Idiot Box Savant: Hospital of horror!

By Andrew Kiraly

Well, the Savant slapped down his $1.29 membership fee this weekend and officially joined Club Chalupa. In case you don't know, chalupa is Spanish for "Hey, look, a ground beef/cheese/lettuce/sour cream comet crashed into a catcher's mitt made of flour." It was pretty tasty, but, like most fast food, leaves you feeling as though a basement has just been poured in your stomach. And what's with the interiors of Taco Bell these days? The harsh, angular, glaring schtick used to just make you feel sketchy and uncomfortable--just enough to make you not wanna hang around and go crazy with your rollover minutes--but now it's like they've been upgraded so you feel paranoid and sad, vaguely suspecting you clubbed a baby seal in your sleep. Verdict: chalupas = good, but your emotional welfare definitely takes a kick to the balls.

Anyway, reality TV's been hurting lately; you can either watch women in bikinis eat sheep buttholes on "Fear Factor" or try to stomach "Forever Eden," a prog so devoid of personality, character or charm it makes Simon Cowell look like he's doing charity work when devouring young souls on "American Idol." So the Savant checked out this Stephen King-stamped horror miniseries "Kingdom Hospital" (ABC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m.). It's the story of this hospital built on the grounds of a 19th century textile factory where--oooh!--child-slaves burnt to death in a fire--oooh!--when the karaoke machine they rented for the annual office Christmas party short-circuited.

And we all know what dead children do when adults build hospitals on top of their sacred resting places: They summon the full horrific force of their supernatural fury and...make mysterious noises. What? Yeah, the two-hour premiere was pretty lame, with few scares 'cept for this menacing anteater that could talk. But the AFLAC commercials have brainwashed me so badly, I kept expecting him to sell me supplemental insurance. Even lamer is how the Grave Voiceover prologued the whole plot away in the first two minutes, essentially nixing any slow, satisfying, creepy unfolding of backstory. Instead, you're left with this lame Cliffs Notes residue contrasting modern medicine's preoccupation with healing the physical while the poor widdle spiritual wounds of history go untreated. Lesson learned, fellow textile mill owners: Don't burn to death your child laborers; try drowning them instead.

The plot: Artist Peter Rickman, a trope for King himself, get splockered by a van and has to go to Kingdom, run by charming rogue-doctor-on-the-edge Andrew McCarthy, who stays busy looking fashionably overworked in his rumpled labcoat and GQ 5 o'clock shadow. The semi-comatose Rickman is scared by the evil anteater and a dead ghost-child into serving as a sort of prepaid calling card between the living and the dead. Throw in a hypochondriac medium, a jerk-ass head physician, a schlonky security guard and a hospital policy that apparently allows a German shepherd to run around and hump patients' legs at will, and you have "Kingdom Hospital."

Overall, though, this series looks like it's shaping up to be as exciting as watching Martha Stewart doing ab crunches in the prison yard. Why'd the Grave Voiceover have to give everything away? I thought being a horror fan was, in addition to being obese and frequently reliving not going to prom, also about using your imagination. And why are there so many ads for Glade Plug-Ins? Yeah, that's another thing: The creep factor is seriously offset by the commercials. Just when I'm starting to pull my security afghan over my head, my mounting fear is interrupted by a commercial that sends a gigantic Domino's Dot rolling into my living room, crushing me with flavor. Or a Lowe's ad that assures how much help they'll be when I install a new toilet. Idea: At least tailor the commercials so, like, the Lowe's workers are replaced by evil doll-children who never shut their eyes and do only the bidding of Tim Russert in a wizard costume. See? Now I'm scared! Security afghan, deploy!