TRU CALLING has that Run Lola Run vibe to it (including a song on the soundtrack that is also featured in Run Lola Run). The pilot is a tight drama that introduces us to Tru at the age of 12 where she is at the funeral of her mom (who was murdered right in front of Tru and the murderer was never caught) when she hears Mom speak to her. Her mom says she forgives Tru, but her family doesn’t believe Tru heard Mom. Then the pilot flash fowards ten years later to the day of Tru’s college graduation. Tru runs to make it to her graduation (because she is a track star) only to find her family didn’t attend (they weren’t at her track meets either).

The next day, Tru wakes up. We find out she lives with her boyfriend (who is a teacher at the college she attended). The day proves to be a disaster for Tru: she loses her hospital internship (due to budget cuts) that she wanted before she entered med school, her brother is beaten up for not being able to pay up in a poker game, and she finds out her older successful sister is using coke again. Tru does get a night job at the Morgue preparing and tagging corpses, a place where somoen people have died of unnatural deaths). The first corpse she tags is a young woman who was shot in the neck.

Then Tru is left alone alone at the morgue (but another morgue attendant says she has the company of the 32 dead people next door in the crypt). She hears a voice coming from the crypt. She thinks it is a pratical joke from one of the people who work at the morgue. She goes to check out the drawers in the cyrpt only to finally open up the drawer where the female DOA is. The woman opens up her eyes and says "Help me". Faster than you can say Run Lola Run, Tru wakes up to live the day over again. She has a second chance to do the day over again. She sets out to save the woman from being shot, her brother from ending up in the hospital, and trying to svae her older sis from her drug problem.

The pilot sets up an intriguing drama that can go in several different directions as Tru tries to save a person from an unnatural death and fix the problems of her family (from her brother’s gambling to her sister’s drug problems). Eliza Dushku is believable as Tru. You care for Tru. You want Tru to succeed. The script throws ina few twist and turns to keep the viewer guessing. When you think something is going in one direction, it throws you into another direction. TRU CALLING has great promise. The only problem with the pilot is that it is trying tooo hard to borrow from RUN LOLA RUN, and Tru should get a bicycle with all the running around she does to save a person (even if she’s a track star). Let’s hope the Thursday time slot doesn’t kill the show.