Saving Hope is a Canadian medical series that premiered in CTV and NBC in June 2012. NBC dropped the show after one season, but Ion Television later picked it up, and began airing the series from season one in 2016.
The show centers around doctors at Hope Zion Hospital in Toronto.
It ended after five seasons.
Tropes used by the series:
- Bookends:
- The season three premiere features Joel recounting to Zach how he arranged to have Alex's bike stolen when they first met so he could offer her a ride home. The season ends with Alex recounting the same story to Maggie after Joel's death.
- In an even more tragic variation the series begins with Charlie and Alex in a car accident which sends Charlie into a coma. He awakens by the end of Season 1, but in the series finale, they are again in a car accident that puts Charlie in a coma. Charlie never wakes up this time.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Joel kisses Alex on the lips while she is comatose. She wakes up seconds later. Oddly enough, her spirit form was kissing Charlie at the same time.
- Easy Amnesia: Alex's amnesia after her coma lasts for one episode, with her memory rushing back as she performs CPR on a patient.
- Genre Mashup: Medical Drama + supernatural.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Joel sends Zach on a fake errand to put him out of harm's way while they are taking a mortar shell out of a patient. Joel ends up dying.
- Irony: In "All the Pretty Horses," the demolitions/bomb expert is the one with the mortar round stuck inside him.
- I See Dead People: Charlie has this ability after waking up from his coma.
- Invisible to Normals: The ghosts/spirits to everyone but Charlie. When Alex is in a coma, a spirit who is brain dead can't see her, though Alex can see the patient.
- Lodged Blade Removal: Averted when a patient stabs Alex with a large pair of scissors. She doesn't pull them out while frantically trying to get help, and the doctors and nurses who rush to her aid don't try to either and instead focus on stabilizing her and getting her into the operating room as quickly as possible.
- Lens Flare: To an absurd degree. Seemingly every imaginable light source and every remotely-reflective surface produces one. IV stands, stethoscopes, windows, desk lamps, and even, at one point in the pilot, A PATIENT'S TEETH.
- One of Our Own: The doctors become patients frequently over the series' run, including Charlie for the majority of the first season (he was in a coma).
- Pet the Dog: Dawn is very no-nonsense, and frequently downright mean, but Spirit Alex witnesses her gushing over her guinea pig.
- Promoted to Parent: Alex claims to have basically raised her younger brothers after their father's suicide, which led to their mother's alcoholism.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- Alex's pregnancy was a result of Erica Durance's real life pregnancy.
- Joel's death was the result of Daniel Gillies being unable to be a lead character on two shows (he stuck with The Originals).
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: While Charlie awakens from his coma by the end of the first season, the series finale puts him right back into a coma. Only this time he never wakes up.
- Twofer Token Minority: Shahir is both Indian and gay (and also has Asperger's, so really a three-fer?).
- Unfinished Business: Most of the ghosts/spirits in the hospital have this, and resolve it with Charlie's help.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It seems odd that we don't get to see the stuck-together patients from "Awakening" reunite after their surgery, particularly to see whether the woman accepts the proposal.
