Tru Calling

Tru Calling
Created by	Jon Harmon Feldman
Starring	Eliza Dushku Zach Galifianakis Shawn Reaves A.J. Cook Jessica Collins Benjamín Benítez Matthew Bomer Jason Priestley
Opening theme	"Somebody Help Me?" by Full Blown Rose
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	26 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 43 minutes
Original release
Network	FOX
Release	October 30, 2003 – March 11, 2005

Tru Calling is an American television programme, filmed in Vancouver, Canada, which premiered on the Fox Network in October 2003. It ran for two seasons of 26 episodes in total, before being cancelled.

The show's cancellation was officially announced at a press conference in January 2005, but Gail Berman, then president of Fox, insisted the network intended to broadcast the remaining six episodes filmed for the show's second season. Season two of Tru Calling first aired in New Zealand on TV3 beginning February 4 2005, with the final episode shown on March 11, 2005, in Croatia, the following March/April; and, after nearly a year-long hiatus, in the U.S. beginning March 31 2005. In the United Kingdom, the second season began October 12, 2006 on Sky. The complete series also aired in Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, and Slovakia. DVDs of both seasons have been released in the United States and the United Kingdom. The final episode filmed was never broadcast in the U.S..

Premise

The lead character, Tru Davies, (Eliza Dushku), is a young woman working the night shift at the City Morgue. Occasionally, the corpse of a newly dead person appears to awaken and utter the words "Help me" to her. As they do, Tru wakens with a start, at the beginning of the same day, finding herself compelled to stop the death, which may be the result of anything from suicide to murder. In the course of the re-run day, Tru often takes the opportunity to rectify various personal situations involving family and friends.

Supporting characters in the series include: Harrison Davies (Shawn Reaves), Tru's irresponsible younger brother (who becomes a loyal asset to Tru by the end of the first season), and Davis (Zach Galifianakis), her friend, confidante, and supervisor at the Morgue. As the series progresses, it is revealed that, several years earlier, Davis had a fateful encounter with Tru's mother (who was, apparently, the last person to receive the "calling" before her daughter).

Supporting characters surviving only a portion of the series included: Meredith Davies (Jessica Collins), Tru's drug addicted sister; Lindsay Walker (A. J. Cook), her best friend in the first season; Luc Johnston (Matthew Bomer), her love interest in the first season, and Gardez (Benjamin Benitez), her former co-worker at the morgue.

Jack Harper (Jason Priestley), a counterpart to Tru's character, is introduced midseason as a foil and potential love interest. He is there to make sure fate gets its way, and introduces a philosophical aspect to Tru's endeavours: should she be saving the lives of people who may have been intended to die? In the second season, Tru and Jack compete to get to a person first — she to save them, and he to restore the order of fate, and maintain the balance of the universe as he understands it.

Episode list

Main article: List of Tru Calling episodes

Controversy and cancellation

Tru Calling has been cited by television critics, bloggers, and science-fiction fans as an example of a series that was not given time to find an audience or adequately develop its premise. On the other hand, some websites refused even to cover the show in their "spoiler" listings, claiming it was too contrived and difficult to watch, and the addition of Jason Priestley to the cast (arguably) failed to increase ratings. Further hype and speculation was generated by the show's season-ending cliffhanger, with Jack revealing himself to be Tru's nemesis, and even having a working relationship with her father.

After this cliffhanger, spoilers and inquiries began hitting industry magazines , with the promise of great plot developments in store during the second season. Even odder, given the series' eventual fate, is a season one DVD release with commentary by an enthusiastic cast and crew talking up the second season of the show. The website Ain't It Cool News, which hated the show in its first year, claimed the second season deserved praise for being the "Most Improved" show of the year. Fox Television, however, could not decide what to do with Tru. First they renewed for a second season, then curtailed it to a length of 13, then, eventually, just 6 episodes. The season's broadcast date was moved from November 2004 to an undetermined date in 2005. After storing the show's set for an indefinite period of time, word finally arrived that it was being torn down, and Tru's fate appeared to be sealed. In the end, Fox replaced it with another science-fiction genre entry, Point Pleasant, which attracted even lower ratings than Tru Calling.

