I was skeptical when I learned that the CW would have a television remake of the 2000 film Frequency. It appeared to be the same show with a slight gender-swap. I wasn’t sure an entire season, let alone a series, could be made from that one film. I was completely wrong. 

After discovering her father’s old ham radio in the garage, lighting strikes the antenna, allowing Raimy Sullivan (Peyton List) to talk to her father, Frank (Riley Smith) at the same time 20 years earlier. In the next couple days in 1996, Frank will go on an undercover sting operation where he’ll be shot and killed on duty. Meanwhile, Raimy is investigating a serial killer cold case called “the Nightingale.” While in the process of digging up a body from the ocean, Raimy informs her father of his imminent death and saves him from the crooked cops who planned to take him down.

As with all time travel stories, this creates a butterfly effect for the present. By saving her father’s life, Raimy’s mother visits him in the hospital and is put in the Nightingale killer’s sites instead of his former target. In turn, the body she finds in the ocean is her mother, whom she suddenly realizes is dead due to her actions. While the events in the past change the present, Raimy remembers both timelines. This allows her to find evidence on the Nightingale and call Frank with the information to track him down in the past, though it causes problems when the timeline changes and people she knew to be crooked have changed in the 20-year period. Nonetheless, with her mother’s death date already discovered, the father-daughter team work together to track down the killer before this can happen.

The season finale of Frequency premiered this week, with a majority of  season one’s events settled, aside from ensuring Frank survives to the present, while setting up events for a second season if it is to come. With ratings being low until the past few weeks, the network capped the number of episodes at 13 for the season. While no word of renewal has been announced, this could prove helpful for the struggling show, though with constant new programming coming and going from the network, finding room for this may be the excuse the CW uses to cancel it for good. Luckily for us, thanks to the new WB/Netflix deal, the entire series should be available on Netflix next week. If the views on Netflix are high, we may get another season of the Sullivan family.