I watched a couple of episodes of the show last night on the Sci-Fi Channel. I laughed my butt off, and now I’m kicking myself for ignoring the show first run. Someone please explain the back story to me, since I didn’t see the pilot.
George and the gang are people who’ve died, but instead of going on, they have to play tag with the people who are about to cash it in? Why?
The members of the dead gang are flesh and blood, not spirits/angels?
What is the little scaley monkey thing?
The blond lady with the geekette daugher is George’s family, and George died skydiving?
What happens if the dead gang fails to tag the about-to-die person?
The actress that plays George is not the hottest looking one in the cast, but she has everyone else beat hands down because she has the best rubber face I’ve seen short of Jackie Chan. She’s her funniest when she scrunches up like she’s concentrating on something…
George and the gang are people who’ve died, but instead of going on, they have to play tag with the people who are about to cash it in? Why? [/spoiler] A reaper has a set number of souls they have to reap before moving on. They don’t know what that number is. The last person a reaper takes becomes his or her replacement.
Yes, but immortal. And they aren’t the original bodies. George’s body is actually buried in her grave, for example.
A graveling. While the reapers take a person’s soul, the gravelings are the ones who cause their deaths. In the second season, we get a clue as to where gravelings come from.
Yes. But George was killed by a toilet seat that fell from a space station.
If the person still makes their appointment stated on the post-it, they die anyway, but their souls actually experience the death, they’re trapped in the corpse until the reaper releases them, and they carry their death injury as they pass on. If a reaper actively prevents someone from making their appointment, then they’re saved, but the gravelings rain down hell on the reaper in retaliation.
I’ve only seen the pilot episode, but based on that I’d recommend renting the show on DVD – it must be cut down on the Sci-Fi Channel, and I think it would lose something without the cursing.
Also, we’re told that if a reaper saves a person from her appointed death, the person’s soul will have already expired, and will go bad inside her. Mandy Patinkin’s character says: “Consult Webster on the meaning of ‘bad’”.
A lot of questions I hope will be answered later. E.g., what about people who die in isolation, many miles from another person?
The two seasons are fairly cheap to buy (about $30/each). It’s a great show, and I don’t feel like it was given enough of a chance, but I feel part of that was a failure on the part of the creators. The show didn’t really settle into itself until season two, and by then it was already too late. Perhaps that’s the downside of those half-sized seasons that are becoming more and more popular.
You people like picking at old wounds don’t you? I was pissed when it was cancelled. From what I remember most fans thought it was a dirty trick by Showtime to cancel it, not the creators fault. Showtime had two series ,Huff and Fat Actress that they were pushing. Those shows were owned and developed by Showtime. Dead Like Me was purchased from another production company. Showtime wanted to push their own shows so they dumped Dead Like Me. Of course if the show was getting Soprano numbers then it wouldn’t have been an issue.
George’s family fell apart when she died. Her father is going through a mid-life crisis and her sister is going nuts. He left and you get to see him from time to time. For some reason they chose to follow her family as a sub plot. I could fast forward through all of it. Each one of them annoyed the hell out of me. George is better off dead.
He started his affair with one of his students before George died - when we finally see them together it’s fairly obvious this wasn’t anything new - also Mom is a bit of a shrew - she has no clue how to relate to her younger daughter, let alone her (ex) husband, and I get the impression she had similar troubles with George (in fact she apologizes for such at George’s gravesite somewhere in the middle of season one (“George’s Day”)) If I had a mom like that, I’d be closed off, too. (as in I can’t blame Reggie for the way she behaves)
Well, in fairness, I only finished the show about three weeks ago, so it’s not an old wound to me. I don’t watch (or have the ability to watch) any television, so I can *only *catch shows on DVD.
By the way, I finished both Dead Like Me and Carnivale that week. Talk about a bummer of a week.
I agree. I just completed the series on DVD and although I enjoyed it, I thought it was weaker with the family subplot. I just didn’t care about any of them.
I agree, mostly. I like Reggie, but I find Joy boring and one-note. To me the adventures of George and the other reapers are way more entertaining/interesting than what’s going on with her family.
anyrose, are you sure about the affair already being in motion? I got the impression from that episode (where George meets the affair girl when she and Mason reap a kid at the local college) that the girl had a thing for George’s father, but had not been able to approach him. Remember the scene with George, her father and the girl in the restaurant? George gets up from the table, does something, then turns back to find the other chick had moved from the other side of the table to sit next to George’s father. I had the impression that, in a weird way, George had provided the push that brought the affair into being; another of those consequences that come from reapers trying to maintain contact with their loved ones (such as Rube frequently warns Georgia about). That was the point of the scene, as I read it.
Either way, it’s still part of the family stuff, and I could use less of that.
By the way, does anyone know how many more episodes are left before we get to the end? Last night’s second ep was the one where George reaps the rock star at his performance, in case you’re not up on where we are in the sequence.
I loved the show, though I felt that the second season was weaker.
Bryan Fuller, the creator, left after season 1 and I don’t think that the new show runners really “got” the concept (for instance, George’s dad was originally conceived as being a closeted/in denial homosexual, and the marriage would break up when he came out). They also added a christian sub-plot for Daisy’s character that had me worried that the show would eventually turn into “Touched by an Angel” (I think one of the season 2 show runners came from that show).
By the way, Fuller left the show to do “Wonderfalls,” a network show that Fox buried on Friday night and never promoted. Only 4 episodes aired, but the DVD has all 13 episode that were shot. If you like DLM, this is a show with the same sensibility…
if not already in motion, certainly being considered - Joy left the marriage long before George died; Dad was just taking the next logical step of a middle aged man receiving amourous attentions from a pretty co-ed. The co-ed’s actions and body language said to me that this had at least been something she’d been thinking about for a while.
You probably don’t even need to buy the DVDs – you can rent them from your local video rental place, netflix, etc. That’s how we’re watching Six Feet Under.
Yup. It too will not have a third, though. It makes me wonder about Weeds…
I like Dead Like Me but I think they dropped the ball on the OP’s question #2. It confused the heck out of me when I first began watching the show, too.
Fair enough. But whether she’d been thinking about it or not, I think the crucial difference is, she only acted after George showed up and befriended her (and thereby formed a tangential connection with her father). That point about the consequences of George interfering with the living needs to be kept in mind.
Thanks for the info, DeadlyAccurate. I’ll assume you live up to your screen name.
I remember when we started watching these… I distinctly recall thinking that George’s dad’s friend would end up being male… There is some stuff in season 2 that helped mom’
s side, and don’t ask about JD…
I’ve got the season set for Wonderfalls… one of these days I’ll watch it…remember reading an interview where they said it all tied together by the end of the season…