COWBOY PETE SELECTS THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE SERIES ON TV

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

Until recently, it was “Lost,” with “Desperate Housewives” a close second. And in a few weeks, it will go back to that, most likely.

But right now, for the time being, the most unpredictable TV series on the air is “Tru Calling.”

Now the ol’ Cowboy doesn’t generally wish unemployment on anyone, but really, the chowderhead at Fox who chose to cancel TC in favor of the already-cancelled “Point Pleasant” deserves to be given the heave ho. Progressing from a first season which already left me impressed by how many ways they could come up with to provide variation on what would seem a repetitive theme, the second season of “Tru Calling”–truncated as it is–progresses with a confidence and ingenuity that makes the show’s woefully premature dumping all the more regrettable. Not since the chuckleheads at the WB tacitly admitted that they’d screwed up by canceling “Angel” with their floating notions of a “Spike” series has a network’s complete and utter balls-up been so screamingly evident.

The addition of Tru’s nemesis, Jack, to the cast was nothing short of a masterstroke, and the backstory and mythos being steadily built for the series is quite simply brilliant. So much so that it seems to the casual observer that the producers of the struggling “Joan of Arcadia” are following suit by giving their protagonist her very own evil opposite. But that seems slapped on, whereas Jack’s introduction and involvement–whether intended or not–at least seems to have developed organically from the series’ progress.

And they just keep peeling the layers, like an onion, but without the unfortunate stinging smell. Just when we think that Jack is perfectly happy in his job, convinced of the rightness of his actions, we discover, no, that’s not so much the case. And the upcoming episode seems to be sending Tru tripping over into Jack’s territory, as she appears to be drawing a line in the sand and picking and choosing who she’s going to save, whether they ask for her help or not. Plus we’ve not seen hide nor hair of Tru’s annoying sister, which is fine by me. They’ve got enough going on right now.

I keep hoping that either the boneheads at Fox or perhaps someone at Sci-Fi will realize what a worthy series this is and keep it going.

PAD

36 comments on “COWBOY PETE SELECTS THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE SERIES ON TV”

  1. PAD,

    While I think “Tru Calling” is far from perfect, I have to agree that the current season has been quite good. Like you, I especially liked the revelation that Jack isn’t happy in his job. Which, of course, begs the question, what, other than the fact that he’s “not strong enough”, keeps him from quitting.

    I especially liked last week’s episode and how it dealt with the emotional impact it had on Jack when someone he had a personal interest in was involved in the rewind. As Jack’s face revealed the internal struggle regarding whether he should defy “what must be” and save Megan, we can only wonder what agonizing thoughts ran through his head. On the one hand, she’d had the good day she’d wanted, and would be spared dying in a hospital bed. On the other, who’s to say the money Tru won for her wouldn’t help her get the necessary medical care that would put the disease in remission?

    Then, on another level, there’s the agonizing fact that it was through her time with Jack (and to some degree with Tru as well) that Megan decided she shouldn’t check out so soon. Yes, she may have originally “called” him for help in making her suicide look like an accident, but when the day came to a close the second time around, that was no longer what she wanted.

    I don’t know how many episodes are left, but I hope Megan won’t just be forgotten, and that in whatever time remains for the series, we continue to see some indication of how Jack has been affected.

    On a related note, another facet of Jack’s personality was revealed in the previous week’s episode in the fact that he knew the fated-to-die man’s name, while Tru did not. As it wasn’t necessary for him to learn it, since his double misdirection would doubtless keep both Tru and Davis occupied until too late (as, indeed, was the case), the fact that he _did_ learn the man’s name suggests these people aren’t just ciphers to him.

    I definitely want to learn more about Jack and what makes him tick.

    Rick

  2. While Tru is definitely on my “Must See TV” list,I don’t think it’s the best. One of the most unpredictable, true, but not the best. I just wish they hadn’t introduced Jack. As great as the idea is, the acting so far has not been up to par with the rest of the cast.

    FYI, other “Must See TV” shows…
    (in order from Sunday to Saturday, not preference)

    PBA telecast (on hiatus till next season)
    Grey’s Anatomy (fantastic new WB show; wait that’s not WB)
    24 (still one of the best)
    Veronica Mars (it will be back!!!)
    American Idol (Vote Constantine or Carrie)
    Lost (the origin of Mr. Rourke and Fantasy Island)
    Smallville (the real Superman cast and story; please let the movie derail)
    Alias (not up to season 1 or 2, but better than last; just don’t kill Jack–he’s the best)
    Joey (started weak, but has grown very strong)
    Tru Calling (afraid we will be left with more questions than answers)
    Project Greenlight (Feast?!?!?)
    Enterprise (I really wish this had been last season; we wouldn’t be saying goodbye)
    Battlestar Galactica (the best since B5)

  3. I’m afraid I become very pessimistic when it comes to SciFi channel picking up any show. I figure what is most likely is that they will start out giving fans reason for hope and then half ášš it right before giving the show an early demise.

