Tru Calling/Recap/S1/E01 Pilot/Analysis

OK, so. The Pilot was a failure as a pilot, but a pretty decent episode overall. The next two episodes were able to keep interest due to being character pieces. Episode 2 was about Tru's breakup, but it also had a great twist ending: the guy dies anyway. Episode 3 was a great episode overall, well written, and very well acted by everyone (except maybe Lindsay's actress). Episode 4 is the beginning of what ultimately sank Tru Calling as a show: dull writing.

This episode is OK. There's nothing particularly offensive. There's a bit of Fridge Logic about how Tru should have known the drug wasn't in the alcohol once the guy asks for non-alcoholic drinks, but we can let that slide. The problem is that it's a straight murder mystery.

A murder mystery story can certainly work. But the writers didn't pull it off. It functions as a story, but there is no real sense of danger or time running out. And this is probably due to the fact that, as far as Tru and everyone else thought, Tru solved the real problem when she switched the alcohol. It isn't until about 10 minutes until the end that we find that it was really in the ice, and by then nobody cares anymore.

The last two episodes had something in common: a personal element. The firefighter wasn't just a random guy; he was someone Tru was hot for. And Harrison was intimately involved (in more ways than one) in the murder plot of the last episode. This one is about 6 guys we don't know, nobody in the main cast knows, and we aren't going to meet again.

That's OK for a mystery series; Murder, She Wrote was able to do this quite well, as have many others. The problem is that there are six characters who don't even get introduced until 15 minutes into the episode. Take 5 minutes off of the back end for epilogue and such, and that leaves about 20 minutes total to develop these characters. That's very little time to develop six characters.

In many ways, this show is a victim of something that probably ought to be a trope: Sci-Finding Yourself Syndrome. So many Sci-Fi shows don't really know what they're about for the first few episodes. It's easy to know what works in a regular dramatic series, but once you start to bring the fantastical in, it becomes more difficult to gauge whether something will work or not. It took Star Trek: The Next Generation a whole season of crap before it even began to find its voice. Tru Calling will do better, and it'll get more quality episodes as the writers really figure out what works and what doesn't.

But there's also the Negative Continuity with regard to Harrison not believing Tru. And unfortunately, you're going to see this continue for far too many episodes before he eventually buys it. It's really just a drag on the series at this point, and it actively detracts from Episode 3.

I will say this. The Meredith arc, all 5 minutes of it, really makes me hate the fact that they're going to get rid of her mid-season. It was short, but I really liked how it ended. How Meredith called Tru to "not thank her" for the "not warning" Tru gave her. And how they both know that Tru helped her, but Meredith won't admit it (and Meredith doesn't truly know Tru knew that she would fail). I really wish they could have incorporated Meredith more in the show.

It was certainly a lot more interesting than the Lindsay arc. Fortunately, that bit didn't eat up much air time. I wouldn't go so far as to call Lindsay a Creator's Pet, but she's just such a boring character.

Oh, and BTW, when Tru goes after Tara when the guy tried to grab her, Tru basically is about to accuse her of putting the poison in their drinks. That seems like a rather large conclusion to jump to, but there's a reason for it. There was a cut scene, when Tara was getting ready for her act and Tru brought her a drink. It was maybe 2 minutes long, but the selling point of the scene was that Tara would be willing to do "whatever it takes" to keep people from going too far with her. Which is where Tru's suspicion comes from.