[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
This week on SurrealEstate, we begin the second half of Season 3 and director T.W. Peacocke’s block of five episodes. “Battleground,” written by series creator and showrunner George R. Olson, is another really lovely episode that’s sometimes soft and sometimes loud, and amplifies the way the team at Roman/Ireland care for and about each other and their clients.
Susan’s newest listing hits a snag when titular war battles start breaking out featuring soldier Robbie (Sam Ashe Arnold) on the second floor. While Tag tries to hone in on which war and who Robbie is, Susan is also dealing with a blast from her past when Bob (The Way Home‘s Jefferson Brown) comes calling for purely professional reasons. Surfacing those emotions leads to a little bit of a subconscious reaction that introduces her to Crash Newberg, a local fireman (Hallmark regular Stephen Huszar).
Augie is still struggling with the division of home and work, which makes things a bit awkward with Rochelle until he clears the air about why exactly this case is so troubling for him. Luke ends up lost in the woods while looking for a new client and finds himself taking shelter from a storm with unlikely companions who deliver a message he needs to hear. Guest star Stuart Hughes is just pitch perfect as a man who’s found his peace in the world and begrudgingly shares an evening with Luke. [FWIW the clip below is spoilery if you don’t want to know going in.]
When the trio convene together at Susan’s property, they realize what’s triggered the nightly battles for Robbie now, and what’s needed to put them to rest. That also makes for a series of really sweet, quiet scenes as the living and the dead find solace and release.
In part two of my conversation with George R. Olson, we talk about the time jump, and Susan and Luke finding their way while those around them keep moving forward. “As we were negotiating that three-year time jump, which really did make it possible to fill in some of the blanks and everything and transition everyone to a new kind of setting and a new kind of milieu, we talked about where our cast was emotionally and in their life journey this much later. And talked a lot about what had changed and what had not changed,” Olson shares.
“I loved the relationship that Susan had with her mother. [Alison Woolridge] was always just so wonderful. And their scenes were always just a nice warm blanket to crawl under. And so we thought, well, you always wanna make things difficult for your characters and what would be a tough thing?”
“The loss of her mom felt like that was something that our audience would kind of feel because she’s pretty wonderful. It’s something that drives Susan in Season 3 to think back, ‘Well, what did mom always tell me? She always told me ‘don’t work so hard. Try to have a life outside of work.'”
“Being so type A and driven, and now that she’s a partner, it’d be very easy for her to fall into this real workaholic kind of thing. And the idea that her mother would have been very pleased to have her having a life and a good life and a relationship and all of those things that she wants to do. And her efforts in dating have not gone that well.”
“For Luke, we thought it was really interesting, the thought of everybody else has kind of moved and evolved. And he’s still doing pretty much the same thing. One of the fun things about this season was that we had everybody back at full power and full speed and we were really able to dive into those things,” Olson explains.
“But Luke’s feeling that everybody else is kind of moving forward and he’s just running in place puts him in a little bit of a vulnerable spot when Tyler McNeil shows up and offers him a new project that could really be lucrative and really make him feel like he’s moving forward into something. And that’s tempting. And of course, Tyler McNeil has intentions of his own.”
Season 3 marked the return of Megan, and Tennille Read, which Olson [and we] loved. “Having Tennille back was just one of the real high points of Season 3 for me, because not only is she just lovely to work with, but what she did with Megan, giving her that skepticism and strength, but still keeping her so warm and so, so good for Luke was just a real treat,” he says. “Every scene she’s in, she just is one of those actors who you’re just drawn to.”
Of course bringing her back comes with some bumps, while Susan also runs into less than ideal dating options. “I am guilty of sometimes loving my characters so much. I don’t wanna throw big rocks at them. And that’s not good, dramatically. We love it for Luke, and then also for Susan. It was really, really hard looking at love interests for Susan because it’s hard to imagine someone who’s good enough for her, and they have to be resilient,” Olson points out.
“She does have that laser-like focus on her career. The fun thing about Luke and Susan is they just love real estate. I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I have a sign up in my office when I’m working on the scripts, and it is just a sign that says, ‘We are a show about real estate.'”
“And I mean that sounds kind of obvious and everything, but what makes SurrealEstate different from shows like Ghost Whisperer and a lot of supernatural shows that are about people trying to help ghosts move into the light, is that helping ghosts move into the light is great, but we’re out to sell some houses.”
“We talked about it very early on as ‘closure and closings.’ So the theme of real estate and the theme of what these people do is not an end unto itself, but the means towards an end, which is a housing sale, is kind of the fun of the show. And we really try to keep that alive.”
SurrealEstate Season 3 airs Thursdays at 10 pm/9c on Syfy in the US. The first two seasons are now streaming on Hulu. For our Canadian friends, you can catch Season 1 and 2 on Crave, and Season 3’s fourth episode, “A Family Thing,” airs this Thursday on CTV Sci-Fi. Here’s a sneak peek, and ICYMI, all our coverage for SurrealEstate is here.
Photos courtesy of Albert Camicioli/SE3 Productions Inc./SYFY and video courtesy of SYFY.
