Kingdom Hospital

Storyline

Stephen King's remake of a Danish series created by Lars Von Trier. Although the story and the characters are based on the ones from the Danish show, the story eventually diverges into its own storyline. While jogging, artist Peter Rickman is hit by a van driven by an unstable junkie, Dave Hooman. Terrified that he'll end up in jail, Dave flees the scene of the accident leaving Peter to die. However, a mysterious telepathic giant anteater called Antubis appears and pulls Peter's paralyzed body into the road just in time for an ambulance car to run into him and save his life. Antubis takes a ride with Peter and asks him for only one thing - to 'do him a solid' in return when the right time comes. The friendly and dedicated ambulance duo, Danny the ambulance driver and Ollie the ambulance doctor, take Peter to the nearest hospital called Kingdom, a modern private clinic owned by the board of investors that's located in Lewiston, Maine, and is said to be haunted. In 1869, a great fire broke out and burned down to the ground the town's sewing mill which was at the time producing uniforms for the soldiers in the Civil War using child labor, and the fire ended up killing most of these children. In its place a hospital was later built. Rumors of horrible things happening there spread through the town and then history repeated itself when the hospital burned down as well in 1939. Now, the Kingdom Hospital stands in its place and it's widely believed that it's haunted by the spirits of everyone who violently died there. The most frequent strange occurrence are the mysterious earthquakes that frequently hit the hospital but are usually more annoying than dangerous and even the jaded staff pays no attention to it anymore, since everyone there has experienced things much stranger and harder to explain many times throughout the years including ghostly sightings of an old-timey driverless phantom ambulance car. The most jaded of all the staff is certainly the middle-aged Dr. Stegman (mostly referred to simply as Steg), who's only recently started working for the hospital. Although a brilliant brain surgeon, Steg is also incredibly vain, pompous, abrasive, egotistical, hypocritical and likes to play god. This last trait is the exact thing that got him kicked from his previous cosy big city job after he botched a delicate operation on a little girl called Mona Klingerman leaving her severely brain damaged for life. Steg tried to immediately cover this up and blame the anesthesiologist, but a copy of the anesthesiologist's devastating report that proves malpractice still exists and if the commission that's investigating Steg ever gets it, he's done for. Steg is also a judgmental snob who looks down upon the bums and junkies who hang around the homeless shelter nearby that's operated by the young, passionate and dedicated Reverend Jimmy Criss (intentional reference to Jesus Christ), who actually follows what he preaches and cares about his down on their luck flock. Steg's most prize possession next to his cocked up white lab rats that he uses for an experiment which could lead to a scientific breakthrough and ensure his fortune, fame, and return to grace is his beloved car. However, the car instantaneously becomes the target of a cruel running joke where in almost every episode it gets more and more damaged and vandalized by one reason or another by one person or another. This, as well as the pressure concerning the malpractice investigation, are slowly driving Steg insane and his mission in life eventually becomes to take revenge on everyone who in his mind have wronged him, and especially to find those that dared messing with his car. And number one on his hitlist has got to be Dr. Hook. Despite his name, Hook is actually a charming and likable doctor who likes keeping to himself but still can't resist standing up for the right thing in the end and care for his patients' well-being. He even keeps a list of every member of the staff that caused a patient's death or maiming through carelessness or for any other reason. The list includes his name as well since no one in Kingdom is all that innocent. Hook's love interest is Dr. Christine Draper, a competent young doctor who nevertheless allowed herself to slip up once or twice and she quickly accepts both Hook's advances and his sense of responsibility for the lives that their carelessness took. The hospital's quirky director is eccentric Dr. Jesse James (another running joke on the show is that there are several characters named after famous people or characters which they themselves amusingly acknowledge). James is obsessed with keeping up the hospital's appearances as the board is planning to sell the hospital and bring him a mighty profit. He loves his job and always insists on optimism, happily ignoring all the reports of the paranormal, the earthquakes and the increasingly hostile working environment that Steg is creating. In fact, James' latest project is to create an optimistic public image campaign that will make