No One's Getting 'Saved' Here

Don't be fooled by the title of this show. It's not a series based on the 2004 Mandy Moore movie of the same name, nor does it feature any call to get right with God. It does include a team of paramedics who set out to save, with varying degrees of success, people who often need saving from themselves. But if you watch enough of the stories about these guys who drive "the bus," you start wondering who it is who really needs rescuing.

Wyatt Cole (played by Tom Everett Scott of That Thing You Do!) dropped out of medical school after two years. ("I flunked sucking up," he explains.) He's still in medicine, though, as a paramedic. That doesn't cut it for his domineering father, the chief of medicine at the Portland, Ore., hospital where Wyatt's ambulance frequently ends up. Dad tells his son outright that he's wasting his life and tries to bribe him into returning to med school—a bribe that takes the form of paying off half of Wyatt's gambling debt.

What's Your Poison?
Which brings us to a major theme of Saved: addiction. Wyatt is always playing the odds, even putting money on whether a man threatening suicide will jump or not. ("It's not gambling," he explains to a concerned friend. "It's risk assessment.")

His partner, John "Sack" Hallon (Omari Hardwick), is a recovering alcoholic with a strained relationship with his ex and young son. Wyatt's ex-girlfriend and former med school chum, Dr. Alice Alden (Elizabeth Reaser), is addicted to unreliable men—including Wyatt. And many of the patients they treat have been done in by one form of addiction or another. Via quick-cut flashbacks that replay each victim's history we see a grotesquely obese heart attack victim who became addicted to junk food after his wife left him; an OD'd family man who slowly gave in to the allure of heroin; a drunk driver who could not give up the bottle, dying as he's pinned in the crumpled wreckage of his car. Another story line revolves around Wyatt's former college roommate, a painter so addicted to his "art"—painting, then bedding, nudes—that he can't give it up even after it's determined that one of the paints he uses has caused the rare form of leukemia he's suffering from.

Not a Pretty Picture
To its credit, Saved pulls no punches when it comes to showing the results of these various addictions. Wyatt's gambling is not glamorized; it's shown as the pathetic weakness it is, and his rationalizations ring hollow. (Even he doesn't seem to believe them.)

The show also benefits from sharply drawn characters and interesting plots. In Wyatt's immediate orbit are other paramedics, including a no-nonsense Latina, Angela (Tracy Vilar), and a rookie paramedic, Harper (Michael McMillian), who happens to be Mormon. (Ironically, Angela, who is sensitive to any real or perceived slight, particularly racial, nicknames him White Bread.)

Even though Saved is not a religious show, religion is a frequent topic. Harper prays over a sick woman and comments on Mormon doctrine. The owner of the ambulance company is Indian and discusses the Hindu concept of karma with Wyatt. One patient is a practitioner of Santeria, who trusts his spells and potions more than modern medicine. And Wyatt certainly knows not just his Bible, but biblical lore, too. A homeless man who thinks he's John the Baptist ("I eat only locusts and honey") refuses the paramedics' help to treat a bad cut to his head, so Wyatt plays on his biblical delusions, telling him that Salome is looking for him. "She's a witch!" the terrified homeless man responds. "Have you seen her?"

"No," Wyatt responds, "but I've seen her dance." (See Matthew 14:1-11 and note that the name Salome is only inferred by Bible scholars.) The man promptly runs to hide in their ambulance.

A Bumpy Ride
In addition to spiritual counterfeits and sly religious allusions, viewers have so far gotten a bit of rough language, coarse joking and prolonged views of a man's bare backside peeking through his hospital gown. One episode graphically shows the gory results of a man getting his hand caught in a hydraulic machine press. Most problematic, though, are the steamy sex scenes—for example, in the back of the ambulance, where Wyatt and Alice passionately strip down to their underwear before the camera cuts to the outside of the rocking vehicle.

Michael Wright, senior vice president of original programming at TNT, seems proud of this content. "Like the lead character's life and job, the series itself is an ambulance ride," Wright says. "It's fast, bumpy and full of the unexpected."

And therein lies the problem. Despite the show's aesthetic plusses, Saved ultimately gets knocked off-course by its own bumpiness.