I watched the first episode of Showtime’s new series “Dead Like Me” tonight, and overall I was quite pleased. It was funny and clever, and it really left me wondering where it might go next.
The main thrust of the story: a young woman is killed suddenly, and confronted with a group of “grim reapers,” undead people who facilitate people’s souls moving out of their bodies after they are killed. She learns that she is to become the newest grim reaper, and this first episode focuses on her learning about their ways, and trying her first death.
Some highlights were Mandy Patinkin (who I nearly always like) as Rube, the sort-of leader of the group, and an excellent score by Stewart Copeland. Jasmine Guy shows up as another Reaper, who has a day-job as a meter-reading traffic cop, and Rebecca Gayheart’s character of Betty may well be somewhat modelled after Neil Gaiman’s version of Death… she doesn’t have the look, but she definitely has the spirit.
The main character, Georgia, is played by Ellen Muth, who I’ve never seen before, but she brings a nice level of depth to her role. Not overly dramatic, but capable of emotion when its called for. Her character has a lot of potential.
Which is pretty much how I feel about the whole show so far… it’s got a lot of potential. This, it seems to me, is ground ripe for some really good ideas. That potentail could either be squandered, or it could be met… I’m hoping they’ll at least manage to tell some good stories. If they keep up the nice mix of good stories and surprising humor, I’ll at least keep watching.
Actually, a correction… turns out that I have seen Ellen Muth before, but a long time ago. She was the young version of the daughter in Dolores Claiborne. Not bad… not bad at all.
This show could be really great or really bad depending upon where they take it. Mandy Patinkin is great and Ellen Muth is good. I hate hate hate Jasmine Guy. They should have got that black woman baliff from Night Court, or maybe an unknown black actress/actor. (I’m assuming they wanted a black person to round out the cast and Mrs Guy was all they could get.)
I hadn’t heard of it beforehand and we kind of randomly switched to it. I loved it, naturally–I love those types of shows.
I also like how Georgia was commenting on how she doesn’t like the whole corporate-office type of work, which she was stuck in before dying, but then when she became a Grim Reaper she became a part of a similar workplace. (At the beginning, the Grim Reaper who took her soul was ‘promoted’, with “a nice benefits package,” said someone–which makes it sound like heaven is a corporate office.)
I really like the concept of the show, and it will be interesting to see if Georgia is promoted and what exactly happens to someone once they’re promoted. Also, when one of the characters explained gravelings, he made it sound as if they aren’t very often seen, but Georgia seems to see them a lot. Maybe this will make her a better grim reaper?
The show might succed if Ellen Muth manages to carry the weight and the writers manage to come up with fresh twists. I would say that the whole show rests on her internal narrative. The dry humor is perfect for an 18 year old girl, with teen angst. Reminds me a lot of ‘Ghost World’, even though my first impression was ‘Touched by An Angel’ mixed with ‘Six feet under’.
Prediction: If the show is modelled as a clone of ‘Sex feet under’ (i.e. “Hey guys, with need to come up with a hip and egdy show about death!”), then it will fail, due to lack of real vision. If, however, the writers/creators know where they’re going and why, it could be the greatest things on tv, since… Well ‘Six feet under’.
I think the concept is fun and has a lot of potential but the execution seems to be lacking something. I think there doesn’t seem to be enough otherworldlyness to the job the Grim Reapers have. Plus the rulesdon’t seem to be well definied just yet. They show them eating but do they need to eat? They implied that people can see them (just that they do not look like their old selves) so how do they get away with living at murder scenes? Also I am still not so clear on what exactly the grim reapers do.
This is not to say I hated it. The pacing and style were fun and I liked the performances. I will give it a few more chances but I thought I would like it more.
As an aside: was that really Jasmine Guy?! I remember when she was the sex appeal on a show.
I wanna know the rules. Do the GRs attend everyone’s death, or just the violent ones? Can they be killed/hurt/imprisoned? What happens when they yank out someone’s soul? Do they ever run into/create ghosts?
Also, this destiny thing doesn’t make sense. Either a) it was foretold both that a little girl would sit down in the seat and then be saved, or foretelling can’t predict the actions of the undead, which would be a really dumb cop-out, or b) a graveling did it.
Hopefully, there will be better explanation later in the series.
I’m in Quimby’s camp. I see potential, but as of right now I felt there were a good number of weak spots. So for the time being at least, I am on the fence with hopes it will improve.