the Kingdom hospital seem more appealing for both the public and the investors. Only Hook knows hot to handle James and actually get what he needs from him. Dr. Lona Massingale is heading the hospital's small dream research department, where patients, including her much young geeky co-worker Dr. Elmer Traff, who's obsessively in love with her and won't take no for an answer, sleep in an MRI machine that tests their brain waves during sleep. Lona keeps tolerating Elmer's more and more extreme attempts at advances because he turns out to be her best subject and she believes that if she can crack his dream patterns, she could make a significant breakthrough in the field. Most people believe that Elmer's troubled upbringing is responsible for his sometimes bizarre behavior, since his nurse mother didn't have time for him and his righteous father, Dr. Louis Traff, who brought him on board to work at Kingdom, believes in tough love. However, although unpredictable, Elmer is mostly a man-childish good guy who just wants to fit in. Mostly. Elmer's best friend is Dr. Sonny Gupta, who also despises Steg over his racist and disparaging comments on his behalf. However, there is one person in Kingdom who adores Steg, Dr. Brenda Abelson. Not only is she his secret girlfriend but she even uses love spells to try and make sure that he never leaves her, seeing his shadiness as his asset, not fault. When she realizes how stressed out Steg has become due to everything that's being going wrong for him recently, she suggests that they go on a holiday to Salem, MA. This is one of several references to the show's creator, famous horror author Stephen King. In fact, this is another running joke as most episodes have some reference to him, whether it's one of King's book that someone's reading or someone actually mentions that the on-goings in the hospital are just like from some King's novel. King even actually appears himself in a hyped up cameo in the final episode as a character Johnny B. Goode (with an E at the end), as the hospital's head of maintenance whom everyone are trying to contact throughout the show but he never seems to be there for one weird reason or another, which is another running gag on the show. Various weird janitors show up as his replacements throughout the show including the singer Wayne Newton. When it comes to Kingdom's security, Otto is the hospital's chief (and possibly only) security guard who always seems like he's on the verge of having a panic fit while carefully watching the hospital's security cameras and witnessing some strange or unpleasant things that happen there. His companion is his eye-seeing pet, a German Shepherd called Blondi who, unbeknownst to Otto, actually also uses telepathy to talk just like Antubis. Blondi also has a thick German accent, not unlike Otto, who needs Blondi because he's tragically slowly going blind. Bobby Druse is the hospital's orderly and Otto's best friend. He's a simple young man who likes to hang out in Otto's security room when he's not on duty and have a snack from the staff's fridge. Besides the patients, Bobby also worries about his mom Sally who keeps telling him that something strange is happening at the hospital. Abel Lyon and his friend Christa, two orderlies with Down Syndrome, prove that in a way, as this giggling duo somehow possess knowledge of future events and they basically function as tricksters in the hospital. They also take part in desecrating Steg's car, which drives him over the edge to the point of offering one of the bums known as simply as the Firecracker Man cold hard cash to find out for him who keeps abusing his favorite car. Nurse Carrie Von Trier, whose name is a tribute both to the creator of the original Kingdom show and to one of King's most famous characters, is helping out the doctors while trying to figure out which specialization would fit her best. The rest of the staff include Nurse Brick Bannerman as the chief nurse in the hospital and Dr. Henry Havens, who's the hospital's pathologist, As for Peter, after some surgery, he's put in a private room to rest as his loving wife Natalie, Nurse Von Trier and Dr. Hook take care of him. Unfortunately, he's become completely paralyzed from the accident and no one knows that he's still sentient inside. Although trapped in his own body, Peter gains the ability to leave it to help Antubis and a little ghost girl with a bell called Mary in the spirit world that exists between this world and the next and where all spirits and lost souls reside. As it turns out, Antubis, who's somehow actually the Egyptian deity Anubis, is trying to help Mary find her peace, and Peter has a key role in his secretive plan. In their way stand the evil spirits of sadistic surgeon and the series' narrator, Dr. Egas Gottreich, who was the Josef Mengele-like brother of the mill's greedy owner, and his assistant, Paul, a sickly-looking ghost teen on the edge of adulthood who's always trying to turn people in the real world against one another and indirectly influence the real world in