HOPE ENDURES
Supernatural medical drama enters final season after years of defying industry odds
“Is there any future for Hope?”
Erica Durance admits, early on, the thought did enter her mind.
CTV’s Saving Hope began its life back in 2012 as a medical drama with a supernatural twist. It was one of those high-concept hybrid shows that sounded intriguing on paper. But was it sustainable? Was it the sort of premise that lent itself to a long life in the fickle world of Canadian television?
“It was like: ‘So we’re going, now what do we do?’ ” the Calgary native said with a laugh, when asked about the show’s ongoing ability to balance medical drama with supernaturally enhanced questions about the great beyond. “Thank God, the creators said, ‘No, no, it’s fine, we know what we’re doing with it.’ But it’s funny, because we all had those moments.”
As fans know, exploring weighty themes of love, fate, destiny, death and the afterlife amid the frantic backdrop of a Toronto hospital has proven fertile ground for the writers of Saving Hope. Durance, who grew up on a farm in Three Hills, Alta., and first won attention as Lois Lane on the sci-fi series Smallville, has been playing Dr. Alex Reid since the series began five seasons ago, when she signed on as the show’s star and producer.
On Sunday, Saving Hope will enter its fifth and final season, wrapping up five years of death, romance, wandering spirits, authentically gory operating-room scenes and expertly expressed medical jargon. As in the past, Sunday’s return comes after another nail-biting, emotionally draining cliffhanger that found Reid and her longtime love interest, Dr. Charlie Harris (Michael Shanks), confronted by a guntoting convicted killer from their past while attending a swanky reception. Gunfire is the last sound audiences heard before the closing credits of Season 4 back in early 2016.
It was a dramatic and potentially tragic cliffhanger in a show that has become known for putting its audience through the emotional ringer. The end of Season 3, for instance, included the spectacularly explosive end of Dr. Joel Goran (Daniel Gillies), the dashing orthopedic surgeon and another Reid love interest. Season 2 ended with Reid at death’s door after (literally) being stabbed in the heart.
Saving Hope began its first season with Harris, then chief surgeon of Hope Zion Hospital and Reid’s fiancé, in a coma after a car accident and wandering the hallways of the hospital in spirit form. He recovers by the end of the first season, but doesn’t lose his ability to see and communicate with the hospital’s dead or comatose spirits, maintaining the show’s supernatural edge.
Since then, Reid has lost her brother, reconnected with her mother, been stabbed in the heart, given birth to a baby boy and endured typical ups and downs of television romance with Harris, among other major life events.
The show’s heavy doses of melodrama and cliffhanger finales are not novelties, but reflections of the show’s major themes, Durance says.
“It’s always been that way: nobody is really safe,” says Durance. “I think that is what we’ve talked about. It’s not just because it’s a shtick. A lot of shows seem to do that to get people excited and interested. It goes along with the theme of the show, which is we never know when our time of going to be up. Nobody does. So what are we going to do with the time we’ve been given and how are we going to treat the people in our lives?”
The decision that Saving Hope’s time was up was made after much discussion, based on the notion to end the series on its own terms rather than have the decision made for them.
As with most actors, Durance says she didn’t enter Saving Hope thinking about its long-term future.
“This business is interesting, because everything is in hindsight,” she says. “You look back and say ‘I ended up doing that for five years.’ But at the time you’re doing it, it all seems like it’s going to be very finite and over very soon. So you never really, at least I don’t, rest on your laurels and think I’m going to be here for a bunch of years. For me, each year was exciting and new and I was on tenterhooks to see if we would continue on. In hindsight, looking back, it’s an actor’s dream come true to be able to play something for 85 episodes for five years and see this character through many different situations and get to play in that world for that long.”
So Durance was determined to make every second count while filming the final season.
“It makes every moment more precious and for every scene you want to do the best that you can and enjoy the character you’re playing,” she said “When we went through the season knowing it would be our last one we gave it our best effort. We wanted it to end the way it began. Yes it’s about the medicine, but it’s a show about all those bigger questions. Our theme for this year is: Is our destiny written in the stars for us, or do we create our own destiny?”
As for her own destiny, Durance says she is sufficiently occupied these days with her family with husband David Palffy, an actor and University of Calgary graduate. Married since 2005, the family lives in Vancouver. Their youngest son was born in December.
Beyond that, she said she is happy to take her time to discover what’s next in her career.
“I have a teenager, a two-yearold and an infant, so these next few months are all about that,” she says. “But I’m open to what’s out there for sure. But I think that any time I go into a new project, I would definitely push to be part of the storytelling more, whether it’s producing or directing. Just allowing myself to get my hands dirty and get in there more, because I enjoyed it so much.”