TRU CALLING

SEASON ONE

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: violence, gore, sensuality, thematic elements

Rated:

Starting out with a rocky beginning but hitting its stride midseason with a fantastic sequence of plot twists, Tru Calling is a remarkable drama that will appeal to a wide audience.

Twelve year old Tru Davis stands over the casket of her mother: brutally murdered in the dead of night by a man who was never caught. Tru witnessed the horrific event from the inside of a closet. The memory of the event, and the subsequent belief that her mother whispered to her from beyond the grave, haunts her through the years. Studying to become a medical doctor, Tru (Eliza Dushku) finds her internship at the local hospital put on hold. Instead, she is sent to the morgue where her mother's body was sent, to earn summer spending money. Immediately, strange things begin to happen. Shortly after helping her boss, Davis (Zach Galifianakis) with their first body, the dead woman looks at her and pleads for help. The next thing Tru knows, she's reliving her day over again, this time to prevent a murder.

Her brother Harrison (Shawn Reaves) is all for using this newfound ability to win money at the races, but Tru has bigger concerns. Her family is falling apart, her sister is a recovering drug addict, she hasn't spoken to her father in five years, and her boyfriend is cheating on her. Knowing that she can tell no one about this remarkable ability to rewind time, whenever it happens, she strives to save the person before their death. A heroic fireman who perished from smoke inhalation. A woman who was brutally murdered in an alley. Some of the deaths hit closer to home, forcing her to face her fears, unearthing horrible things about her parents, and often placing the lives of her friends in peril. In the meantime, Harrison intervenes in Lindsay's life (A.J. Cook), Tru's best friend, and the two start an impromptu relationship, and Tru finds herself falling for the charming crime photographer that works upstairs.

Just as she is hitting her stride, a new coworker comes to the morgue. Jack (Jason Priestley) is charming one day and mysterious the next. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to keep her secret around him, particularly when Tru realizes that there is a death force working against her. To be honest, I wasn't too happy with Tru Calling in the early part of the season. It seemed fragmented, none of the plots lined up very well, the main characters weren't all that likable (with the exception of Davis, and Tru), and there was a lot of sexual content. But the seventh episode changed all that and the season only improved as time went by. The most fascinating aspect of the series is the ongoing revelations about Tru's parents as they slowly leak forth through flashbacks. The season finale is positively gripping, paving the way for the second season, which unfortunately was canceled midway through. The acting is very good and everyone fits their roles ideally.

The content wanes as the series moves forward, but five out of six of the first episodes involve sensuality or other questionable content. Her first day on the job, Tru overhears the couple upstairs having sex -- this is present a second time, as the day rewound. Her relationship with her boyfriend is intimate, and he spends the night several times, but we never see them fooling around. Later episodes imply that she has also become intimate with her new boyfriend; and that Lindsay and Harrison are similarly involved. Harrison is shown in bed with a woman (Brother's Keeper). Past Tense involves a bachelor party that turns murderous, in which a stripper is present. Harrison is shown ogling girls at the strip club, as they writhe around in barely-there outfits. Tru is present at the party as a bartender, and the camera watches as the stripper wriggles around and gives lap dances in a skimpy outfit. The most questionable episode is Star Crossed, in which Tru attempts to prevent a double death; she believes the two people ran off together, but discovers a lesbian relationship instead. The girls are shown kissing in the woods.

A stalker has pictures of a woman in his apartment, sometimes half-undressed. A girl presumably has a tape of her sleeping with a judge, which she is using as blackmail. Tru wears some revealing outfits. There isn't much language, and violence is moderate, with lives being threatened, people getting shot, stabbed, and poisoned. There is some blood. Christian content is nonexistent except in symbolism. It could be argued that toward the end of the first season, Tru has become a Christ figure, with the Grim Reaper character playing the role of Satan. The "bad guy" spouts a lot of Asian theology about balance in the universe, and how if one person does not die, another must. Tru doesn't buy into all this theology, but accepts that she is the counter-balance for evil. There is one early quip by Harrison about why he doesn't believe in God. It's an interesting series that won me over in the end with its fantastic conclusion.