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255 of 268 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the truly great series of recent years - no kidding!, February 15, 2004
July 2007 Update!!!!!! There is going to be a movie! Shooting has either wrapped up or is close to wrapping up. Star Ellen Muth goes so far as to hint that that a renewal of the series might be possible. Details are still forthcoming and apart from the movie (and I'm sorry, I don't know if this is a TV, a direct-to-DVD, or theatrical release) nothing definite is known about the chances of the series being revived, but this is definitely good news. There is some recasting. Mandy Patinkin, unfortunately, will not be back as Rube nor will Laura Harris as Daisy. It appears Rube's character is being replaced by a new head reaper, while a new actress will be playing Daisy. Otherwise all the other actors will be back. The rest of my review now appears as it was first written back in February 2004.
I would place DEAD LIKE ME on the shortest of short lists of the truly great television shows of the past decade and a half (that date referring to the debut of TWIN PEAKS and a more artistically serious form of television). Most television shows are unambitious affairs, either because of constraints from the networks or lack of creative talent at the top, but DEAD LIKE ME stands head and shoulders above the competition. It is not nearly as well as it deserves, primarily because it was a series that appeared on Showtime, which limited its exposure.
The television show begins--we learn later--with a toilet seat from the MIR space station rushing to fulfill its destiny on planet earth, namely to ignite into a ball of fire and strike eighteen-year-old Georgia "George" Lass, who is taking her lunch break on the first day of her temp assignment with the Happy Times Employment Agency. George looks up at the descending ball, inaudibly utters the word "sh#t" and immediately enters the next stage of her existence, if not her life. Much to her astonishment, she finds herself standing a few feet away from her body, able to see the living, but herself unseen by all except for a few Grim Reapers, whose job it is to see her into her afterlife. Usually this involves aiding them to the place where they will spend eternity, but in George's case, she is recruited very much against her will to become a Grim Reaper. The rest of the first season deals with George's deep resistance to accepting her new vocation, as well as coming to terms with her death, the loss of her family and the discovery of what they unexpectedly meant to her, her need to find a living (it turns out being a Reaper is an unpaid position), her yearning for friends and companionship, and her growing awareness of what it means to be a human being.
The show succeeds on virtually every level. The scripts are consistently superb, many of them by series creator and STAR TREK: VOYAGER alum Bryan Fuller. The production values are far beyond the normal television series. The special effects (and there are more than one would expect on a show of this kind) are always striking. The photography is simply unmatched in television. I might be inclined to defend the statement that this is the show has the best photography in the history of television. The camerawork is difficult to praise too highly, with innovative camera angles, zooms, wide angle lenses, and especially filters to make this an incredibly beautiful show to look at. It was filmed in Vancouver, but it was supposed to be Seattle, but instead of the rain that one anticipates from the climate, there is constant and brilliant sunshine. Green dominates the screen (the color of growing things?) in every exterior shot. It is exhilarating to view a series that is made this well.
The cast is exquisite. Ellen Muth plays George, and I'm not sure they could have gotten anyone more perfect to play the role. She is a perfect blend of sullen, grumpy, vulnerable, and lost, and she manages perfectly to communicate her awakening to life by having died. She is also one of the more interesting actresses to have appeared in sometime, giving the appearance of being average in appearance while in fact being a striking beauty. Her undead supervisor Rube is played by the great Mandy Patinkin, and he turns in his usual exquisite performance. Rebecca Gayheart (who was the original Inara on FIREFLY, but left before the pilot was shot) was superb in the first few episodes as Betty, who was replaced in the team by Laura Harris (of "24") as deceased Hollywood bit player and promiscuous party girl Daisy Adair (who continually regales the group with tales of her sexual conquests of movie stars). Perhaps my favorite moment of the season occurs when the Reapers are forced to catalog and record all the last thoughts of those whose souls they have reaped, and we inadvertently learn Daisy's last thought. She immediately moves from being an unsympathetic character to one that we love more than a little. The hard-as-nails Roxy, who works as a meter maid, is played convincingly by Jasmine Guy (of A DIFFERENT WORLD, and the team is rounded out by Callum Blue as the hapless British thief and druggie Mason. Cynthia Stevenson is great as George's mom. Special mention has to be made of the supporting character who provides perhaps more hysterical moments during the season than any other, Christine Willes, who plays the unforgettable Dolores Herbig "Brown Eyes," George's supervisor at Happy Times, sometimes friend, and host of her own website called "Getting Things Done," on which she is seen whenever she is home "getting things done."
After loving the first season of the show, I was tremendously excited about two things: 1) the DVD set coming out and 2) the second season. I was ecstatic when the show was renewed for a second season. Despite its quality, Showtime has not worked at developing original series as has its rival HBO. But last fall they announced the show had been renewed for 2004. The new episodes should begin appearing in May 2004. I heartily urge anyone who loves great TV like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SIX FEET UNDER, and FIREFLY to give this remarkable series a shot. You won't be disappointed.
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103 of 113 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The early adventures of the Grim Reaper known as Toilet Girl, September 13, 2004
I am sure the people at Showtime knew what they were doing when they scheduled "Dead Like Me" to start when HBO's "Six Feet Under" was over, because the two shows are certainly complementary. However, while the deaths that begin each episode of "Six Feet Under" have their moments in terms of being rather weird (my favorite was the woman convinced it was the Rapture when she saw the a bunch of helium filled inflatable dolls floating away), they do not have the Rube Goldberg quality of what the gravelings can set in motion in "Dead Like Me."
