Episode Eight: Haunted Hospital
Review by Noel Wood

I was wrong.

This week's haunted Surreal Life isn't the last episode of the season. No, there are two more episodes of this season to go, and I'm convinced that it's just to spite me. Great idea, guys...make the biggest stinker of a Surreal Life season the longest. The shark has definitely been jumped.

This week, of course, we bear witness to the Haunted Hospital episode of The Surreal Life, which seems like it aired a week too early. But this episode starts out like any other: It's early morning, so Jordan hits the weights, Dave does calisthenics, and Brigitte proceeds to get boozed up. The gang actually sits around all day before receiving the late late edition of the Surreal Times, in which they learn their mission today is to work the graveyard shift at the titular hospital.

They arrive at the hospital late that night, and are immediately shocked to see that it is boarded up and abandoned. The gang meets Dr. Larry Muntz, a Doctor of Parapsychology, who explains that their job is to determine whether or not this place is really haunted. Ryan cowers because she's afraid of the dark.

The first Surreal Lifer to investigate is Dave Coulier, who straps on a flak jacket with a camera attached to it. He wanders down the hall with an earpiece so he can communicate with the doc, and starts seeing apparitions and the like. He sees a ghostly figure in overalls who tells him his name is "John" and then enters the morgue. In the morgue, he has a seat so the doc can tell him a spooky story, but something nudges his chair. Dave stays fairly calm, and is ordered back up to the main chamber where the rest of the cast are located.

Jordan and Ryan are volunteered to go next, but Ryan wusses out. Charo takes her place, but reminds us that she's a "chicken with a big mouth". Jordan and Charo head down the steps and make their way toward an elevator shaft, where the doctor tells them another freaky story. They make their way into a room and Charo freaks out because she sees and electric chair (because most hospitals apparently have electric chairs in them) and they return to the room.

Finally, Flavor and Brigitte make their way down the stairs, equipped with what Flav calls a "Wee-gee" board. Flav tells us that "Operation No Doubt is in progress", but after he and his on-again, off-again lovergirl are met with silence he notifies the doc that "Operation Nothing is now in progress". The doc tells yet another spooky story, a door slams, and Brigitte cries. Flav and Brigitte retreat as well.

They all go back to the room where everyone talks about how scared they were and how this will affect them for years to come. I realize that this is probably the stupidest episode of the show to date and how it will affect me for years to come. Ryan apparently thinks that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Geneva. They make good chocolate there, I hear.

And that's it. Next week is the return of Sally Jesse Raphael to the show, once again digging up dirt on our celebrity guests. How original.