Okay, Bill. I'm loving you in that bathrobe. So much realness! Now before we do a take, I want you to really go inside yourself and think about how Elmer would watch Wheel of Fortune. I mean, here's a man who hangs with Sigmund Freud and has seen both World Wars and communicates with dead people and just, you know, has a totally different take on life here. Are you there yet? Take all the time you need. Cappuccino? No? Okay. People, we're ready! Oh by the way, when you say, "Time to get to the board, Vanna!" I want to hear the resignation of someone who is not going to be walking this earth much longer. I want to hear a lifetime of otherworldly experiences in that line, Bill. I want you to be thinking about hanging out with Vanna in the afterlife. You're not talking to the TV, you're talking to Vanna. Your spirits are communicating. You're like the man, Bill. Now give me that realness. Do we have sound? Okay, lights, camera, action, roll tape!
Oh. Bill. That was amazing. You. Are. Elmer. There's just no other way to put it! Now just think how amazing that's going to look with the TV reflecting off your eyeglasses. Our viewers are going to freak, and we haven't even done the talking-wallpaper thing yet. Now, do we need another cappuccino before the take? You are a trooper! Gimme five! Okay, we need you to interact with the spirits who are communicating with you through the various electrical appliances around the house, namely the TV set and the lamp. You're not freaked by this. I mean, Elmer's not freaked by this. He's seen this before. This is all in a day's work for the E-man! So when Johnny, our PA, starts turning the TV off and playing with the lights, you're just cool with it, you know? You're just kinda peeved cause all you want to do is kick back and watch some Wheel of Fortune. So when you say to the spirits, "I'm watching Pat Sajak," it's like you're just trying to get a little peace and quiet. Got it? Okay, let's roll.
Okay, now at this point we're going to add some howling wind effects to the soundtrack. You can't hear them now but I want to feel cold. You're cold, Bill, and you're starting to get the impression that these spirits aren't the normal everyday pesky spirits that you talk to on a regular basis. These are evil spirits, Bill. They're coming for Marion and you've got to tell them to leave her alone. You love this girl. She's your protg. She's a gifted spirit who could be even stronger than you. But she's weak now. She's a newbie. The spirits want her and you've got to tell those evil spirits not to touch her. When you say, "You let her be!" feel it, Bill! Okay, let's roll.
Establishing shot of a creepy urban building. According to the closed captioning, we're supposed to be hearing "grunge music," but I'm not hearing anything except street noise. we see a clipboard with an "Off Campus Housing Lease" form on it, otherwise known as a "lease." Marion signs it, and the camera pulls back to reveal that she's moving into the same apartment that she was already living in last week. How spookay. Even spookier is how she's moved all her stuff into an apartment and she hasn't even signed a lease yet. Kids, if you're watching at home, remember that this is just a TV show and in real life you could get royally screwed if you move into an apartment and you haven't signed a lease yet. Marion asks the skeevy Asian landlord if she can change the wallpaper in the bedroom. Skeevy Asian Landlord says that he just put it up last week and it's the same wallpaper that's in his bedroom, and he invites her to (wink! wink!) go up and take a look. Marion reviews her history of roommate problems and how she had to seek off-campus housing and how she needs to have a place of her own that's decorated the way she wants to decorate it. Like we care. The landlord asks her to give him a couple of days to think about it. He exits. Marion contemplates her new living space. The light from the lamp goes out. She reaches into one of her boxes and pulls out a light bulb that just happens to be on the very top of all of her stuff. She goes to unscrew the bulb and the light turns on again. She turns it off and walks into her bedroom. The camera focuses ominously on the lamp. Just to jump ahead here, no, that lamp is never going to do anything else freaky during this episode.
In Marion's bedroom, we finally get to see this wallpaper and yeah, I have to admit, Marion's right. This wallpaper has to go. It's not even kitschy ugly. I'm not exactly sure, but the design theme seems to be either "Scenes from American History" or "Great Moments in American Literature." There are lots of line drawings of people in colonial costume gathering, fighting wars, and hanging people. It looks like something that would be sold in the gift shop at Sturbridge Village. Marion is lying on her bed and looking through a course catalog and talking to herself about how confused she is about what to major in. Oh, that again. She pushes all her paperwork off her bed and contemplates her wallpaper. "Yuck," she says. She turns off her light and gets into bed. The light in the hallway turns on by itself. Before she can get up and turn it off, we see a character on the wallpaper come to life and turn around to watch Marion. The lights go out.
The Hospital. Dr. Mark is looking at a patient's paperwork, and all of a sudden he gets an empathy attack. Can I just say, Dr. Mark, that maybe if you have the gift of empathy and suffer each and every time someone within your general area is in pain, a hospital might not be a really great place for you to work. I'm thinking maybe a nice job in a floral shop, or at one of our national parks. Just saying. A pre-adolescent boy is brought into the emergency room; he shot himself playing with a gun he found in his father's closet. The older doctors start looking at the boy's chest. Dr. Mark starts ordering his senior physicians to examine the boy's abdominal area, because the bullet fractured some bones which then damaged his stomach, causing internal bleeding. The doctors are all "whatever" because they don't know that Dr. Mark is an empath and can just see these things. The kid starts doing worse so Dr. Mark does his energy transfer thing and brings the kid back to life and none of the other doctors is any the wiser. Dr. Mark's eyes tear up and he looks drained.