other ways to get both Antubis and Peter killed in order to keep Mary in their limbo forever. As it turns out, the influence of this evil duo who love driving people mad was behind the horrors that occurred in the original hospital as well as the fire that engulfed it. In that respect, Paul arranges for a serial killer and arsonist on death row, Rolf Pederson, to survive his suicide attempt and be brought to Kingdom where he orders him to kill Peter. Things don't go well for Rolf as Peter saves Antubis from Paul, so Antubis in return makes Rolf accidentally set himself on fire. Things don't go as planned during Rolf's second attempt on Peter's life either, as the vengeful cop who was guarding Rolf, despite being distracted by the infatuated Nurse Von Trier's futile advances, notices that Rolf's not in his bed and shoots Rolf dead just in time to save Von Trier's life. Bobby's mom Sally Druse, who happens to be an actual psychic, arrives at the hospital for a check up as well as to visit her dying senile old friend and lover. During her stay, she immediately notices that something is wrong and manages to get Dr. Hook on her side to help her contact Mary, all the while avoiding Stig's wrath for hers taking up the hospital's bed. Mary eventually gives Sally a sign to contact Peter, so the two team up and even Peter's wife takes a liking to her. Throughout the show, Sally keeps referring to the spirit world or limbo as the Swedenborgian Space, which is a reference to Swedenborgianism (aka The New Church), which is the name for a Christian denomination inspired by the writings of Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Sally sees this Space as the ghost dimension that souls must navigate through to reach the white light that leads them to the other side, presumably Heaven or Hell. Other Kingdom's patients who come and go over the course of the episodes include the junkie who hit Peter and an ambulance chasing lawyer accused of statutory rape. The junkie is quickly identified by the cops as the driver who hit Peter, but when the police arrives to arrest him, he ends up falling off his own roof while high and hurting himself badly. Antubis visits him in the hospital room and lets him have a look at his razor sharp teeth - real up close. The lawyer has a heart attack in the court room when the girl's mother publicly accuses him of making her teenage daughter pregnant. Now he needs a new heart and Antubis sends Blondi to get him one. However, there's a catch, as Antubis is the one that's going to operate on the lawyer - with his claws. Meanwhile, Elmer continues to refuse taking Lona's no for an answer and does all he can think of to seduce her, even going as far as organizing a romantic dinner for two in the morgue or pulling a gruesome prank with a severed head of a deceased bum, which goes horribly wrong. Elmer's prank also causes the bum's soul to become trapped in the ghost world, so his body maniacally tries to find his severed head and reattach it to his body. This fiasco gives Dr. Hook a leverage to make Elmer help him get the document that could end Steg from the hospital's archives and finally bring some justice to the Klingermans, but also prevent Steg from continuing to risk other people's health as well as steal other people's scientific studies, like Dr. Draper's, and presenting them as his own. However, things between Lona and Elmer eventually change when he accidentally manages to somehow teleport them to the morgue in his sleep. Confused, perplexed and high on adrenaline, Lona finally agrees to sleep with Elmer in hopes that that will send them back to the dream research lab. This works, so she insists that they continue the tests which leads to more trysts in what may or may not be the dream world. Weird things continue to happen. A baseball player who failed to catch the ball and cost Lewiston Robins (a made up baseball team) the World Series victory in 1987 shoots himself in the head after years and years of open abuse from former fans. He survives, but his soul ends up stuck in the spirit world. Mary, Antubis and Peter manage to save his soul and Mary lets him go back to 1987 to fix his mistake and live a normal life. He succeeds and the timeline changes with him now becoming the town's beloved mayor. Another tragedy soon hits when the Firecracker Man finds Reverend Jimmy literally crucified on the chain-link fence behind the church by some crack junkies. Jimmy soon dies while whispering words of forgiveness from his lips. However, he continues to bleed and his blood turns out to be able to heal wounds. During the next three days, the same miracles that Jesus Christ accomplished in the Bible start happening once again and a benign cult of Jimmy's worshipers quickly forms. As the third day passes, Jimmy is seen by several people and his mortal shroud begins glowing as his face appears on it. His followers celebrate in tears and Otto joins them as his blindness turns out to have been miraculously cured as well. In the evening, the police disperses the followers