  4. I tuned into Tru Calling simply because I wanted to see what Eliza Dushku was up to. Besides the name of the show being kind of corny, I like the show and am enjoying seeing where it goes. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it earlier this year and assumed it was cancelled, but once it came back on, I thought I was wrong. It seems like me liking a show is the kiss of death. I started watching both Angel and Buffy (along with several other shows) right before the respective last seasons. Maybe I should stop watching so much TV. (^.^x) oro

  5. Peter,

    The Fox entertainment chief Gail Berman is the one who was at the forefront of the decision to replace Tru Calling with Point Pleasant.

    Your wish is technically coming true though. She is leaving her position to take a job with Paramount Pictures.

  6. I don’t remember where, but I read that there are only a few, say 5 or 6 episodes in the second season of “Tru Calling.” I hope that there are a lot more; this is one show that I absolutely cannot bear to see go away again.

  7. I hated Tru Calling until very late last season. Every episode made me want to gag, but something made me keep watching. I’m so glad I did — the end of last season and the tragically short run of the second was amazing.

    Hey, Peter, are you watching Veronica Mars? If you think Tru Calling has layers, you should check VM out immediatly. It is the one, true, successor to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer — a dark, funny, facinating show with brilliantly drawn characters, engaging episode plots, and best season arc since Buffy and the Mayor squared off all those years ago.

  8. Sorry about the double post, but I just remembered:

    Now the ol’ Cowboy doesn’t generally wish unemployment on anyone, but really, the chowderhead at Fox who chose to cancel TC in favor of the already-cancelled “Point Pleasant” deserves to be given the heave ho.

    Gail Berman, the President of FOX who decided to drop Tru for PP has left the network. (I’m not sure if this link is going to work) check it out. I’m absolutely sure I read on like offical news sites that they’ve brought on the man who was the boss-man of FX these past few years and gave us what has probably been the most consistantly high-quality orignal cable programming that we’ve seen in a long, long time. So, I’m hopeful about FOX’s future.

  10. Have to say, while the series sometimes made me squirm impatiently, it’s consistently impressed me with how many variations on the theme they’ve come up with so far. And it’ll probably forever annoy me that my own personal “Jack” theory will never be answered – We only have it on his word that Tru’s dad allegedly did the same thing. If he still has the power, he’s never mentioned it or how he came to lose it.

    Personally, I think that once he found out what his wife did, he couldn’t mentally handle it so he created this whole “You’re not supposed to tamper with the design” rationale for stopping her. From there, it’s no great leap to think he’d probably spend time tracking down others who might have this ability and convince them of the same thing – Given Jack’s stay in a mental hospital over his newfound powers, he’d probably have been rather suceptible to this point of view, eager to fob off such a large responsibility he clearly wasn’t up to.

    And I admit, it’s great to see “Captain Liberty” on TV again, even for a short time.

  11. The entire second season’s run in NZ, and I managed to acquire said. It gets better; not only to we find out how Jack’s powers work, but (I THINK) we start seeing the creation of a new “Jack”…

    (Second the recommendation for “Veronica Mars”, but remember I first heard of it on this very site)

  13. Uh, Fox didn’t cancel Tru Calling to make room for Point Pleasant, they cancelled Tru Calling so they could move North Shore into that timeslot to try and leech off the OC’s ratings. When that failed, they decided to stick PP in there.

  14. Yes, Berman may have screwed up with this decision (I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t say), but those who are so quick to dismiss her neglect that she was instrumental in getting BUFFY off the ground. She was listed as an Executive Producer and it is said that she was the one that approached Joss about relaunching his failed movie as a series.

    Trust me, I’m the first one to bìŧçh about chowderheaded programming decisions at Fox, but temper your criticism with the knowledge that without Berman there probably wouldn’t BE a Joss-verse.

  15. “Uh, Fox didn’t cancel Tru Calling to make room for Point Pleasant, they cancelled Tru Calling so they could move North Shore into that timeslot to try and leech off the OC’s ratings. When that failed, they decided to stick PP in there.”

    That’s not my understanding of it. What I read was that it was decided there was only room for one semi-mystical/mysterious one hour drama on Thursday, and “Point Pleasant” was given the nod over “Tru.”

