Summer TV Club: Dead Like Me – “Pilot”

Dead Like Me is available to watch for free on Hulu or on Netflix Instant Streaming!

There’s a good chance you may have missed Dead Like Me when it was on Showtime from 2003-2004. It’s brief run came at a time when Showtime was still running mostly second rate programs in comparison to the heavier shows on bigger rival HBO, and though it was easily the best and highest rated original show on the network. The show was the first created by Bryan Fuller, who’s other shows Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies have garnered strong cult followings. Fuller made a name for himself through his work on the first season of Heroes, and before Dead Like Me, wrote for the Star Trek Franchise, but his first show set the tone for the remainder of his work. Though he left the show after only five episodes, due to a creative dispute, he was able to leave his mark on it, and leave behind his distinctive touch (pun intended for you Fuller fans out there), creating a show that was heavy on its characters instead of it’s fantastic theme.

Dead Like Me is an ensemble show, but it centers on it’s narrator, George Lass (Ellen Muth), an angsty 18-year-old college drop out, who on her first day working at a temp agency, is killed when the toilet seat of an abandoned space station crashes down on her as she eats lunch. But rather than moving on, George joins a group of Reapers, undead souls that remove the souls of people before they die and help them move on to the afterlife. At the head of group is Rube (a fantastic Mandy Patinkin), a no-nonsense leader of the gang that also includes Mason (Callum Blue), a British hooligan, Roxy (Jasmine Guy), who works as a meter maid when she isn’t reaping, and Betty (Rebecca Gayheart), who takes pictures of everyone she takes the souls of. They’re a motly bunch, and unfortunately for George, they souls they’re taking aren’t the old or even the sick, but those that fall in the “External Influence,” so homicides, suicides, and most notably, horrific accidents.

I think that one of the brilliant aspects of the story that was revealed from the start is that this isn’t just a bunch of ghosts taking people’s souls. First of all, they don’t maintain their same appearance, at least to the rest of the world, as all non-reapers see some sort of alternate version of them. Secondly, they don’t kill anyone per se, that’s left to the Gravelings, little goblins that set in motion the chain of events that lead to a person’s demise. Interference will lead to some sort of repercussions, though it’s not terribly explicit in the pilot what those might be. Every morning, the Reapers get notes of who they’re going to be reaping from Rube that contain only the person’s first initial, their last name, a location, and time. It adds an amusing and entertaining level of difficulty to the actual reaping, where the Reaper is left to figure out on their own who is going to die before it’s too late. If they don’t get to them in time, the soul will remain in the body, and be subjected to terrible things, such as their own autopsy or even being buried soul-alive, which sounds even more terrifying to me. Additionally, if a Reaper refuses to remove a soul, it will wither inside them, which again, sounds pretty terrible.

Another clever thing that’s established from the start is that the Reapers don’t get paid for any sort of compensation for their work, which means they have to get a day job or some other sort of income. It’s this little caveat that leads George back to Happy Time Temp Agency, where she worked ever so briefly before she died. Having gone through the interview process previously, George, under her no identity of Millie Hagen, charms Deloris Herbig (“as in her big brown eyes!”) into getting an office job.

While all of this is pretty disconcerting to George, her new companions assure her that she’ll get used to it, and that everyone dies. Yet, it’s easy to sympathize with George, as she attends her own funeral and sees how distraught her oft ignored sister Reggie and her mother are. Her first two reaps aren’t any easier, the first taking place in a bank full of people (and ending in a crazy Rube Goldberg fashion) and the second being the soul of a little girl that dies in a train crash. George refuses to take her soul, but once Rube tells her about how souls wither and die, she reluctantly does so, and leads the girl into a bright light. It’s a poignant moment mixed into a 72 minute pilot that largely stays in the realm of slapstick and dark humor.

Fans of Pushing Daises will love Dead Like Me, given all of the similar devices that Fuller would later transfer over to that show, including a girl going by a boy’s name (George and Reggie, Chuck in Pushing Daisies), the family dealing with the aftermath of their loved one’s death, that said loved one actually being alive in some supernatural theme and not being able to tell their family, and most notably, the complicated set of rules that govern life and death. As with Pushing Daisies, the characters of Dead Like Me have a strict set of rules governing their interaction with death. Stating these rules so explicitly in the pilot doesn’t make for great dialogue, but without understanding them, the show would have hard time standing on its own.

But the pilot of Dead Like Me is intriguing and a whole lot of fun. I like that the Reapers get such vague descriptions of who they need to reap and how they guess how it will all happen, and I love that even after she’s died, George still has to get a job to make ends meet. In a way, Dead Like Me is a really twisted coming of age/workplace comedy/fantasy show/family drama that is able to shift between each with ease. Make no mistake, at its heart, Dead Like Me is a black comedy, but the pilot had its fair share of touching moments. But it’s the little things that make this show so funny. George being killed by a toilet seat is funny enough, but there’s also the zany, slapstick nature of George’s first reaping, and the goofiness of things like the secretary at the temp agency, who looks like she just wondered in from a Saturday afternoon cartoon.

It’s a premise that’s chalk full of potential, and the cast in the pilot is pretty brilliant. Mandy Patinkin shines, naturally, as Rube, but Ellen Muth’s pitch perfect grouchiness steals the show, yet she plays up George’s human side well too. Without it though, Dead Like Me doesn’t have a soul (another pun intended). I know that one episode, especially a pilot, makes it hard to tell the general tone of a show (and it’s made even more complicated here given that Fuller left the show so early on), but Dead Like Me definitely engages on several levels, and I’m quite interested to see where it heads.

Michael’s Score: 80
TUiW Grade: B+

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.