I bought this simply because Eliza Dushku played the lead role, she first came to my attention playing the supporting character Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then the spin-off Angel. Apparently she had declined to do a Faith spin-off in order to make this show Tru Calling.In hindsight it was a monumental error on her part because this show was mediocre. Buffy is one of the classic television series and the spin-off with input from Joss Whedon would have been in all likelihood brilliant and anyway lasted more than one and a bit seasons.
The plot involves Tru Davies an aspiring medical student who finds herself working at the city morgue, for some reason when cadavers are left alone with her they come to life for a half second and ask for assistance. Her mind is then transported back in time to the last time she awoke, who was responsible for this and how they did it was never explained. In the beginning of the show this was when she had woken up that morning but later they seemed to tire of this and had her taking naps during the day and she would travel back to that point. She would then try to prevent the person's death. The show had a fantasy setting but it still must have its own internal logic which this frankly did not. There were logical gaps in Buffy like why crosses would work on vampires when in the universe of that show the Christian religion was just a made-up story but this did not matter because it was such a good show that you did not care about such small quibbles. The writing of the characters was simply not good enough, they were not interesting enough, plot-wise they tried to make it more complex by not having her be able to save everyone but this complexity simply jarred with the two-dimensional characters and simplicity of the show.
They did seem to be trying to build it on a Buffy template. Her boss Davis was a mentor figure like Giles and referred to her as having a calling, her brother Harrison was the platonic male best friend like Xander and Lindsey was a fashion obsessed character like Cordelia who starts up a relationship with Harrison (Xander) and in the second season when she went to medical school there was a female character in her anatomy class who had the series not ended might have been destined to become a Willow figure.
There are 26 episodes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen on eight discs with a basic booklet, each disc has its own plastic tray and are all hinged together like pages with a cardboard cover. The whole thing fits into a cardboard sleeve.
The extras are few, there are some deleted scenes which nicely are presented with the episode they come from and not altogether at the end of the last disc like The Shield or Battlestar Galactica DVDs. There are some short featurettes, a music video and an Easter egg of Zach Galifianakis' audition. Nothing of any value and as usual the commentaries are few and pretty poor, only the one with Jason Priestley and series creator Jon Harman Feldman is decent because crazily Jason Priestley seems to want to make it good whereas no one else seems to care.
I'll end on the good points. Eliza Dushku. It has Jason Priestley in it, his role is utter nonsense but he plays it brilliantly. Zach Galifianakis is great in the role of Davis.
