So this is the start of my blog and recap for ‘Saving Hope’ this drama is set in the hospital of Hope Zion, it revolves around the lives of the doctors who work there. Dr Alex Reid (Erica Durance, Smallville), Dr Charlie Harris (Michael Shanks, Stargate SG1) and Dr Joel Goran (Daniel Gillies, The Vampire Diaries & The Originals) are our main focus but we do get the stories of some of the other Doctors who work with them. I give you warning some of the surgeries in this are not for the faint of heart, as the series progresses you will see a lot of different issues and surgical matters with not always good results, but it has been made especially well and I fell in love with this show from the moment I started to watch it.
So we begin with season 1 episode 1 named Pilot.
Ok so we open with Dr’s Alex Reid and Charlie Harris in a taxi, Alex is sitting on Charlie’s lap watching a video on a phone of how to tie a bow tie, whilst she is trying to tie his bow tie, she is wearing a white dress and he has a tuxedo on. Charlie mentions that this is already better than his first wedding (what a charmer, lets remind our future wife she isn’t his first). They both exchange “I love you” whilst in the taxi just before it is hit by a car and spins around.
They check on each other, Alex seems Fine and Charlie has a cut on his head, they then get out and Alex phones for help and they each check on the two drivers involved. Charlie finds the woman in the other car can’t talk and is not doing so well, he calls Alex over and tells her to bring her handbag, (woman have handbags for a reason) and asks for “The tube thing from the err!” yes immediately she knows it’s the tube for her tampon, (So cute how he doesn’t say its actual name). just before the ambulance arrives, he uses the scissors she has in her handbag and the tube to help the woman to breathe properly, help arrives and they start to move out the way, they hug and kiss and then Charlie rubs his head before he collapses on the floor.
A ride in the ambulance later and he is rushed into the hospital, you hear him comment on his condition through his thoughts and he is pleased when Alex says what he was thinking, right up until she mentions he has been unconscious, the camera pans back and you see him watching them working on him, he stands and starts to shout to get their attention but nobody hears him, they just rush past him.
We now have 12 hours earlier on the screen, Charlie is leading a lecture and has the staff all laughing, they are discussing a tumour in the arm, he questions the staff on, whether the arm should be saved or not this is important for later in the episode, here we meet a few more of the people we interact with including Dr Hamza a brain surgeon I find he is funny and adorable on occasion.
We now skip to an intimate moment interrupted by a page for Alex, as they walk the halls to where they are needed they are discussing the wedding that evening and then split of for their respective duties, Charlie goes to talk to a young man who is going to have his arm operated on, he signs the arm and jokes we don’t want to cut off the wrong one. Alex is helping young resident Dr Maggie Lin who has a large woman with abdominal pain, it seems Maggie paged Alex because she had trouble diagnosing the patient because she is “FAT” words I hate to hear and it gives you a little insight to our young resident, by Alex’s reply Maggie tends to page often for help, (is it for help or is it for attention I ask).
Just as Maggie and Alex stop speaking a voice asking for a room shouts out whilst a gurney speeds down the hall, queue awesome Dr Joel Goran on top of the Gurney with his hand in a guy’s chest (best entrance award goes to Daniel, because that got my attention and so does his cute curtains hairstyle). Whilst he goes down the corridor, he smiles (yum) and see’s Alex, so says hi and gives her a huge compliment. Next is the surgery to help fix a bus crash victim, (I’ll skip the details) Charlie and Alex have small talk over the open patient including talk about kids, we find out that the guy is a John Doe, no wallet or ID when he was on the bus.
Charlie and Alex come out of the surgery and you see Joel scrubbing up, they have a chat (and then it hits you, Joel is like Daniel from New Zealand, the accent is amazing). Alex and Joel chat and you get a little insight into the fact they dated BIG time, it seems he was a romantic but liked the nurses. Charlie goes to inform his patient with the arm scheduled to be taken off, that he has to wait now due to the OR being backed up, he is not happy and shouts, Charlie has to calm him down, this happens with a smile and a couple of words (he has a nice smile and a calming face, so yeah that would do it).