    PAD

  17. I just saw the notice at the Futon Critic about the season/series finale of Tru Calling getting bumped for the bloody Simple Life. I sure hope we’ll end up seeing that final hour. Just when I thought FOX couldn’t stun me more …

    It really is unfortunately that they only made those 6 hours of the show before being told to pack up.

    Neil

  18. BY the way, if you go to
    http://www.fox.com/schedule/index.htm
    you can see that is the way it is. Tru Calling on this week, and an hour of Simple Life next week.

    On their page
    http://www.fox.com/community/askfox/
    they did have an old question about Tru Callin:

    4. Where is “TRU CALLING” – when will the show be back on the air?

    ANSWER:
    TRU CALLING will return to the schedule with ALL-NEW episodes sometime in 2005!!

    I guess it is time to hit the Feedback button on that page to ask about the final episode.

    Neil

  19. As widely reported in the press, FOX shut down Tru Calling six episodes into the production of the second season due to their belief that Point Pleasant would pair up better with The O.C. instead of Tru Calling. I think that Tru Calling’s episodes have been drawing more than the PP episodes at the end of its run before FOX pulled it.

    Apparently FOX felt that the Christmas themed final episode wasn’t the right thing to show in April. Of course, when they started production, Fox had been saying the show would return in the fall so a Christmas show made sense.

    Lee Whiteside
    SFTV.org Webmaster

  20. By the way, I hope Cowboy Pete has been watching the best comeback series in two decades:

    BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

    You want unpredictable, that season finale was, as our British friends might say, a corker.

    — Ken from Chicago (who can’t wait til BSG S2 returns this July)

    P.S. THE SHIELD’s addition of Glenn Close has been totally on the money!

  21. If they cancelled it for Point Pleasant, then why was North Shore in the slot before it got canned? They did it last fall because they thought OC and NS would fit together. They said as much at the time. Then that failed and PP came midseason, probably the time people expected TC to come back, so maybe therein lies the confusion.

    Now TC is being bumped for that whørë’s show? I hate anyone who watches that show, just on principal.

  22. Fox is notorious for not being able to support it’s sci-fi (and adult themed cartoons). I have a long list of “favorite shows” that Fox has cut down in their primes within its infinite wisdom. The list includes but is not limited to; Millenium, The Lone Gunmen, Strange Luck, Sliders, Freaky Links, Futurama, Family Guy… Each one of these shows I devoted much time and emotion to and they were yanked away from me in their formative years.

    But conversely, I look at the life and death of the X-Files. To me the series ended when the movie came out. But Fox milked it (and milked it and milked it) for all it was worth thus destroying much of the greatness of the series.

    Perhaps its best that these shows got axed. Each one holds a special place in the old memory banks and the doldrums and the staleness that tends to affect “prime time sci-fi” never had the chance to infect these precious little works of art.

    (And a just little note that needs to be scattered to the aether – blindly directed towards HBO, please don’t take my Carnivale away. It’s all I have left.)

  24. Lee,

    Thanks for pointing out that there might have been some logic behind FOX not showing this Christmas episode of Tru Calling in the Spring. Still, the substitution was practically last minute and they did have a press release earlier this month on it.
    http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/listings.cgi?id=20050408fox15
    “Twas the Night Before Christmas? Again”

    One of the interesting aspects of the episode in the PR is Tru asking Jack for some assitance.

    Of course, since the series was shut down with no warning, we couldn’t expect this final episode to wrap anything up anyway.

    Have the creators of the series ever posted what they had in mind for how the series would have progressed?

    Neil

  25. Neil,

    I haven’t seen anything online. I hope they do let the fans of the show know what was planned eventually.

    I remember when John Doe was cancelled the creative team talked about what the end story would’ve been.

  27. I only have to wait until July for BSG S2? I can’t say I love everything they do in BSG, but it’s one of the few shows that I look forward to seeing, and will go out of my way to watch “live.” Lost and 24 being the only other two shows. Taping Smallville, and spending most of the time complaining about it.

    I’ve otherwise given up on programmed TV. Our TV is great for sports, Xbox, and DVDs, but networks have become so ingrained to be looking for the next Survivor, there’s nothing but clones and crap around. Network execs seem bent on getting that one show that grabs 15+ million viewers…ignoring the fact that the 7 million people that will watch an Angel, Buffy, Tru Calling, Firefly, B5 or BSG are for the most part NOT in that 15 million watching Survivor. Mostly, they’re a whole different audience that, if networks were smart, they’d try to capture.

