Saturday, February 07, 2004
Tru Calling - The Longest Day
New twist for Tru - she lives the day over and over and over until she gets it right. It worked pretty well. She even made reference to Groundhog Day - which is a most excellent movie, by the way.
I liked that she got increasingly impatient each time she had to go through the same seemingly trivial stuff each time. Not so sure why Luc seemed also to become increasingly impatient. It was the only time he'd had the conversation - each time. Especially given that she was trying to address his needs and concerns a little better on each go round.
I didn't really get her garbage disposal motivation, though. Or the timeline. One time he said she'd been bugging him all week to fix it, another time he said the bugging had been for weeks. The first time through it seemed that Harrison did something to it after Luc had done the repairs. Why would she take from this that it's destined to be broken? If she thought it was the disposal and not Harrison, maybe she could have just said something like, "You know, that's been fixed before and seemed perfect, but then it always fritzes out again in a few hours." That might prompt Luc to analyze the problem more closely. Or maybe buy a new one. Or maybe, I don't know - CALL BUILDING MAINTENANCE!! My landlord's plumber was very efficient about repairing my garbage disposal. And he was quite polite about the fact that it was broken due to the shiny nickel that had jammed its little rotors. Of course, the nickel got there while I was dumping buckets of water into the sink from the basement which was flooded when the water heater sprung a leak, turning the 20 year old shag rug and 1 inch thick felt pad which had been left by the previous tenant into a stinky disgusting swamp, so maybe that's why he cut me a little slack. But I digress.
They got me with the knife-weilding psycho mugger. I spotted him pretty early as significant, when the camera lingered a bit too long on his crazy eyes in his Bruce Dern face, with the slight layer of sweat. I was feeling pretty smug - "Oh those writers again. This guy is such an anvil. And that pack of cigarettes! They keep zooming in on it. It's a bomb!!!! The whole convenience store robbery is a ruse. HA!"
Oops. Guess I was wrong. This is a good sign for the show, since the storyline went off in a direction not entirely obvious. At least to me. And I had just sat through a double session of Criminal Law, so I should have been able to spot the bizarre twists. All the cases we study are the ones with the bizarre twists. But maybe I was tired.
Unfortunately, the show once again developed gaping credibility holes at the end. Tru was accompanying Michael, who had just been brutally gutted by Crazy Eyes, into the ER. They need a way for Tru to have a shroud of authority (comes in handy later), so the doctor asks in an incredibly rude way, almost yelling, "Who the hell are you?" Wouldn't he at least momentarily have thought she could be the stabbing victim's friend, his wife, a good samaritan who helped someone in need?
This was topped by her response. "City Morgue." Oh, that explains everything. I guess the morgue is trying to cut down on their response times by having employees roam the streets waiting for life-threatening illness and injury to rear its ugly head, then follow the victims into the nearest trauma center, so they can be there when the person dies. Then the morgue employee gets to say, in a deep and official beaurocratic voice, "City Morgue. I'll take it from here."
But the trauma doc found nothing odd or unseemly, so Tru gets not only to stay, but to give orders!
I could see where they were going with the heart transplant, and indeed they did. Who found it odd that they would just take this random City Morgue worker's word that this guy was the father? That his tissue type would be an appropriate match for his 11-year-old daughter? Is there any sort of size consideration when matching heart donors with recipients? Because that kid was tiny. He was short, but not like her. What about getting consent from the mother? No mention was made of this - just "Notify the transplant team," and they push the kid's gurney out of the room.
Why are they going to such lengths to make us think Tru and Luc aren't having sex? He's always there making her breakfast, but the scene usually includes him just arriving, or a point about her having slept on the couch because she was so very, very tired the night before, or she was drunk and he has rules about those things. It's not like we believe she hasn't done this before. We know she had a wildly inappropriate affair with one of her undergrad professors, and they showed him getting dressed while she was just waking up. They've shown other characters in bed post-sex, so it's not because of the 8:00 timeslot. I just don't understand.
Maybe Tru is in the process of coming out. She knows she's done with the boys, but she just can't get up the nerve to let go of the safety net. I had a friend who did this for her entire college career. Perhaps Tru was actually in love with Candace, not Ronnie, and that's why the whole prom rejection thing cut her so deeply and lastingly.
