Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season

Amazon.com

Pay cable's "other"show about life and death, Dead Like Me takes a darkly comic look at mortality through the eyes of someone stuck between this life and the afterlife. "Bail bondsmen for the disembodied" is how Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the often exasperated Reaper foreman, explains it to disaffected 18-year-old George (Ellen Muth) after she's vaporized by a falling toilet seat from the Mir space station and drafted into the ranks of the Reapers. It's now her job to take the souls of the doomed, preferably before their mortal coil is damaged beyond recognition by the devilish machinations of the gremlin-like gravelings.

You wouldn't mistake George's fellow Reapers for the do-gooders of Touched by an Angel, but they are anything but grim. Charming British shyster Mason (Callum Blue) always has some scam brewing, high-living, fun-loving former flapper Betty (Rebecca Gayheart) treats death as a cabaret ("Reaping Havoc"), and one-time starlet and wannabe actress Daisy (Laura Harris) still nurses her dreams of stardom. Even hard-bitten meter maid Roxy (Jasmine Guy) manages to find a way to let loose.

Dead Like Me puts a light touch on black comedy, but it has a sneaky way of using humor to explore loss, loneliness, and regret, as well as kindness, and courage, and responsibility. George gets a hard lesson when she tries to wriggle out of her assignments like some overgrown kid, only to see the damage of her (in)action in "Reapercussions." And as George's angry, tightly-wound mother (Cynthia Stevenson) and withdrawn little sister Reggie cope with death, she breaks the rules to watch over them: their own pouty, glum guardian angel. There's nothing like your own death to put your life into perspective.

The four-disc set features all 14 episodes of the debut season of Showtime's witty black comedy. The feature-length pilot includes optional commentary by cast members Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Jasmine Guy, Cynthia Stevenson, and Callum Blue. Other supplements include the nominal documentary featurettes Dead Like Me: Behind-the-scenes and The Music of Dead Like Me (with theme song composer Stewart Copeland), 32 deleted scenes, and a still gallery. --Sean Axmaker

Description

You're about to be collected. "Winningly eccentric" (LA Daily News) and "insistently irreverent" (People), this groundbreaking, original series delivers you into a realm of shockingly funny characters and twisted narratives you'll find completely "addictive" (NY Daily News)!When an errant toilet seat from the falling Mir space station puts an abrupt end to her life, George (Ellen Muth) discovers that death is nothing like she thought it would be. Recruited to collect the souls of others as they die, she suddenly finds herself an unwilling participant in a line of work she never knew existed: Grim Reaping!

Customer Reviews:

Fabulous.......2007-09-11

One criteria for the greatness of a movie is how often I can watch it. The second is that if I stumble across it while channel surfing, will I stop and watch. Dead Like Me is one of those shows.

Mr. Blinky.......2007-09-07

IMHO 'Dead Like Me" is the all-time best television series. Of course I like off-kilter stuff that still makes sense and tries to build themes into the story. For those who have not discovered this gem, imagine a cross between "Tru Calling" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" that pushes the envelope of irreverence about as much as "The Family Guy". Then imagine that behind all the surface irreverence is a transcendent reverence for the human condition. If that level of complexity appeals to you, "Dead Like Me" is something you should immediately track down.

I was permanently hooked by the conclusion of the "Pilot" episode when the resolution did not take the traditional happy path. Instead of being able to intervene and change the destiny of the little girl, George (Ellen Muth) is forced to do her job as a reaper. They go out to the strains of "Que Sera Sera", normally very corny but here very ironic. The song was originally written for Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much", a film about parents trying rescue their child which has parallels to what George is attempting. And the song's lyrics are a perfect fit for the "randomness of life" theme of "Dead Like Men".

Each episode has subtle details like this, which may require repeated viewings just to uncover elements that you missed initially. I recommended purchasing a DVD of each season just to have the flexibility to watch several times at your convenience.

"Dead Like Me," has the mark of writers who aren't thinking about audience reaction or how the Showtime executives will relate to it. The story just pours out with a lot of verve, wit, and audacity.

The story is told from the point of view of 18-year-old jaded slacker Georgia "George" Lass (Muth), whose voice-over commentary sometimes contradicts what is happening on the screen. Her intelligence and advanced maturity give a world-weary "whatever" to the endless bizarre situations she must deal with; "it looks like death was just my wake-up call".

Any series that focuses on a teenager killed by a falling toilet seat from the space station Mir has something going for it. George is sometimes called Miss Toilet Seat. She is assigned to Rube (Mandy Patinkin from "Chicago Hope"), who is kind of a platoon sergeant for a small group of "not always grim" reapers (soul collectors) who meet in a German Waffle House (listen for the occasional yodeling in the background).

There is a running side story about the family George left behind. Her grieving unhappy mother Joy (Cynthia Stevenson), her professor father, Clancy (Greg Kean), and her sister Reggie (Britt McKillip) who collects toilet seats and may remind you of Dawn Weiner.

The reapers might technically be the undead but they interact with the living 24-7; although in a different body than they had when they were alive. There is no pay but they need a place to stay and food to eat so they get day jobs or relieve the dead of their spare cash. They even have pets; George keeps Mr. Blinky, the little girl's frog from the pilot episode.

Rube gives each reaper a yellow sticky note with a name, address, and an ETD; it's up to the reaper to collect the soul-ideally just before the actual death, and guide them to the next life. Reapers don't know why they got the job or how long they will be performing it; they accept it because it affords them the opportunity to continue to experience the things they liked and disliked about living; and they are not ready to give these up.

