Saving Hope: Season 2 (DVD) – Series Review
Whilst not as medically captivating as popular medical drama’s such as ER, House M.D. and Grey’s Anatomy, Saving Hope does a good job nonetheless. The medical drama features a supernatural twist in the form of Ghost Whisperer. In the first season of Saving Hope we followed Dr. Charlie Harris whom was comatose for a large part of the season. During his comatose state he interacted with other spirits, learning about life after death, something he found difficult to accept with his scientific background. In the second season we continue to follow the life Charlie and his fiancée Dr. Alex Reid.
Near the end of the first season, a miracle of some sort has happened and Dr. Charlie Harris (Michael Shanks) has finally woken up from his comatose state. He enjoyed being back in the land of the living, finally being able to interact with real people, with the exception of the woman that has been his rehabilitation buddy for a few days.
The second season doesn’t pick up the storyline immediately after the finale of season one. It begins with Charlie and Dr. Alex Reid (Erica Durance) returning from a long-due holiday. To the regret of Charlie, they haven’t eloped although he desperately wants to marry his possible soul mate. While the reasoning behind this is unclear at first, the show reveals bits and pieces of information that can be seen as the possible reasons for the show’s central characters to not jump the boat when it’s rocking. As soon as they return a shooting takes place, scaring Charlie and Alex even more. Without going further into it, they both return to work at Hope Zion. Charlie is beyond excitement to continue his career until realization hits him. He hasn’t fully left the spiritual plane behind him.
Charlie has trouble accepting the fact that he can still see ghosts although they unknowingly help him perform even better surgeries. They allow him to make calls he never could before and whilst this makes his even more famous in the hospital, he can’t help but wish the ghosts away. His ability to adapt is being pushed day-in day-out while he also has to deal with personal issues. Charlie’s ex-wife Dr. Dawn Bell (Michelle Nolden) has declared that she will never stop loving him while the playboy Dr. Joel Goran (Daniel Gillies) that is now Chief of Surgery at Hope Zion has declared that he still loves Alex. These declarations are causing trouble in paradise to a point of no return.
Alex on the other hand is having some personal troubles of her own. She’s constantly being pushed to be a better doctor, especially by Dawn whom feels some hatred towards Alex for stealing Charlie. The road to self-discovery is lengthy. At some point she needs to decide on her specialty while the next minute she needs to find out what went wrong and whom to blame for the wrongdoing of the death of a fireman. Her personal and professional issues are constantly challenged and require tedious tending but she faces it all headfirst.
Story wise the show continues to maintain two main narratives: the perspective of Alex and the perspective of Charlie, both narrative split into a dramatic and a medical aspect. Once in a blue moon the show also explores other relationships that has formed or are being formed, such as the loving relationship between Dr. Gaving Murphy (Kristopher Turner) and Dr. Maggie Lin (Julia Taylor Ross). Charlie’s perspective is certainly more extraordinary due to his bond with mysterious earthbound creatures but the general storyline in Saving Hope is a bit of a drag and highly predictable. Whilst being a medical drama, the show doesn’t feature interesting cases and seems to be medically incorrect most of the time. We’re not surgeons but we do feel that the cases in House M.D. were far more imaginative.
There hasn’t changed much when it comes to character development. It continues in a steady curve but it has also slowed down in terms of thought-provoking and amusing characteristics. The one-liners of nurse Jackson Wade (Joseph Pierre) continues to be humorously entertaining and the odd but loveable neurologist Dr. Shahir Hamza (Huse Madhavji) keeps the ball rolling with his quirky behavior.
We’ve said it before and we still stand by our decision made for season one of Saving Hope. Despite having a strong cast comprised of members with previous roles in TV-shows in Stargate SG-1, Smallville, Nikita and The Vampire Diaries, the acting performance is rather flat and meager. The quirks and irks of each character is rather distinct, no matter how small the roles but the performance is just on the backburner.
Just like the previous boxset, the DVD-boxset of Saving Hope Season 2 comes with extra footage, extending your view time for a bit. The cast interviews and last call webisodes provide an interesting perspective of the show but we miss the humor of the typical gag reels.
Conclusion
Saving Hope is a mediocre medical drama in the likes of Grey’s Anatomy, except it lacks interesting cases and far too much drama. The combination of a medical drama with a supernatural fantasy twist has been a good call though and the Ghost Whisperer-like aspect of the show will intrigue many viewers although it will never reach the same level as previously mentioned shows.
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