Next week: Valentine's Day hijinx! Will Tru and Luc enjoy a romantic weekend alone in the country? See above two paragraphs.
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I liked that she got increasingly impatient each time she had to go through the same seemingly trivial stuff each time. Not so sure why Luc seemed also to become increasingly impatient. It was the only time he'd had the conversation - each time. Especially given that she was trying to address his needs and concerns a little better on each go round.
I didn't really get her garbage disposal motivation, though. Or the timeline. One time he said she'd been bugging him all week to fix it, another time he said the bugging had been for weeks. The first time through it seemed that Harrison did something to it after Luc had done the repairs. Why would she take from this that it's destined to be broken? If she thought it was the disposal and not Harrison, maybe she could have just said something like, "You know, that's been fixed before and seemed perfect, but then it always fritzes out again in a few hours." That might prompt Luc to analyze the problem more closely. Or maybe buy a new one. Or maybe, I don't know - CALL BUILDING MAINTENANCE!! My landlord's plumber was very efficient about repairing my garbage disposal. And he was quite polite about the fact that it was broken due to the shiny nickel that had jammed its little rotors. Of course, the nickel got there while I was dumping buckets of water into the sink from the basement which was flooded when the water heater sprung a leak, turning the 20 year old shag rug and 1 inch thick felt pad which had been left by the previous tenant into a stinky disgusting swamp, so maybe that's why he cut me a little slack. But I digress.
They got me with the knife-weilding psycho mugger. I spotted him pretty early as significant, when the camera lingered a bit too long on his crazy eyes in his Bruce Dern face, with the slight layer of sweat. I was feeling pretty smug - "Oh those writers again. This guy is such an anvil. And that pack of cigarettes! They keep zooming in on it. It's a bomb!!!! The whole convenience store robbery is a ruse. HA!"
Oops. Guess I was wrong. This is a good sign for the show, since the storyline went off in a direction not entirely obvious. At least to me. And I had just sat through a double session of Criminal Law, so I should have been able to spot the bizarre twists. All the cases we study are the ones with the bizarre twists. But maybe I was tired.
Unfortunately, the show once again developed gaping credibility holes at the end. Tru was accompanying Michael, who had just been brutally gutted by Crazy Eyes, into the ER. They need a way for Tru to have a shroud of authority (comes in handy later), so the doctor asks in an incredibly rude way, almost yelling, "Who the hell are you?" Wouldn't he at least momentarily have thought she could be the stabbing victim's friend, his wife, a good samaritan who helped someone in need?
This was topped by her response. "City Morgue." Oh, that explains everything. I guess the morgue is trying to cut down on their response times by having employees roam the streets waiting for life-threatening illness and injury to rear its ugly head, then follow the victims into the nearest trauma center, so they can be there when the person dies. Then the morgue employee gets to say, in a deep and official beaurocratic voice, "City Morgue. I'll take it from here."
But the trauma doc found nothing odd or unseemly, so Tru gets not only to stay, but to give orders!
I could see where they were going with the heart transplant, and indeed they did. Who found it odd that they would just take this random City Morgue worker's word that this guy was the father? That his tissue type would be an appropriate match for his 11-year-old daughter? Is there any sort of size consideration when matching heart donors with recipients? Because that kid was tiny. He was short, but not like her. What about getting consent from the mother? No mention was made of this - just "Notify the transplant team," and they push the kid's gurney out of the room.
Why are they going to such lengths to make us think Tru and Luc aren't having sex? He's always there making her breakfast, but the scene usually includes him just arriving, or a point about her having slept on the couch because she was so very, very tired the night before, or she was drunk and he has rules about those things. It's not like we believe she hasn't done this before. We know she had a wildly inappropriate affair with one of her undergrad professors, and they showed him getting dressed while she was just waking up. They've shown other characters in bed post-sex, so it's not because of the 8:00 timeslot. I just don't understand.
Maybe Tru is in the process of coming out. She knows she's done with the boys, but she just can't get up the nerve to let go of the safety net. I had a friend who did this for her entire college career. Perhaps Tru was actually in love with Candace, not Ronnie, and that's why the whole prom rejection thing cut her so deeply and lastingly.
Next week: Valentine's Day hijinx! Will Tru and Luc enjoy a romantic weekend alone in the country? See above two paragraphs.
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Posted by Rogueslayer at 10:04 AM 