The idea of the afterlife created by Bryan Fuller, who also created the similarly quirky Wonderfalls," is that right before you die you soul is taken from your body by a Grim Reaper. Although they are replete in the opening title sequence these are not Grim Reapers as in figures in black hood carrying scythes. In fact, they look like regular folk, although not the regular folk they were when they were alive now that they are a peculiar variety of undead. We learn the rules of the game along with young Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth), an 18-year-old sourpuss called George. Having decided to forego the college experience George has been sent out into the world to find a job and during lunch she is passed on the street by a strange man who touches her. We see a light passing from her to him and within seconds a toilet seat from a disintegrating Russian space station strikes her dead.
George is surprised to see herself looking at the big hole in the ground where she had been standing a moment ago and even more surprised to be informed that she is now a Grim Reaper. This task is done by Rube (Mandy Patinkin), who is in charge of a cadre of Reapers in this particular town. This includes Mason (Callum Blue), an English bloke who has figured out that you cannot overdose when you are already dead so indulge in drugs to your heart's contextt; Roxy (Jasmine Guy), a meter maid for the police department with ample attitude to spare; and, at first, Betty Rhomer (Rebecca Gayheart), a former beauty queen who is ready to move on to the next level. We are not quite sure what that is, because while Grim Reapers get to release souls and head them in the right direction (bright lights that assume various pleasing shapes), they really do not know what the final destination is really like for the dead.
Of course, in the early episodes of the series George is not happy with being dead and not exactly thrilled with a job when she is given a post-it note with a name, address and E.T.D. (estimated time of death) so she can go reap a soul. The latter is taken care of when she gets a couple of hard lessons about what happens when she does not (your form in the afterlife is not how you look at the moment of death, but at the moment that your soul is reaped, so it is something you would want to have done before the autopsy). The former is more difficult, because trying to reconnect with her life from beyond the grave is hampered by the fact that she looks different (to everyone else) and she cannot say anything that would convince anyone who knew her before that she was still around.
One of the strengths of this quirky series is that we do not ignore the family that Georgia has left behind as her mother (Cynthia Stevenson), little sister (Britt McKillip), and father (Greg Kean) try to deal with moving on after her death. Watching the Lass family disintegrate is almost a show within the show, capable of standing on its own, because their interaction with Georgia the Grim Reaper is infrequent and usually something indirect. We are as interested in what is going to happen to Joy and Reggie (and J.D. rather than Clancy) as we are to Georgia and her friends.
Another thing that makes "Dead Like Me" work is the actual friendship that springs up between George and Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes). Now known as Millie, George ends up going back to work at Happy Time, the employment agency that she was taking a lunch break from when the sky fell on her head (even when you are undead a girl has to eat). Dolores is extremely annoying, but "Millie" pretends to play along so long that she actually starts playing along with Dolores' weltanschauung.
The cherry on top with this show is Mandy Patinkin as Rube, who finally has a role in which he can say pretty much anything he wants, especially when it comes to what he is having for breakfast and how it is cooked. I like the way he calls George "Peanut" all the time as he imparts to her the facts of being undead. I also like the way Roxy gets mad at people who tear up their tickets, the moments of conscious that Mason has when doing his job, and the way Reggie honors the memory of her sister. But then it is a well- established fact that I like quirky.
Joining the cast during this first season is another Grim Reaper, Daisy Adair (Laura Harris), an actress who had a role in "Gone With the Wind" and makes no bones about how she got the gig before she died. She and George become roommates just to cause further trouble for our heroine (and her frog) and is most definitely the character who rubs me the wrong way. But in the end I have to say that the only thing about "Dead Like Me" that really bothers me is that the post-it notes only have the first initial of the person who is destined to die. You cannot tell a person's gender from just an initial.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mysterious and Reassuring, November 21, 2004
A friend once told me that he was creeped out whenever an episode of "The Twilight Zone" featured a ventriloquist's dummy. Those episodes never impressed me, but recently I got chills watching an old episode about a toy telephone.
You can never tell what's going to strike a chord and resonate with a particular person. "Dead Like Me" is not for everyone. Some people will hate it. Others just won't "get" it. It's too bad, really, because they're missing out on something truly wonderful.
18-year-old Georgia (George) Lass, deceased, has a new job: collector of souls of the newly departed--a grim reaper, if you prefer. She doesn't want to be a reaper. She doesn't know how to be a reaper. She gets on-the-job training. What she learns about, mostly, is life.
In life, George was too cool to care about anything. In death, she learns to care, in ways that are funny and sad together. The result is the most consistently moving television show I've ever seen. At the end of each episode, when the credits appear, I find myself shaking my head and muttering, "What a GREAT show!"
The language and some visuals are too harsh for young children. The show contains a lot of adult subject matter--no, not like cable porn--rather, like parents struggling over how to cope with an emotionally troubled 11-year-old daughter. Material for genuinely mature audiences. Very rare, that.
Not for everyone, but I couldn't recommend it more highly. What a GREAT show.
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