Charlie and Alex are getting ready for their wedding and they are both changing in the same room (isn’t it bad luck to see the bride just before the wedding?). As they get ready they are discussing honeymoon locations, like they have no set plans (I’d have it set in stone, if I was getting married). A kiss happens which is interrupted by a page, (guess who sent the page) Maggie lets Alex know her ‘fat’ patient is actually pregnant and then as Alex tells her to not page her whilst she is getting married, Maggie lets her know she looks Beautiful (she really does). We then have Alex and Charlie running for the Taxi that we now know is where we started.
Back to present time and we are back with Dr Hamza discussing what needs to be done with Charlie and they head to get a brain scan, Charlie is talking to us as this happens, he says Doctors love tests as they give them answers “It’s the unknown that scares them!” that’s when it hits him he is having an ‘out of body’ experience, he swears at himself to wake up. Dr Melinda Tolliver a friend of Alex’s sits next to her, they discuss that everyone keeps telling her to go home, as a friend Melinda tells her to “Suit up” as her family is here, (good advice from a good friend, well apart from not seeing Alex start to cry as Melinda leaves).
Charlie watching himself again as they discuss him, turns to see someone can see him the guy asks if he can see him and Charlie’s sense of humour, that I love throughout this show replies with “Yes because I am talking to you!” (I love his little comments and how it adds a light hearted side to the programme). As they talk you realise that this guy was the John Doe bus victim from earlier, as they talk about the fact Charlie is in a coma and this guy is dead, eventually Charlie turns to ask his name and he is gone, (spooky).
Maggie has a young girl and Dr Gavin Murphy turns up, (he is the cute Psychiatrist), he has come to see why the girl has swallowed a daffodil bulb, she is a bratty teenager and not answering the questions too well, she has had her stomach pumped and is now retrieving a pizza bagel from her jacket to eat (what is a pizza Bagel?), Maggie and Gavin hound her with questions of why and she keeps saying no, then she tells them it was a Love Potion! She is a bit embarrassed as she also gave the potion to a boy she likes, (I won’t try this, as it can be poisonous).
Joel walks in as he is taking over Charlie’s Patients, the arm guy who is called Sean is not very happy about it, Joel talks about saving the arm and the guy is adamant he wants his arm taken off, Joel seems to be an awesome doctor because he wants to make sure he does the right thing here (I’m not biased about him really). Alex now rushes into the room with our Pregnant patient, she is in extreme distress and Alex says to Maggie “Do you know what that is?” Maggie’s answer just shows how unobservant she is today “A Babies head!” so right there and then Alex delivers the baby, its tiny and a boy.
Alex is now on the phone having to cancel the suite they had booked for the weekend, she is talking about a non-refundable deposit, which shows how the hotel couldn’t give a crap about why she is cancelling they just want the money, she starts to talk to Charlie and then the monitors go nuts, a woman runs in and pushes Alex out-of-the-way to start CPR on Charlie. Joel rushes in and they get the paddles ready and he has to physical push Alex out the way and takes control of the situation, so she doesn’t do this (he knows she shouldn’t be the one to do this to her fiancé). Charlie has pressure on the brain and they have to relieve this, the procedure involves drilling his skull and he gets to watch the surgery on himself (weird, I’d freak), Alex is in the room watching as she doesn’t want to leave his side, he walks up behind her places his hand on her shoulder, she can’t feel it but it is there, she then runs out in a panic, (considering they are drilling his skull, yeah I would run).