brutally. One of the most violent cops in the group is suddenly hit by a beam of blinding bright light straight from the night sky, which causes him to become blind but also makes him have an epiphany, as he begins reciting the Bible and warning of a disaster. Several other people are inexplicably turned into some kind of blind prophets as well, and they all warn of the same great but somewhat vague danger. Meanwhile, after a short hazing ritual gone wrong, which results in a nose cut, Steg is finally accepted into the Keepers of the Kingdom, a quasi-secret order that consists of the hospital's senior staff. The Keeper's were originally formed to protect the hospital, as well as one another, so Steg hopes that they could solve his problems with the Klingermans' malpractice complaint. Curiously, the order's secret greeting happens to be that of blowing into one's thumb and raising one's pinky finger while pulling one's thumb from one's mouth and making a 'plop' sound. However, the Keepers have no time for Steg, since they're organizing a lavish dinner for a famous British geologist, Dr. Richard Shwartzton, and they plan to offer him a nice donation as well, if he publicly says that the earthquakes in the hospital are completely normal. That way, Kingdom's investors could calm the public and sell the place more easily. However, Mary manages to contact Richard, who turns out to be an alcoholic, which temporarily drives him insane and he suffers from sudden and complete mental breakdown. He's quickly rushed to the Kingdom Hospital and placed in the same room as Peter. Richard gains the ability to see some of the ghosts and realizes that they are causing the earthshakes through a supernatural frequency he calls the Black Noise that creates the vibrations that cause the earthquakes, and the big one is coming. He explains this to Hook, Draper and Sally, since only they are willing to take his semi-coherent ramblings seriously, and it becomes clear that something needs to be done fast. Paul realizes that he must act quickly as well, so he and the evil doctor kill the hospital archivist and invisibly give Elmer the last surviving copy of the anesthesiologist's report which Hook then releases to the public. This document indeed destroys Steg, but that's exactly what the villains want, as he's now so unhinged that they can influence him even more easily and possibly even convince him to actually take revenge by going on a killing spree. Antubis warns Peter, Draper, Sally and Hook about this. Sally gathers everyone save for Von Trier, Gupta and Steg for a seance. Mary and Antubis appear physically and Mary explains how the fire in the mill started. In a flashback, it's shown that the owner did it and that Mary, with the help from Anubis (whose name she misunderstood as Antubis, so it stuck), had managed to somehow survive the incident. However, naive Mary makes the crucial mistake of returning to the burned down mill to give back the foreman, whom she considered in her childish mind to be nice even though he's actually completely corrupt, the hat his mother made for him. When the owner sees that Mary survived and could potentially testify against him, he asks his sadistic brother to kill her. After questioning Goode and Gupta at gunpoint, Steg find the room that the seance is being held in and breaks in, but Antubis saves the gang by severing Steg's arm and sending everyone to the world between worlds. After many flashbacks to events from previous episodes, the good guys (traumatized Steg had left them by this point to go to sleep) confusingly find themselves in the mill just as the fire is starting. That's when Peter finally realizes that he literally needs to 'do a solid' for Antubis - draw a fire extinguisher on the wall of the mill, so Dr. Hook can use it to stop the fire and save the kids, including Mary. With a little help from Abel and Christa, this works and the day is saved. Even Steg gets his hand back. As the gang learns about this new timeline they've created, in which Mary and the kids had survived the fire, they notice a portrait of Mary on the wall of the Kingdom Hospital and learn that she ended up growing up and living a long and happy life. She also financed the construction of Kingdom Hospital in this timeline as thank you to her friends. As the gang joyously walks out of the hospital and leaves, Mary's smiling face appears in the night sky. On the other hand, Steg, who had a fallout with his girlfriend after discovering that she didn't manage to destroy the copy of the anesthesiologist's report, is now completely alone (she even scratched his face in revenge) in his office looking at the gang as they leave happy. However, the two evil ghosts, Paul and the evil doctor, show up to keep him company and continue to persuade him to exact his revenge on the gang anyway. The show ends on this sequel-baiting sequence. Since the ending to the original Danish version of the series was never filmed, it's hard to tell whether this was meant to be the ending of the original show as well.