Ring Ring Ring... It's Tru Calling
by Kerri Skarfe, Otherworldly Staff Writer
November 10, 2003 + Boston, MA
 I really, really wanted to like this show. I wanted Eliza Dushku to not be that other Slayer. I wanted something else to watch instead of why-is-Ross-so annoying Friends or my-mom-is-the-only-one-left-watching-this-show Survivor. I wanted a show about my favorite concept -- time looping -- to stick around long enough for there to be reruns.
I just don't know.
I mean, the good news is, I don't hate Tru Calling. It just makes me very, very sad.
Maybe the problem is that I've already lived Thursday, November 06, 2003 once before. Though if that's true, then why didn't I know not to eat any more of that egg salad in my fridge? Within the first ten minutes of Tru Calling, as soon as the dead bodies were delivered to the morgue, I knew exactly how the rest of the episode was going to play out. Every detail played out, one boring, tired detail, right after the other, exactly as I predicted.
Am I psychic? Should I start my own hotline?
I wish. What's gone wrong already? Are the writers too scared to do anything edgy and surprising? Not that I need another lost-two-years-gone-and-Vaughn-married thing, but at least no one was expecting that! In the age of reality TV, writers of plots need to do better than this to keep us imaginative, otherworldly people happy and content and continually interested. If they don't, I'm afraid that soon we may see Tru Calling switch to the Fox Friday night Sci-Fi slot of death. Only one show ever made it out of that timeslot alive, and people, Tru Calling isn't The X-Files.
Plus, they owe Eliza Dushku. She deserves so much better than this. I wonder what goes through her mind, having come from the creative and unpredictable genius of Joss Whedon and company. I don't want to see her strong yet sensitive female heroine go so quickly. And I know that at least one editor I know would like to see the scene from the credits where she's running through the city with her shirt unbuttoned to her navel.
I figure I better stop writing now. With that last visual, Editor Steve has stopped reading now anyway.
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