    Or maybe it’s the advertisors that need to realize this. Sure, Coke can buy air time during Desparate Housewives and reach 10 million people. But if the also buy time during survivor, they’ve only then reached an additional 4 million people. And spent a whole bunch more $ doing it. If they, say, instead advertised on BSG, they’d reach the same additional 4 million people, and spent a whole lot less doing so.

  28. In the case of Tru Calling, I have to agree that adding Jack was a good idea. And I’m glad they do not begin every episode with Tru walking around in tight tee shirt and panties (which it looked like thy were going to do in the first season.) Not that seeing Eliza in such Maxim style gear is a bad thing, it’s just not the way to sell a show (at least a show you want to last.)

    Where I do disagree with Peter David is about Joan of Arcadia. I am not usually into the “God” shows. They meander, get to preachy and in too many cases have obvious conversion objectives. What make JOA good is that it does not preach, it does contend that any one religion is better or more right then another, and there seems to be a direction to it.

    It does tend to go for the overly melodramatic (this is one family that can’t catch a break, and with God hanging around you’d think one or two breaks would be had.)

    It also has some balls. It mixes elements you don’t normally see in televison shows. At times it’s a cop show, a times a comedy.

    With it’s final episode it went straight into “Buffy. . .” territory, and that is not a bad thing (at least to me.)

    In my mind Tru Calling and Joan of Arcadia needed the kick in the pants of having opposites. In both cases the main elements of these shows would have gotten stale without them. I don’t feel that in JOA’s the adversary was “slapped on” at all. The season ending for last year was about faith and doubt, now it ends with conflict. In fact it has made the show much more interesting and I can’t wait for the third season.

    In Tru’s case I think the element that seems tacked on is the Father (who is a corny as the pops from the boring “Point Pleasant.”) It would have been better if Jack worked alone without the father element. Other then that I give both shows a lot of credit. The best villians, in my opion, are not the ones who are evil for evil sake, but the ones who think they are right and are doing what the believe is the right thing.

    Both these shows are extremely well done, and what scares me is that TV doesn’t keep to many shows with high quality on for long. Look at what happenned to Wonderfalls. Other then the tacked on and totally unnessecary romance between the brother and the friend (the new rule is that Black peole are no longer allowed to date Black people on televion – unless they are stereotype “ghetto.”) the show was really interesting. And now it’s gone.

  29. “the new rule is that black people are no longer allowed to date Black people on television – unless they are stereotype ghetto”

    Ðámņ.Umar actually has some intelligent observations and interesting points and ALMOST made it through a post without talking about race.
    Oh,well. Maybe next time.

  30. Other then the tacked on and totally unnessecary romance between the brother and the friend (the new rule is that Black peole are no longer allowed to date Black people on televion – unless they are stereotype “ghetto.”) the show was really interesting.

    Yes, because the fight for equality will not be won until the networks realize that instead of giving the romantic subplots to two talented actors in leading roles with excellent chemistry, they should tack on uninteresting recurring characters for epic five-episode romances for the sole reason of making sure everyone only dates inside their own race.

  31. I’m glad PAD notice that JOAN is basically cribbing from TRU. It also seems like they’re cribbing from MEDIUM with Joan’s mom, but I could be wrong. Were the psychic dreams established in the first season or in earlier episodes?

  33. I’ve seen all 6 of the Tru episodes (hooray bittorrent), watched them all back to back. They were soooooo good it was tragic. Interesting characters, consistent backstory and character development, interesting surprises… I wanted to show a shoe at the screen when the last episode was over for leaving me with so many unknowns.

  34. 1
    No more Tru.
    Want Faith.

    PAD, I’m going to join you in the pouting line. Want some munchies?

  35. The five episodes of Tru Calling season 2 that I saw were really good. Tru, imo, has just got better and better with the addition of Jack. What a great character! I think he’s made Tru’s character more interesting too.

    I so hate FOX for not showing that sixth episode! I don’t care if its a Christmas episode! SHOW IT!!! UGH. I hate FOX. If it wasn’t for 24, House, Family Guy, and American Dad I swear I’d just never watch FOX again! I swear it! *SIGH*

    As for Joan, I loved the season finale. It was awesome, imo. I really hope that they get to play out her struggle in another season! *crosses fingers and hopes* Joan is an awesome season. This season has been really good to great in some episodes! *hopes for another season*

    Anyway…back to Tru, I wish somebody would pick this show up for more episodes!!! Or at least pick up the first season and the six second season episodes..so we could at the very least see that sixth episode! *sigh*

    DF2506
    ” Is also happy to report that latest Enteprise episode was frelling amazing!!! Whew. “

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