Tru Calling - Premise

Premise

Tru Davies (Eliza Dushku) is a young woman who intended to go to medical school after graduating from college. When her internship with a local hospital falls through, Tru takes an unexpected job with the city morgue. While working there, a dead woman asks for her help and Tru suddenly wakes up to find that the day has restarted and finds herself compelled to stop the death, which may be the result of anything from suicide to murder. In the course of the re-run day, Tru often takes the opportunity to rectify various personal situations involving her family and friends.

Supporting characters in the series include Harrison Davies (Shawn Reaves), Tru's irresponsible younger brother (who becomes a loyal asset to Tru by the end of the first season), and Davis (Zach Galifianakis), her socially-challenged but loyal friend, confidante, and supervisor at the morgue.

As the series progresses, it is revealed that several years earlier, Davis had a fateful encounter with Tru's mother (who was, apparently, the last person to receive the "calling" before her daughter).

Supporting characters present in only a portion of the series included: Meredith Davies (Jessica Collins), Tru's older sister; Lindsay Walker (A. J. Cook), her best friend in the first season; Luc Johnston (Matthew Bomer), her love interest in the first season; and Gardez (Benjamin Benitez), her former co-worker at the morgue. The character of Meredith was inexplicably written out of the series in the middle of the first season and never mentioned again. Characters would speak about their family history as though Meredith had never existed.

Jack Harper (Jason Priestley), a counterpart to Tru's character, is introduced midseason as a foil. He is there to make sure fate gets its way and introduces a philosophical aspect to Tru's endeavors: should she be saving the lives of people who may have been intended to die? In the second season, Tru and Jack compete to get to a person first — she to save them and he to restore the order of fate and maintain the balance of the universe as he understands it. It is eventually revealed that Tru's father had played a similarly antagonistic role to Tru's mother, eventually terminating her by hiring a hitman. The series was canceled before Tru or Harrison finds out about their father, though it was revealed that he intended to tell Harrison and attempt to get him on their side.

The final episode contains a number of cliff-hangers: (1) Tru's season two romantic interest, a fellow medical student named Jensen, begins to remember reliving an occurrence he and Tru had together from the negated timeline where he was killed, causing him to obsess over death. (2) Although initially highly antagonistic to Jack, Tru invites him to a Christmas party with her, hinting he may in time become an ally against her father. (3) Carrie, the new psychologist at the morgue, who is revealed as an agent of Jack's working to seduce and subvert Davis, learns the truth about Tru from Davis, Davis is yet to tell Tru he has done so. (4) Jack, talking to Tru's father, hints he is still intent on killing Jensen, despite having failed to seal his fated death in a previous episode.