“I’m having an out-of-body experience…in a tuxedo.”

The NBC/CTV medical drama, Saving Hope, finally made its debut last night and it was underwhelming, to be honest. It wasn’t disastrously bad, but it just wasn’t as great as I expected it to be. I have a problem, actually. I raise my hopes WAY up, and then I watch them crush because I got too invested before even watching the show.

But anyway…

Dr. Alex Reid (Erica Durance), a general surgeon at Hope-Z, and Dr. Charlie Harris (Michael Shanks), chief of surgery, are in a cab late to their own wedding (I loved that scene, by the way, ever since the trailer. Those two have so much chemistry together and they’re so easy on the eyes). And then boom! Their cab crashes with another two cars. Everyone’s hurt, but Charlie has a shallow scraping on his forehead – or so we think. After saving the life of one of the drivers, Charlie collapses.

We start hearing his voice explaining to us what’s happening to him. But it turns out, he’s not awake; he’s actually passed out but is roaming around the hospital as a ghost – so to speak. And he can see other patients who died in the hospital. Spooky.

And then we flashback to a day (?) before the accident. Charlie and Alex are flirting and talking about their honeymoon when a new doctor arrives to the hospital with a patient. The new doctor, Joel Gorran, is played by the ever so gorgeous Daniel Gillies, and that’s when the show becomes very Grey’s Anatomy-esque. It turns out Alex and Joel were dating but he cheated on her, and she’s still holding a grudge.

Joel: “You didn’t invite me to the wedding, so presumably, you’re still in love with me. “
Alex: “Right. I totally forgot. I like to remember the poems you wrote me, the breakfast in bed.. and the nurses you were banging.”

Ouch.

Let the shipping wars begin!

After that back-story the show builds, we return to the present where Alex is trying to deal with the chaos around her. She’s losing her fiance, but she cannot just stop being a doctor. So she handles her cases oh so gracefully up until the antisocial neurosurgeon, Dr. Shahir Hamza, walks up to her after Charlie codes and they resuscitate him and asks her if she wants to do a DNR if Charlie ever codes again. How can she make a decision like that? Does she give up on him and spare him the agony all of this may cause him (especially that she thinks he’s going to die)…or does she let him live via machines?

And that’s when we see her really break down. She takes it out on Joel and tells him he’ll never be half the surgeon Charlie was (is) . He will never be as amazing as he is. The problem here is that Dr. Harris had a patient, Sean, who has cancer. Dr. Harris wanted to amputate his arm, but Joel thinks otherwise. He thinks he should do a limb-sparing surgery to try to save his arm.

When they go into surgery, Joel tries to amputate Sean’s arm, but he can’t. So he does the limb-sparing surgery pissing his patient off who threatens to sue him. But Joel is convinced his patient has PTSD – he was in the war. And that’s why he wants his arm cut off – he’s feeling guilty that he’s still alive and not dead like the others. And it turns out, he’s right. By the end of the episode, Sean is happy with Joel’s decision and is thankful his arm’s still there.

All of these events really didn’t interest me at all. For some reason, I wasn’t emotionally invested in any of the patients, and I couldn’t care about them like I expect I should have.

The moment that really stirred up my feelings was when Alex walked into her husband-to-be’s room and tries to sleep next to him, but then she freaks out. She tells him she lost a patient – a pregnant girl who dies after delivering her baby – and that she usually talks to him about things like these. She needs him to be with her. She climbs to his bed again and holds him tight this time. We see Charlie standing next to her – as a ghost – telling her not to give up on him.

It’s a beautiful love story because of how melodramatic it is, and I expect that’s what’s going to keep me watching this show – especially that Durance’s performance as Alex Reid is flawless. In that scene, she was amazing. We got to see a side of her we never really saw in Smallville. The way she pulls away from him at first and then holds him close is tear-jerking. I really, really loved that scene. (Daniel Gillies and Michael Shanks are awesome, too, by the way. But we didn’t get to see much of them, SADLY! I’m guessing their roles will become bigger in the episodes to come.)

What I hated, though, just like everyone else who watched the series premiere last night, was the lens flares! In every scene, there’s this bright light that could blind you while watching. If it’s on purpose, I don’t get why it’s there. And if it’s not, please cinematography people, fix it. It’s annoying.

Just like I said before, I expected the episode to be bigger, to be stronger, but alas, it wasn’t. I kept blanking out while watching and I don’t think that’s good. The episode needed to be a bit more aggressive, somehow. It was too soft for a premiere episode. The cases weren’t all that interesting and all that original, and we didn’t get to see much of Charlie being a spirit wanting to hold on for dear life. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m going to stop watching the show because a) it stars two of my favorite people on the planet and b) I’m saving my hope on it (see what I did there?)

What did you think of the episode? Will you keep watching the show?