As a series "Dead Like Me" establishes a complex and consistent set of rules that viewers embrace. The writers are good about playing within this set of constraints and not cheating when they feel lazy or it is otherwise convenient.

Humor of various kinds is the predominant emotion but things often get serious and philosophical in a believable and intelligent fashion.

"When I was just a little girl I asked my mother what will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here's what she said to me.

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Que sera, sera... What will be, will be...

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This show is on of the great ones.......2007-09-05

I don't know what to say that others or the product itself cannot say for itself. The show has great characters portrayed by the perfect actors and actresses, and it was over too soon. The storyline was intense and yet humorous, I think this is a great way to understanding death while keeping a neutral point-of-view.

Great Show!.......2007-08-18

This was such a great show, and we were so sad to see it taken off the air. We're really glad the box sets were released, and at such a good price they're a must have!

Excellent and unusual series, mediocre DVD set........2007-08-15

Dead Like Me is an intelligent, irreverent, short-lived Showtime series about death and the implications it has for life. Smart, snarky teenage slacker Georgia "George" Lass (Ellen Muth), who "excels at not giving a shit," is killed on her lunch break from a boring temp job by a toilet seat crashing to earth from the MIR space station - and that's in the first half hour of the pilot. Rather than the end, this is the beginning of her new life as a Grim Reaper, undead persons who reap the souls from the living just before death and help them on their way to an afterlife that is very deliberately kept vague, but seems to be inviting and tailor-made for each individual.

Stuck in an unpaid and unpleasant job she can neither refuse nor quit, George spends the first few episodes rebelling and looking for loopholes, which sets her at odds with her kindly but authoritarian Reaper boss, Rube (Mandy Patinkin). She gets help and advice on coping with her new unlife from her fellow Reapers: Betty, a free-spirited flapper who died in the 20s (Rebecca Gayheart); Mason, a cheerful lowlife who died chasing the "ultimate high" in the 60s (Callum Blue); Roxy, a grumpy hard-nosed meter maid (Jasmine Guy); and Daisy, a frilly, self-centered would-be starlet from the 30s (Laura Harris).

Although the living see them as someone other than their former selves, Reapers have physical bodies and must eat and sleep, although they heal very quickly when injured. George ends up squatting in a grubby apartment abandoned by one of Mason's reaps, and for income returns to the "Happy Time" temp agency and the same job she hated before she died. However, with a new identity and a slightly better attitude, she quickly makes a friend of the quirky but big-hearted Happy Time boss, Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes).

George had little use for her family before she died, but finds herself obsessed with them afterwards, and, despite Rube's instructions and her fellow Reapers' advice to the contrary, she frequently visits her old home as "Millie" to see how they are coping and how they remember her. Her tightly-wound, hyperorganized mother, Joy (Cynthia Stevenson) and her glib, easy-going father, Clancy (Greg Kean) cling to denial and find it harder and harder to talk to each other. George's brainy, introverted little sister Reggie (Britt McKillip) enters into a morbid phase of collecting toilet seats and dead birds and trying to contact her sister by Ouija board.

The cast is excellent, the writing sharp and insightful, the directing and score and visual effects good-to-excellent. The series is mostly very funny, but has a deft touch for slipping in philosophy and pathos from time to time. Themes of life and death, fate, morality, responsibility, and what people mean to one another are constantly in play, but the characters do not sit around discoursing on the profound. Like George's highly entertaining narrative voice-overs, the series raises the big questions but makes no attempt to answer them beyond providing a panoply of lives and deaths, ranging from the elaborately absurd to the deeply moving. The main characters are multi-layered, expertly crafted, and beautifully portrayed. Their very human flaws and failings are on display alongside surprising strengths and nobilities - the series very carefully avoids setting up any one character as the touchstone of insight and truth.

There's plenty of black comedy in this series about death and the undead, but very little shock-for-shock's-sake. There's also a fair amount of profanity, mostly from George. People who are uncomfortable with those aspects, or who are uncomfortable with a series that treats religious ideas as open to question (while carefully avoiding any definite answers) probably won't like Dead Like Me. And the series, like George, died young without fulfilling its potential. There were two seasons, both abbreviated, 14 episodes in Season One and 15 in Season Two. By no means was the series brought to a conclusion in Season Two - unfinished plot arcs and half-addressed character issues abound - but the final episode in each season does a reasonably good job of providing at least a degree of emotional closure and a decent stopping-place for the characters and their respective stories.

As much as I love the series, I don't particularly love the DVD sets. The set for Season One is on four disks. Disk One has the two-hour Pilot and all the extras, while the other three disks contain the remaining episodes. Among the extras are deleted scenes from episodes throughout the first season, which would have been better connected with their respective episodes. There are two behind-the-scenes features which allow the non-screen creative people to contribute their insights with illustrative clips from various episodes - interesting, but neither extensive nor profound. The only audio commentary is for the Pilot episode, more entertaining than revelatory, by Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Jasmine Guy, Callum Blue, and Cynthia Stevenson. The rest of the special features are throw-aways, including a stills gallery, and there is no captioning available in any language. Each episode is divided into only five "scenes," and there is (annoyingly) no way to skip the opening theme sequence without missing the first part of the episode.

DVD:

DVD

DVD