Finally, almost a year later, Fox Television began broadcasting the last six filmed episodes of Tru Calling in March 2005, in place of Point Pleasant, which had been cancelled. Ironically, these episodes achieved better ratings than Point Pleasant during its run, with practically no advertising. The second season also did very well in New Zealand during its run there in February and March.

When the 2 hour season 2 premiere aired on Fox it managed to attract 5.6 million viewers, but by hour 2 it had fallen over a million and settled back into the 4.5 million stage.

On April 20, 2005, Fox announced that the sixth and final episode would not be aired, and that the series would end its run one week early with the episode they originally intended to show the following evening. Network executives felt it would be peculiar to show an episode with a partial Christmas theme (the show had been scheduled to debut on November 4, putting the sixth episode near Christmas) in late April. Instead, two episodes of The Simple Life were aired in its time slot.

Comparisons

The series' use of time travel as a weekly device led some viewers to compare it to three other television series which fans feel were unfairly cancelled – Quantum Leap, Early Edition, and Sliders. Critics of the comparison note that whilst Tru Calling's "rewind" format is similar to the notions of time travel or parallel worlds, the series distanced itself from using the format to address philosophical or social issues, until near the end when it briefly touched broadly on the notion of fate.

On November 10, 2006 during a hiatus of Lost, ABC began airing another same day time repeating show Day Break where the protagonist, Detective Brett Hopper (Taye Diggs), is caught in a single day time loop in which he is framed for murdering Assistant District Attorney Alberto Garza. In each cycle he obtains clues as to who is responsible and why. Unlike Tru Callings mostly self-contained single story episodes, Day Break's first season, a 13 episode story arc, was scheduled to conclude at the end of January 2007. However, on December 15, 2006 due to falling ratings, ABC cancelled Day Break after airing only six episodes, but went on to air the final seven episodes online, with the last showing on March 2, 2007.

What might have been

After the show's cancellation, writer/producer Doris Egan posted information on LiveJournal detailing how the mythology of the series would likely have been developed, had it continued.

Salient points include:

• There are two great Powers in the universe concerned with humanity's fate; one that laid out the original plan that history has been following since the beginning of time, and one that wants to change that plan (what ultimate goal either side is working toward remains unknown, possibly even to the show's creators). The first power is more strict and authoritarian in its view of humanity, whereas the second is "more accepting of individual freedom and choice."

• Whenever someone dies who may be important to the overall scheme of things (and, presumably, in a way that would serve the second power's purposes), an agent of that power approaches the person and offers them a choice- they can either move on, or return and have a shot at resuming their old life. If they want a second chance, all they have to do is ask for it. If they do, Tru goes back and relives the day, with a view to saving that person's life.

• Every time Tru saves someone who has asked for her help, she steers the destiny of our world a little further away from what the first power intended, and a little closer to what the agents of the second power want.

• Jack, Tru's nemesis, has a very big advantage over her — his mentor, her father (who was Jack's predecessor, just as Tru's mother was hers). Tru is working in the dark, learning as she goes along, but Jack has an older, more experienced counterpart who can share knowledge and wisdom from a long line of predecessors with his young protege. Tru, of course, was robbed of this potentially crucial advantage because of her mother's untimely death.

• Jack became Tru's counterpart after being approached by agents of the first power during his near-death experience. They offered him a choice: he could either die, or return to Earth to do their bidding. Once he got back, his memories of the encounter were hazy, and he didn't initially understand what was happening when his days started rewinding (at around the time that Tru's did). Jack eventually wound up in an asylum, which is where Tru's father found him.

• The central conflict of the show's mythology was never meant to be perceived as a simple, straightforward "good versus evil" scenario. Rather, the creators intended to portray the battle in such a way that either side could conceivably be right — and, at the very least, to show that the soldiers on both sides certainly believe that what they're doing is right. Jack and Tru's father truly believe that she is disrupting the balance of the universe by her actions. Tru, conversely, believes otherwise. Who would have turned out to be right? These are the questions the producers of the show meant us to ponder upon.

