Patti O'Shea's Blog

The more I watch Dead Like Me, the more I love it! (DLM is a television show that was on Showtime for 2 years (2003-2004, I believe) before being canceled.) I’m pretty sure I blogged about this before, but that’s when I liked it, but that was about it. After watching the first 8 episodes of season 2, I can unequivocally say I’m hooked and that I can’t believe it was canceled after only two seasons! I want to keep watching and watching and watching.

DLM is about an 18-year-old girl who dies, and instead of proceeding into the afterlife, ends up being a grim reaper. It’s her job to take the soul out of the body of someone who’s about to die and hang around with them until they cross to the other side. There are other reapers that she works with as well: Rube, the boss; Daisy, the former actress who slept with everyone in old Hollywood; Mason, the addict/alcoholic; and Roxy, the meter maid turned police officer. (Rube was Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride and Roxy was Whitley on A Different World.)

I nearly quit watching after the pilot episode. Quite frankly, I wasn’t impressed and I have a hard time paying attention to television anyway, but I thought I’ll give it one more disk. (I’m borrowing them from Netflix.) Those next 4 episodes captured my attention, but I only liked the show, I didn’t love it. Then I started season 2.

OMG, season 2 totally rocks! After watching the first 8 episodes, I’ve become an avid fan. The characterization is first rate, the humor is dry and sometimes dark, and the actors make the characters come to life.

The other thing I like is that it makes me think about life and what it means to be alive. Not while I’m watching, but afterward. I’m sure a lot of people simply watch it and it’s nothing more than entertainment, but as the characters seek and question, it makes me question, too. George, the heroine, questions everything because she’s a new reaper and because that’s the kind of personality she has. Daisy seeks answers through her religion. And in one episode, Mason has stopped drinking and doing drugs–until he has to reap a father at his young daughter’s birthday party. The deceased person says to him something like how can he live with himself, knowing that a little girl is always going to remember his dying on her birthday. And Mason starts drinking again.

There’s all these nice little insights into character and maybe that’s why I love it so much and maybe that’s why I love it more the longer I watch–the characters become a little more fleshed out in each episode. I can’t rave enough about the show.

I’m both eager to watch the next two disks and dreading it because once I’m done, there are no more episodes to watch. When I’m done, I’m done. Kind of. I heard they’re doing a television movie of the show and if it does well, they might make it a series again. I am so hoping it does well and that DLM continues. It might even be enough to get me to subscribe to Showtime (if that’s the channel that ends up showing it again) and I haven’t had a paid cable station since shortly after I left college.

I don’t feel as if I’ve done the show justice. To give an idea just how good it is, I rarely watch television unless it’s some documentary/informative show on Discovery or Nat Geo or something. Most shows can’t hold my interest for long. This show not only holds my interest, but it’s left me so excited to see more, I can hardly stand the thought of waiting for the next Netflix shipment. It’s even left me excited enough that I want to buy the series on DVD so that I’ll be able to watch it whenever I want.

Anyway, I’d recommend giving this series a try and hanging in there past the first few episodes. It seriously does get better the longer I’ve watched it.

BTW, if you’re already a fan, I saw a clip on You Tube of a sneak peek at the TV movie coming up (I think this year.) I don’t have a direct link–sorry–but you can do a search for it.

Last night I watched Dead Like Me. It’s a television series that was on Showtime, I think. This is one of the frustrating things about having the NetFlix one at a time plan–I wanted to see more episodes, but I didn’t have disks three and four for Season One. There are some episodes up on the website that I can watch, but I’d rather watch on my television than my computer.

Anyway, Dead Like Me is about an 18-year-old girl, George (short for Georgia), who gets killed and discovers that she’s a Reaper. That means that she takes the souls of people who die out of their bodies. The leader of this group of Reapers passes out the assignments on yellow Post-It notes. She doesn’t like her job and doesn’t want it. She questions everything and disobeys rules all the time. The Reapers are dead, but not dead and so they need places to live and money to live on. The job comes without a salary.

Disk 1 was the pilot episode and that was it. It was okay, but not hugely interesting to me. I was going to stop watching there, but the premise of the series was so intriguing, I decided to try Disk 2. I enjoyed the next five episodes much more. George is struggling with her job. She doesn’t want people to die and constantly searches for ways around it. Only that never works and the repercussions are usually high.

IMO the fact that George is 18 when she dies makes the questioning and her trying to keep everyone alive believable. She doesn’t understand yet that death is a natural part of life and that it’s not necessarily fair.

The other part of the series I’m finding interesting is her family. The series jumps to her sister and mother regularly (the father just largely seems absent, both physically and emotionally) and shows how they’re reacting. The mother is a piece of work, but after six episodes, I’m starting to understand why she is how she is. The little sister is the one really having difficulty with George’s death and it feels as if she has no one she can turn to because the mother is so shut off.

Anyway, I enjoyed the five episodes I watched last night enough to get the next disk. The only downside is one of the Reapers in the last episode was replaced and I really dislike the new one. She’s just walking all over George. I’m hoping this woman is only temporary or that George will kick her out of her apartment and we’ll get less of the blond chick. If not, I might be stopping with disk 3.