Review by C.J. Bunce

Deja vu?  I’m a fan of the first season of the Canadian supernatural series SurrealEstate, but the second season seemed to take eight of its ten episodes to find its footing.  Challenged by frenetic storytelling, a season-long arc, a missing co-star, and the inability to use star Tim Rozon for all his strengths, the season didn’t jibe until its final episodes, which ended with some promise for something better in the next season.  Although co-star Sarah Levy was back in action for this year’s third season, again it was the finale where all the elements jelled with the promise that a fourth season could deliver something better.  The show still isn’t The X-Files, but to its credit it embraced the concept of a “haunting of the week,” the kind of feature that should generate innumerable ideas of the Twilight Zone variety.  It’s just too bad two key events that happened in the finale didn’t instead arrive at the beginning of the season.

Why didn’t the writers lean more into the ghost-busting tropes and genre fun?  Instead of Tim Rozon’s paranormal real estate agent Luke Roman embracing his special powers of communicating with the dead, we’ve seen three years of him trying to distance himself.  Thankfully Sarah Levy’s returning agent Susan Ireland wasn’t wasted trading barbs with Luke.  But how many episodes did it need to take to re-shuffle the crew, excise Adam Korson’s ex-priest character without a cameo, and upgrade Savannah Basley’s office manager to lawyer while still not really making her a full member of the staff?  Her replacement, Elena Juatco’s Lomax, still seems surprised by the paranormal of the job even after two seasons.

Meanwhile Luke, target of this season’s Big Bad, seemed vacant, drifting, pondering being someplace else.  That Big Bad was Austin Ball’s Tyler MacNeil, a recently revived undead spirit who Luke’s father trapped in a stuffed elephant inside a locked box at the bottom of a lake for several decades.  MacNeil was a classic cinema villain, down to the twirled moustache.  Particularly loathsome and ruthless, Ball delivered a good addition for the season.  Roman needs to be like Constantine of the comic books or Paul Blackthorne’s Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files.  Let Rozon show some passion.  Rozon was so cool as Doc Holliday in Wynonna Earp, why not let this guy be equally cool?

Similar to the treatment of Luke was Maurice Dean Wint’s August Ripley, back with even more stilted dialogue and inaction.  In stark contrast his girlfriend Rochelle Decker, played by the vibrant Joy Tanner, seemed like she was ready to explode with character.  Instead the writers created a bizarre, inexplicable tension between the two.  Meanwhile something more for the will they/won’t they crowd was hinted at for Luke, with old flame Megan Donovan (played by Tennille Read) dipping in and out of the picture.  Three seasons was too long to get them together so the series hero could move forward.  And a shift in a character’s role in the finale could have added more spooky vibes to each episode all season long.  Even Death herself appeared as a character this season, but even there she didn’t bring along any panache to speak of.

Maybe it’s a success simply because the show is so interesting that we never mention that real estate agents don’t partake in any of the office activities that underline each episode–forget about the possessed bricks or trapped souls with unfinished business.  Was the best story thread really about a haunted toaster?  Yes, and it was the kind of thing that made short-lived series Wonderfalls and The Lost Room as well as Warehouse 13 so much fun.