Dream House

Brolin One Liner: “Alicia Adams was searching for the fulfillment of a haunting dream.”

Brolin is leaned up against a Flotard Real Estate sign to introduce this story. (. Brolin, and later Frakes, are always sitting on, leaning on, or otherwise lounging around props from the show. Dale says this is a common trope in the series but I honestly don’t remember.)

Flotard Real Estate? Faisdodo? These guys are taking the “we’ve changed the names to protect the innocent” a bit too drastically here. Alicia, our narrator, begins describing a too perfect house, during a too perfect spring rolling into an Indian summer. Now, I’m no meteorologist but Indian summer is just a warm fall. And spring’s gradual change to fall is usually called summer. The house is a huge two-story Victorian with clapboard shutters and large colonnade. As she is about to step foot into the house, her alarm clock goes off. 

That’s right, this story begins with a dream sequence. See, it’s really seven a.m. and she’s getting up in the morning. Her husband walks in and reminds them that they are going house hunting today. She describes her dream house to her husband who seems overly interested in his wife’s dreams about a house. If I’m dreaming about a house, that’s going to keep me asleep. Her husband Daniel accuses her of sabotaging their search for their first home by hoping for too much.

[It’s perfect. It’s just not perfect enough.]

     It then cuts to them leaving the last home of the day with Alicia being obtuse and vague about her dislike of the house. Daniel asks if there’s something in particular wrong with it, but Alicia just explains that it isn’t the house from her dream.

Daniel tries to explain that dreams and reality are actually different and hoping for something hard enough doesn’t make it happen. That night Alicia visits the house in her dreams again. Alicia’s dreams are as exciting as the fly through view on Home Architect software, but less so. While walking down the hallway towards the back patio she floats past herself walking through the living room. Wait, what? Apparently, she is dreaming from Daniel’s perspective because a male hand brushes aside the curtains and wakes her up. She tells him about the house again and how impossibly perfect it is for them and their desires to begin a family. Daniel assures her that when they can afford it, they’ll buy a house just like it, but gently brings her back down to reality.

 While out driving towards another possible starter home that’s just hit the market in a familiar neighborhood Alicia demands the car stopped. Turns out the house of her dreams is in a neighborhood she has frequently driven through. What. A. Coincidence.

Actually it’s not, because dreams are only our brains going through our memories and recombining them in weird ways. That’s why you can dream of Kermit the Frog riding a Humpback Whale to Antarctica but can’t picture the city of Marrakesh, unless you’ve been to Marrakesh. One of the odd quirks of the human mind. No one is certain why we dream. One of the major theories is it’s our brain’s way of defragmenting the visual inputs we receive from temporary storage into more long term memories.

Alicia breaks into and enters a strange home where people are obviously still living. There’s not even a real estate sign. She walks through the house like she owns the place and bosses her husband around like he’s never been allowed inside a house before. It turns out that this house is going for sale today and the real estate agent isn’t surprised to see people just waltzing about the place. Alicia and Daniel put in a bid well below the asking price but Alicia has a good feeling about it. The real estate comes back with the good news that they are the new owners of the house. The previous owner had given her instructions to accept the first offer no matter what, so technically, they overpaid. I would’ve just offered them a matchbox car and a Tic-Tac for the house. Daniel asks first logical question that there is something wrong with the house, but the realtor gives him her word that there is nothing wrong. SHE GAVE HIM, HER WORD. But I’ve learned that this is the real world. My girlfriend promised she wasn’t cheating on me. PEOPLE LIE. But he instantly believes it. The realtor does let it slip that the house is haunted though.

[Not in the house description]

The owner of the house decides to come and meet Alicia and Daniel. Instantly she jumps back in fright. It turns out that Alicia is the one haunting the house. Brolin suggests that it was an out of body experience. Alicia was astral projecting herself into a house in order to get the swoop on the sale. However, he also offers a much more logical answer almost offhandedly. “The seller is obviously under a lot of stress.” Which brings this whole episode full circle. People under stress think they see ghosts.

Casey’s Comment: This didn’t get the house sold on the Brady Bunch, it’s not working here. Fiction.

Dale’s Comment: Ugh…this story was just in bad taste. You can’t close the episode on this. There was nothing believable here. This story cheapens the stories that came before it. It’s beyond belief they would continue the series after this story. Fiction.

Fact or Fiction: Fact

Casey’s Comment: Bullshit.