to give his work good reviews. Scarlett was a talented painter forced to live in the shadow of her less-gifted husband, and all her ghost needs to move on is for Aurora to complete an unfinished self-portrait. When the ghost signs the finished portrait of herself, she inexplicably uses her married name.

Scarlett is the most interesting character in the episode, though we only get to meet the ghostly remnant of her that has clung to the house all these years. If Nora Helmer from A Doll’s House failed to leave her husband Torvald, she might have turned into someone much like Scarlett.

Susan’s resignation letter is picked up by a messenger from a company called HastyDrop who finds it stuck under her front door and delivers it to the Roman Agency at 139 Bayview Ave. 10th floor. (No city or town is specified.) How the house managed to put the letter into the envelope and under the door is unknown. Perhaps the house compelled Susan to do that, but when Luke calls, and her phone rings by her bedside, the camera pans, and Susan is nowhere to be seen.

next episode Set Your Flag On Fire

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Miscellaneous Info

Aurora Nelgrave‘s last name might come from “Nel Grave Tormento” (in severe torment), a line from Mozart’s Mitridate.

The lead ship of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the arctic was HMS Erebus.

When Phil and Zooey receive Susan’s entire client database on their phones (probably sent by Susan’s house) several recognizable addresses are included. 19 Broadmoor is from “Ft. Ghost Child“, 33 Barker comes from “A House is Not a Home“, and 113 Bathory is Nellie Neal’s address in “Baba O’Reilly“. The Donovan house is mentioned, as is a file labeled “Raven or Crow. How to Tell?“, which Susan likely created after being frightened by a black bird in “The Harvey“.

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All episodes of SURREALESTATE can be streamed on HULU in the US, and on CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada.