I’m shocked that nobody’s talking about these - shocked, I tell you.
So, what did we think?
I felt vindicated knowing that Rube died from some criminal enterprise. People didn’t believe me at first.
I’m wondering if eventually that George will take over Rube’s job. But it’s obvious she has powers beyond those of regular Reapers. After all, she can see and kill Gravelings!
Mason’s character was starting to annoy more as the season went on.
I think the best storylines revolve around George (and her family) and Rube.
To be fair, Bob, we don’t know exactly how Rube died. He could have been killed in the robbery, or he could have lived on the lam for some time and had a piano fall on his head. It’s a bit early yet to say for sure the he died from a criminal enterprise. And really, him getting killed in the robbery seems a bit too obvious, a bit too ordinary, for this show. I mean, Roxy got strangled over freakin’ leg warmers, Mason drilled a hole in his own head, Daisy burned up on a movie set, and George–well, she’s Toilet Seat Girl. Various reaps have included a guy chopping off his own head, a guy choking to death on candy that flew out of a pinata, and EMS breaking a guy’s neck in a revolving door. They don’t typically do the obvious, ordinary deaths.
Personally, I wonder where they’re going with the Crystal thing. There’s been speculation that she’s Rube’s boss, but I don’t really think so. People have pointed out that episode where she was stealing all those Post-its from Happy Time, but a)Rube doesn’t get his info on Post-its, he writes them himself b) Crystal is the sort of woman who sneezes on people’s keyboards and licks people’s phones, so I’m sure she has her own reasons for stealing a duffel full of Post-its and c)if Crystal were Rube’s boss, she’d already know who Millie is and would have no reason to be looking up Georgia Lass’s files at this late date.
Did she? I distinctly recall her having been killed by a shotgun blast.
Major, colossal pedant: yes, they do do the obvious, ordinary deaths. You’re getting mixed up because mostly we only see the weird deaths, because those are the ones that make for quirky and entertaining TV, but there was nothing unusual or exciting about the gay guy who committed suicide when he found his partner dead, for instance.
Agreed on all points - it’s looking very unlikely that Crystal is Rube’s boss now. However, one does have to ask why she was looking up George’s file at all; if she remembered the name, she’d surely remember that George was dead. While she’s obviously not a psychic or anyone else able to see through Reaper disguises (or she’d have identified Millie long before), she knows about Reaping because she’s seen the Death Files. The most likely possibility I can see is that she’s building a psychic conspiracy theory, and when the time is right she’s going to try and break the story to the world.
I’m fairly certain she’s talked about dying in a fire on the set of Gone With the Wind. Of course, that may just be what she tells people. Given her response to reaping the woman who was murdered by her married lover, I think that she did die on the set as she claims, but the rest of her death story is bullshit. My guess is that some guy she was boning killed her, then set a fire and made it look like an accident.
And, ya know, there’s something of a difference between “they don’t do ordinary deaths” and “they don’t typically do ordinary deaths.” Just sayin’. 
I must say, though, that was a truly impressive pedant. It was amazingly huge that I almost asked if that was a pedant in your pocket or if you were just happy to see me. 
I missed a few of the later episodes from last season, though, so I have to ask: what are the Death Files, how do they confirm Reaping, and how did Crystal see them.
I happened to see this show for the first time - the episode was the Halloween one. I’m not sure I like it yet. But a few questions:
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Can people see them or what? The British guy and the girl were sitting under the tree watching the serial killer walk into and out of the house. He had to see them if they were visible. I guess they aren’t normally visible since that was the big deal about wearing a mask right? Very confusing.
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What the heck are those little demon things? Can people see them?
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Why do they mark them? What happens if they don’t? How do the dead people just randomly show up next to them?
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What’s up with that secretary? And what office are they in? Is that the special death office in the afterlife?
It’s all very confusing.
When I think of Death Files, I think of the episode where Rube made everyone catch up on his paperwork. He had the last thoughts of everyone who had been reaped for years and he wanted them all sorted into categories. Everyone hated it, and George convinced him to do it as a database, to be quicker.
To get access to computers, they broke into the temp agency that George works for and only realized halfway through the process that Crystal was there, even in the dead of night. George was afraid that she would nark on them, but instead she helped.
Is that the death files? I’ve only seen season one.
Let’s see if I can answer the questions:
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They can be seen, but they don’t look like the people they were when they were alive.
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The gravelings cause accidents that kill people.
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If a reaper doesn’t reap a soul, the soul has to feel the death and is stuck in the body afterwards, rather than being able to move on. Watching your own autopsy from inside is unsettling.
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The temp agency is just someplace that George worked and Millie works. She was on her first lunch break when she died. Crystal is odd. She may just be odd-coworker odd, but with this show, you never know.
Oh, and the waffle house is just a waffle house.
undefinedundefined1) Yes, people can see them, at least most of the time. They sort of…fade out a bit when they’re dealing with someone who just died. Normally, they don’t look the way they did when they were alive. They’re given new appearances and identities when they start their afterlives, so that they’re not recognized by people who knew them. On Halloween, though, they look like themselves. The other Reapers are from different areas and have been dead for lo these many years, so there’s not much danger of them being recognized. George, however, is still in her home town and has only been dead a little over a year, thus her need for the mask.
- Those gremlin-y things are called Gravelings. They cause the freak accidents. When somebody dies because of something wholly unexpected, like the reaps I described above, there’s a Graveling at the bottom of it. The living can’t see them, and evidently some Reapers can only catch a glimpse from time to time from the corner of their eyes. George, however, can always see them, even looking at them straight on.
3)They’re not marking people, they’re popping their souls. The soul is removed prior to death so that the deceased doesn’t feel anything when they die and so they don’t go to the afterlife all jacked up. If you don’t reap someone’s soul, they still die, but the soul stays trapped in the body and experiences the autopsy, etc.
4)Nobody’s entirely sure what’s up with Crystal. She’s weird, but near as we can figure out she’s a live human being. The office is a temp agency where George worked for half a day before she died, and where Millie (George’s Reaper disguise identity) works now. Crystal is the secretary/receptionist there.
The last ep of the second season is not usually a good place to come in. Either DL the pilot from somewhere if you can, or get someone to lend you it.
This has been answered twice, but not definitively.
Reapers are mortal (albeit practically indestructible) and entirely visible. Though to we the audience they look as they did in life, not everybody sees them that way - they have a second appearance that disguises them from people who knew them when they were alive. This prevents much confusion and heartache.
Reapers tend to be inconspicuous when nobody is expecting to see them, but when they’re “on business” this effect is much stronger - people ignore them completely. It’s probably to do with humans not wanting to admit to their mortality.
The demon things are called gravelings (pronounced “GRAVE-ling”), and they are the creatures that cause the accidents. Nobody is entirely sure where they come from, but it has been strongly implied that they are the souls of people whose death occurs outside destiny’s plan.
The living cannot see gravelings, and Reapers generally can only see them out of the corner of their eye. The only exception we know of to this rule is George, who can not only see gravelings directly, but could do so when she was alive. What this means, we do not know.
CCL and Yllaria both mentioned that the “marking” was in fact separating the soul from the body before death and described one of the consequences of failure to pop a soul. However, they both forgot the consequence of a Reaper preventing someone who turned up for their destined appointment. In that event, the body lives on but the soul rots within it. It isn’t pleasant.
To answer your last question, the “randomly appearing dead people” are of course the souls of the deceased, waiting to be guided to their final reward. Don’t ask what it is; even the Reapers don’t know. It’s different for everyone.
A natural side-effect of coming in 24 episodes late. Don’t worry about it. It isn’t confusing (much) and you’re not stupid for not understanding (muCOUGHCOUGHCOUGH).
Yllaria - yes, Rube’s paperwork is what I’m referring to as the Death Files. And while I’d have to watch the ep again to be sure, I’m certain that on Daisy’s sheet her COD is given as a shotgun blast.
Oh, and Der Wafflehaus is not just a waffle house. It’s home.
Whoops! I meant to say that they are physical, but they don’t age, get sick or die (again). They can be injured but not seriously discomfited, and any injury they sustain heals with incredible rapidity.
I think Rube dying in the commission of a crime would do a good job of explaining why he’s been a reaper so long. He’s got to work OT to make up for his bad deeds in life.
Of course, I can’t figure out why the Lisa Simpson Reaper (who took Rube’s daughter’s soul) has been on the job even longer. She died on the Titanic! I guess she’s a Reaper assigned to the Old Age division.
Possibly, but that doesn’t explain why the Pet Reaper has been on the job for nine years.
I think it’s pretty certain that Rube was killed in a shootout. Even without the heavy implication that he went out to commit armed robbery and never came back, we get referenced to it in the pilot (“bad people are punished by society’s laws”), and we know Rube died of unnatural causes or he wouldn’t be in the UC division.
Natural Causes, actually. I wondered why she wound up in there when her death was the result of an accident, but it eventually clicked - you’re assigned by cause of death. Her COD was drowning or hypothermia, not “iceberg collision”. As for why she worked with Rube for a while, I blame clerical error.
I liked the last episode. However, I was disappointed in the way they wrapped up the Ray storyline–it left very confusing wrinkles in the show’s mythology, and George’s graveling-slaying at least deserved a mention in the next episode.
I don’t know what’s up with Crystal, but I hope it’s a long time before we find out. I like her as the creepy peripheral character; it would lose something if she were too involved in the plot.
The episode right before these last two–the one where the dog dies, and Mason gets a purple Post-It–was my favorite episode of the whole series.
Have you ever thought that there are more than one Rube out there?
This is probably because the episodes are delayed a week in other SHOWTIME regions?
Mentioned by whom? George isn’t about to tell anyone, and nobody else knows.
So why wasn’t anybody talking about the episode that aired two Sundays ago in some places and this Sunday in others?
Showtime must have weird schedules in some places. Not sure why there is a time lag.
It’s clear to me that George is a Super-Reaper. She saw Gravelings when she was a child. See can see them head on. And she can kill them too.
I’m hoping the third season we will see George get a better feel of just what she can do.