Maggie walks up to Gavin and another DR, they have a young boy of 16, lying down who has abdominal pain, (any guesses?) Maggie deduces he has had Daffodil root. Joel walks out to see his arm patient who is sitting out in the sunshine, Joel Googled the patient and finds out he is an Afghanistan hero, he rescued people and may be suffering from survivor’s guilt, but the guy just wants it dealt with, he just wants the tumour gone. Angela who had the small baby is resting, but she is talking to her boyfriend, they are both young but seem very much a couple, whilst she is talking her condition gets worse and after we see Alex running down the corridor we find that she has passed away. Alex talks to Mitchel about the baby and he has asked about adoption, when told he doesn’t have to make a decision now he says he doesn’t want the baby as it killed Angela, he leaves the room and Alex, we then see him crying as he packs a bag of her things, Charlie is sitting on a bed whilst he is doing this.
Alex is walking down the stairs and is stopped by one of the paramedics from the accident and they have handed her a small box, they found it when clearing up the ambulance, so it must have fallen from a pocket. Alex and Hamza are now discussing who is in charge of Charlie’s care, and after saying he has no relatives, he asks her how far she wants to go, due to the fact they have had to revive him once already. She doesn’t want to talk about it as she would rather not have to make the decision to not revive him if his condition gets worse, she is a doctor and she knows the “Talk” as she has given it, she walks out and leaves Hamza in the room. Alex sits looking at the ring in the box she was given back and looks slightly upset, Joel knocks at the door and walks in as he has come to see if she is ok, they discuss the ring and he says it will be ok, Alex is on a negative and is saying all the things that can happen and she thinks he is just going to die, Joel is the positive trying to convince her that there is hope, things can go right, which makes her just take her anger out on him, saying Charlie is a better surgeon.
Gavin has caught up with Joel and says Sean has PTSD and he is not in the frame of mind to be making decisions about his arm, Joel hot of the bad side of Alex is going ahead anyway, since she basically shot down his skills by saying he is not half the surgeon Charlie is, so he is now affected by what she said and making his surgical decisions on that. Joel is now about to operate on Sean and just as he starts has a look around to think about if he is doing the right thing, does he take off the whole arm or does he save it? This is the same thing that Charlie asked in the lecture the day of his accident, what is the better option save the arm and have to therapy or cut the whole thing off. Fresh out of surgery Joel walked into the room Sean is in, he has his arm still but has had the tumour removed, Sean is not happy that he still has his arm though and doesn’t want to speak to Joel, Joel tries to convince him that saving the arm was what he truly wanted and was best, Sean says he will sue Joel and Joel says he will probably win, now that is true care for the patient and not yourself.
Charlie walks down the corridor and is smiled at by Angela who just seems quite happy walking there, he seems shocked and turns to look at her, he walks backwards a few paces as he watches the direction she went in. Alex is now with Mitchell who is actually thinking for his child and about to say hello to him, he puts his hands in the incubator and touches his son, this makes him smile as he has a small bond with him now and seems calmer now things are sinking in.
Alex goes into see Charlie and the nurse says she can get in the bed with him, she is reluctant as she thinks she will hurt him (well we all would worry that, looking at how fragile he is in that hospital bed) she climbs in and looks tense as she snuggles up to him and then jumps out of the bed, she begins to talk to him about her bad day, something she would normally do at night with him. She then cuddles up again and we then see Charlie watching over her, telling her to not give up on him.
We now have a closing montage, which has beautiful song its set to after seeing Alex cuddled up on Charlie, we have Mitchell cuddling his tiny son, the John Doe going to the Morgue, the two teenagers brought together by the love spell kissing and you see Gavin and Maggie watching them (rude), Sean is now looking at his arm and has a small smile at the fact he still has it and we see Joel operating on someone as he gets on with his job, this is all before we go back to Alex laying on Charlie stroking his hand, as he smiles at her and how she is with him.
So that is episode 1 of Saving hope, we have met some of the characters and seen how they act, what type of job role they have and who they are friends with. I know who my favourite is and I can’t wait to see how Joel grows in this hospital, Alex looks to have a tough time ahead of her and I hope her temper simmers down a bit especially when people are trying to help and I would love to see more of Charlie’s wit and responses. Hope you enjoyed the recap and stay tuned for more.
