"Can you imagine the pain of losing someone before their time? The bottom line: Most of these people shouldn't be dead." - Zach Galifianakis as Davis
Tru Calling: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Tru Davies (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Eliza Dushku) is having a bad week. It is the tenth anniversary of her mother's brutal murder, an as-yet unsolved crime of which Tru was the sole witness. Tru's family missed her college graduation ceremony. Thanks to the pressures caused by the anniversary, her ne'er-do-well younger brother Harrison (Shawn Reaves) is on a gambling spree, and her older sister Meredith (Jessica Collins), an ambitious lawyer, has lapsed into her old coke-snorting habit. Tru's internship at a local hospital has dried up, and she is instead forced to work at the dreary morgue. And, yeah - the dead bodies have begun asking her for help, after which she is forced to relive the day in order to prevent them from dying. And you thought having a bad hair day was a pain!
You see, Tru works in "The Crypt," a division of the morgue that receives only victims of unnatural deaths: accidents, murders, suicides, etc. Many of The Crypt's inhabitants are cruel victims of fate. As Tru's new boss - rumpled, socially awkward Davis (Zach Galifianakis) - says, many of the people who pass through their office "shouldn't be dead yet." When the deceased victims miraculously open their eyes and ask Tru for help, her day rewinds, and she uses the information she learned during the preliminary examinations of the bodies to track down the victims and prevent their deaths. It isn't always easy - Tru might know how the victims died, but not why. Was the beautiful bartender shot by her jealous ex-boyfriend or by her married lover ("Pilot")? Who would want to kill a sweet beauty pageant contestant, and what caused the mysterious rash on her face ("Drop Dead Gorgeous")? How can she possibly save two people who asked for help when her day only rewinds for one of them ("Two Pair")? Luckily, Harrison and Davis are soon let in on Tru's secret and try to help her out the best that they can.
Perhaps these episodes played better when watched once a week. Watching them back-to-back on DVD, however, the series' repetitive, formulaic plotlines begin to wear thin. Many of the episodes are so rote that the same plot devices occur at the exact same point in several different episodes. For example, it's pretty much a given that with seven minutes left of an episode, Tru will relax, thinking that she has managed to prevent the death. Then she'll suddenly realize that she left out one factor in the equation, like the fact that a soon-to-be-dead teen was not wearing the necklace found on her corpse in the morgue ("Star Crossed") or that the creepy superintendent she thought was responsible for a fire was really a red-herring ("Putting out Fires"). Armed with this new info, she dashes off to finish the job of cheating death.
To the producers' credit, they seem to recognize this major creative flaw and halfway through the season take steps toward changing the direction and tone of the show. In "The Longest Day," Tru lives the same day over and over again when preventing one death at a convenience store robbery continuously leads to the death of another bystander. This is a well-plotted episode marred only by a somewhat mawkish ending. In "Daddy's Girl," Tru's estranged father (Equal Justice's Cotter Smith) and his young wife (Melrose Place's Laura Leighton) come for a visit, as does a bad guy from Tru's past. Late in the episode, a revelation about Tru's father leads to a shockingly good plot twist.
"Daddy's Girl" also introduces the series' biggest direction change when Beverly Hills 90210 star Jason Priestley joins the cast as Jack Harper, a mysterious new morgue worker. At first, Davis and Tru are worried that Jack is on the verge of learning her secret. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Jack is harboring a major secret of his own. Jack's importance to the show's mythology grows and evolves with each episode, but Priestley only appears in the final seven episodes of the season, culminating with a season finale that promises a completely new direction for the second season.
There are so few unpredictable twists in Tru Calling's first season that the less said about them the better. That way, interested viewers may discover them on their own. The episodes tend to be long on style but short on substance. Even some of the stylish touches are annoying, though. In the pilot episode, Tru literally runs everywhere, as if running across town is somehow faster than taking a cab, the subway, or even a bus. Luckily, this bit of goofiness is dropped in subsequent episodes. One thing that isn't dropped, unfortunately, is the rewind montage that leads into and/or out of commercials. These montages present snippets of everything that has happened thus far in a speedily edited blur of images. This is a case of what sounds like a neat idea becoming obnoxious in practice.
Of all the cast members, Galifianakis creates the most compelling character. As Davis, he exhibits a twitching, endearing weirdness that is mostly appealing. Dushku has a pleasantly smoky voice that sounds as if she spent the night screaming at a college football game, but her Tru is too dour and one-note. This may be a writing problem. Her character is charged with the serious task of trying to save innocent people from death, but surely she could find a little time just to be happy. She gets to go back in time and relive her days, but she barely even expresses a sense of wonder at this miraculous development. Hopefully, the season two showdown that is set up in this season's final episode will be the spark needed to bring this show back to life.
The twenty episodes that make up the first season of Tru Calling are divided onto six discs. The discs are housed in three clear, slim keepcases. The discs snap onto hubs on the inside front and inside back cover of each keepcase. When the keepcase is closed, the DVDs lie face to face. The hubs do a pretty good job of securing the DVDs, but viewers should still take care when opening the cases. The front covers are dominated by a photo of Dushku. Each cover also features three smaller photos taken from episodes found on the discs contained in that particular keepcase. The backs of the cases feature episode titles, plot synopses, and airdates. The keepcases are clear, but the insides of the cases are blank. The discs themselves feature close-up shots of different cast members. The three keepcases slide into a cardboard outer sleeve.
