Tru Calling

Tru Calling was an American television show, starring Eliza Dushku as Tru Davies. The series premiered in 2003 and first aired on the FOX Network.

The show was said to be cancelled in October, 2004, after six episodes had been filmed for the second season but before they were aired. Gail Berman, then President of Fox, indicated at a January, 2005 television press conference the show is indeed cancelled by Fox but the network intends to air the remaining six episodes "some time in the future." Tru Calling Season 2's episodes aired in New Zealand starting on February 4, 2005, are soon to air in Croatia, and finally, after almost a year hiatus, Fox aired Tru Season 2 in the USA starting March 31st, 2005. The last episode filmed, which had a Christmas motif, was never aired on Fox, presumably because it had a Christmas theme and they aired the episodes in Spring.

Contents

1 Premise 2 Controversy and cancellation 3 Cast 3.1 Trivia 4 External links

Premise

The show was centered upon the character of Tru Davies, a young woman who worked during the night shift at the City Morgue. Each night, she appeared to witness a corpse ask her for help; she then woke up on the previous day, and was compelled to stop the death. Reasons for the death varied from murder, to cancer, to suicides and the like. Jack, a nemesis to Tru's character, was introduced midseason as a foil. He was there to make sure people died, and introduced a philosophical aspect to Tru's endeavors: should she be saving people's lives who were intended to die? In the second season, Tru and Jack "compete" to get to a person first, Tru to save them, and Jack to keep them dead.

Controversy and cancellation

Tru Calling has been cited by television critics, bloggers and science fiction fans as an example of a show that was not given time to find an audience or adequately develop its premise. In polar opposition, other sites refused to even cover the show in their "spoiler" listings, citing the show 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 cliff-hanger ending at the end of Season One, with the character Jack revealing himself to be Tru's evil nemesis, and even having a working relationship with her father.

After this cliffhanger, the show reached the point where spoilers and inquiries were hitting industry magazines, with the promise of great plot developments and a second season were published, but received dead air on actual Fox network television. Even more odd given the show's eventual fate is a Season One DVD release with commentary by an enthusiastic cast and crew talking up the second season of the show. Fox television could not decide what to do with Tru Calling, first renewing it for a second season, than shortening its length to 6 episodes, and promising and moving the show's second season airdate from November, 2004 to an undefined time in 2005. After storing the show's set for an indefinite amount of time, word finally arrived that it was getting torn down and Tru's fate appeared to be decided. In the end, Fox replaced it with another sci-fi genre entry, Point Pleasant, which suffered even lower ratings than Tru Calling.

Finally, after almost a year hiatus, Fox Television started airing Tru Calling's last six filmed episodes, in place of Point Pleasant, which has been cancelled, on March 31, 2005. Ironically, these episodes have garnered better ratings than Point Pleasant during their run, with practically no advertising. And the six episodes also did very well in New Zealand during it's run there in February and March.

On April 20, 2005, it was announced that the sixth and final episode would not be shown on Fox and as such the series would end it's run one week early with the episode that was intended to be shown the next evening. The reason as cited above is because it was felt it would be peculiar to show an episode with a partial Christmas theme (the show was originally going to debut on November 4, making the 6th episode near Christmas) in late April. Instead, they showed in its slot two rerun episodes of The Simple Life.

Tru Calling's cancellation has added fuel to speculation and fear within the sci-fi community when it comes to network television, which has already suffered from abrupt cancellations of other genre shows by Fox and other networks, and trepidation about whether to watch sci-fi genre shows lest they not last more than one season. It also continued a pattern started by Fox of airing one or two seasons of a show, cancelling it, and releasing the show on DVD with many open-ended plotlines. Other genre shows on network television experiencing success, like Alias and Lost, may indicate this fear to be unfounded.

Cast

• Eliza Dushku (Tru Davies)
• Zach Galifianakis (Davis)
• Jason Priestley (Jack Harper)
• Shawn Reaves (Harrison Davies)
• A. J. Cook (Lindsay Walker)
• Jessica Collins (Meredith Davies)
• Matthew Bomer (Luc)

Trivia

• The first character to ask for help was played by Hudson Leick
• The Ask Ausellio TV Guide column received so many inquries regarding Tru Calling that it became a running gag, until Fox finally announced airdates for its second season.

External links

• TV Tome | Tru Calling (http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-17237/)
• Unofficial TruCalling Fansite (http://www.trucalling-fans.com) with synopsis, pictures, updates
• [1] (http://www.livejournal.com/users/tightropegirl/) Doris Egan reveals where the Season 2 story arc was to go.
• Television Without Pity >> Tru Calling (http://televisionwithoutpity.com/show.cgi?show=120)
• The Official Rachael Bella Site (http://www.rachael-bella.com) The Official site to actress Rachael Bella who played Jen De Luca in the first season episode "Starcrossed"de:Tru Calling

fr:Tru Calling ja:トゥルー・コーリング