Television viewers aren’t stupid.

Dushku, the former Faith from “Buffy,” manages to look great and not do much else on “Calling,” and with the muddled plots and set-ups of the show, it’s hard to blame Dushku for not knowing what exactly her character’s supposed to do.

That character is Tru Davies, and as soon as she graduates from New York University she looks for an internship to help her medical school chances. But jobs at the hospital have dried up and the only opportunity is at the morgue.

And despite initial fears, Davies was kind of made for the morgue. It turns out she hears dead people, such as her mother, who was murdered 10 years ago. The bevy of dead bodies in a morgue then leads to a reawakening of this phenomenon, but with a twist.

As opposed to just hearing dead people talk to her, if the corpses ask for Davies help, she gets “projected” back to the beginning of the day in hopes of preventing that death.

While talking with the dead has become commonplace on television, this development goes a little beyond the realm of assumption for television viewers.

On the plus side, the actual action on the show is pretty compelling. In the first two episodes there have been a handful of good plot twists in figuring out how to stop the deaths.

There’s an annoying technique of flashing back through everything that’s happened so far when returning from commercial breaks. And it’s fine for Davies to just be solving crimes at a morgue, but she apparently knows karate, too, if the first episode is any indication.

The supporting cast doesn’t do much to remedy these problems either. Jessica Collins and Shawn Reaves are forgettable as Davies’ drug-addled sister and gambling-addicted brother, respectively. The only co-star that’s fairly interesting is Zach Galifianakis’ Davis, who’s in charge of the morgue.

So much about “Calling” feels thrown together. There’s little room for character development, few things are ever explained and the show can’t find a true identity while carrying parts of so many other shows. Dushku is quite watchable, but she’ll need a better star vehicle than “Tru Calling” if she wants to break out of her second-fiddle status.

Grade: CD,”Matthew T. Olson”

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