• A future storyline on the show would have dealt with the possible repercussions if Jack ever decided that he no longer wanted to fulfill his end of the bargain (i.e., to continue doing the first power's bidding).

• Another storyline (which was actually in progress when the show ended) would have dealt with the consequences of Tru's saving someone who hadn't asked for her help. Because that person was either never given the choice to come back, or was and chose not to take it, he would have essentially lost his soul after being saved by Tru, and would then have begun spiralling into increasingly menacing behavior as his humanity faded away and his personality began to disintegrate.

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This file may be deleted after Friday, 24 August 2007.

Cast

Main article: List of Tru Calling characters

Main Characters

• Eliza Dushku (Tru Davies) (2003-2005)
• Zach Galifianakis (Davis) (2003-2005)
• Shawn Reaves (Harrison Davies) (2003-2005)
• Jason Priestley (Jack Harper) (2004-2005)
• A. J. Cook (Lindsay Walker) (2003-2004)
• Jessica Collins (Meredith Davies) (2003-2004, appearing afterward)
• Benjamin Benitez (Gardez) (2003-2004, recurring previously)
• Matthew Bomer (Luc Johnston) (2003-2004, recurring previously)

Special Guest Stars

Season two featured some recurring "Special Guest Stars", notably:

• Cotter Smith (Richard Davies) (2004-2005)
• Liz Vassey (Dr. Carrie Allen) (2005)
• Eric Christian Olsen (Jensen) (2005)

Guest Stars

Tru's two Medical School friends were also recurring characters in season two.

• Lizzy Caplan (Avery) (2005)
• Parry Shen (Ty) (2005)

Main article: List of Tru Calling characters

U.S. television ratings

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Tru Calling on FOX.

Note: Each U.S. network television season begins in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.

Season	Timeslot	U.S. Season Première	U.S. Season Finale	TV Season	Season Rank	Viewers (in millions)
1	Thursdays 8:00pm/7:00pm	October 30, 2003	April 29, 2004	2003-2004	#151	4.5
2*	Thursdays 9:00pm/8:00pm	March 31, 2005	April 21, 2005	2004-2005	121	4.89

*Please note that the final episode of Tru Calling did not air in the United States, and that the second season originally aired in New Zealand from February 4-March 11, 2005.

DVD releases

Region 1

Tru Calling: The Complete First Season
	Set Details			Special Features
	20 Episodes 6-Disc Set 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio English (Dolby Digital Surround) Subtitles: English, Spanish and French			Selected Episode Commentary Deleted Scenes 3 Featurettes "Finding The Calling: The Pilot" "The Tru Path: Season One" "Evil Comes Calling: A Late Season Twist" "Somebody Help Me" Music Video by Full Blown Rose
	Release Date
	United States	November 30 2004

Tru Calling: The Complete Second Season
This file may be deleted after Friday, 24 August 2007.	Set Details			Special Features
	6 Episodes 2-Disc Set 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio English (Dolby Digital Surround) Subtitles: Spanish and French			Making-Of Featurette
	Release Date
	United States	November 15 2005

Region 2 & 4

Tru Calling: The Complete Series
	Set Details			Special Features
	26 Episodes 8-Disc Set 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio English (Dolby Digital Surround) Subtitles: Swedish and English for the hearing impaired			Selected Episode Commentary Deleted Scenes 4 Featurettes "Finding The Calling: The Pilot" "The Tru Path: Season One" "Evil Comes Calling: A Late Season Twist" "Tru Calling: Opposing Forces" "Somebody Help Me" Music video by Full Blown Rose Easter Egg: Zach Galifianakis' audition tape
	Release Date
	United Kingdom	June 27 2005
	Australia	October 24 2006

• Tru Calling Season 1
  • Region 4-August 9, 2005
• Tru Calling Season 2
  • Region 4-August 9, 2005

External links

• LiveJournal Tru Calling page Tru Calling staff writer Doris Egan reveals where the Season 2 story arc was to go.
• Relive A Day Foundation A virtual continuation of the series.