Dead Like Me was a dark comedy about life after death that aired on Showtime for two seasons starting in 2003.  It was funny and quirky and dark and deep all at the same time, and had some really interesting themes running throughout the series.  A follow up movie was released in 2009, but fans of the series were very let down by it.

What was Dead Like Me about?

Dead Like Me was about a group of people who had died, but instead of moving onward into the afterlife, they became grim reapers.  Their job was to take the souls of people before they died and then escort them to their lights.  Each reaper had to take an unspecified amount of souls before they could move on, and that is where the story started.  18 year old Georgia "George" Lass was the last soul taken by a reaper and thus became a grim reaper herself when she was killed by a toilet seat that fell from a space station.  She joined a rag-tag group led by Rube and had to learn the ropes of reaping and making it on her own while watching her family slowly fall apart without her there.


What was the best part about the show?

I really loved how Dead Like Me showed not only George coping with being on her own for the first time in her life, but also her family coping with losing her.  The back and forth between the reapers and George's family was really interesting, as was George creating a new family for herself and coming into her own throughout the show.  The growth of George's character was handled very nicely and it is really amazing to go back to the first episode and see how much she changed over the course of the two seasons.  Also, the humor of Dead Like Me was a huge drawing point, as was the fact that the show was not all fun and games - it had a lot of sad and poignant scenes as well.


What was the worst part about the show?

The worst part of Dead Like Me may be that it was possibly trying a bit too hard to prove how "edgy" it was.  I don't mind the language, but they may have gone a bit overboard with it at some times.


Where did the show go wrong?

I would say that the show went wrong with the whole Ray storyline in the second season, but it didn't really last long enough to kill the show, and it did give way to one of my favorite episodes, "Last Call".  I just don't think that Daisy would get involved with a guy like Ray after what we learned about her sister being abused.  Other than that, Dead Like Me may have gone wrong with the decision to make the movie without all of the original cast involved.  Had Mandy Patinkin and Laura Harris been included in the movie, I'm sure it wouldn't have been so bad.  As it was though, I'd rather just believe that the last episode of season 2 was the end of Dead Like Me.


What is our favorite/most memorable scene?

The scene early on in the first season where Roxy told Mason that she wanted a bird, when Roxy shot Mason at Der Waffle House for annoying her, and pretty much all of the Mason scenes in the episode "Last Call".  Mason's character didn't really evolve that much throughout the show (which made him all the more funny), but he was so sweet and remorseful in that episode when he thought he was leaving, and his goodbye scenes were really touching.


Who are our favorite characters and why?

I love Mason and Delores Herbig the most, but all of the characters had something special.  Mason was such a screw up and he kept making the same mistakes over and over again, but how could you resist that British accent?  Delores was such a great character and completely clueless most of the time that it was so funny.  I loved how throughout the show she became like George's (or Millie's) mom and the two had a great bond together.  I also loved George, Roxy, Daisy, Rube, Joy, Reggie, and Crystal, which is rare because usually there's at least one character that I don't like on a show, and it just wasn't true with the main cast of Dead Like Me.