Review: Dead Like Me - new series on Showcase
Dead Like Me
Showcase - Tuesdays 10PM
Synopsis
Eighteen-year-old Georgia (George) Lass copes with her dysfunctional family life and her lousy job by turning apathy into a performance art. She is killed on a city street in a freak encounter with a toilet seat from a de-orbited Russian space station, only to find herself standing over her own fragmented corpse, flanked by helpful representatives of the Undead. They are here to initiate her into the ranks of the Grim Reaper - Trauma Division (Murders, Suicides and Accidents). She has a lot to learn and not a lot of time.
Review
A very dark comedy, played supremely well by the cute-as-a-button Ellen Muth; excellent supporting role by Mandy Patinkin. Enjoyable to watch, but I had to not think about it too much. This first ep concentrated on the rules and procedures around finding the victim (our Grim Reaper is given only a name, time and address - or possibly seat number - written on a post-it note), and taking their soul without too much discomfort and loss of dignity. In her division, because of the trauma involved, they sometimes humanely take the soul seconds before the deadly mishap, to save them some pain and suffering.
During her tour with the Undead, she witnesses a woman squished by a falling piano, a young man trying to cash a paycheque who slips and gets his neck broken in the revolving door of a bank and a little girl killed in a train wreck.
As a Grim Reaper, George interacts with the world normally, (though as a distorted, unrecognizable version of herself, allowing her to have a conversation with her own grieving mother without being recognized). A little too normally, perhaps - she still needs food and a place to live. She has a choice, she can get a job (such as Grim Reaper Roxy, the parking officer), or she can squat in dead peoples’ abandoned houses and rifle their pockets for cash. Undeath sucks.
George’s duty as Grim Reaper is to hang around the target, waiting for the lethal accident, not knowing exactly how, who or where it will take place. Worse, she is capable of interfering with events - at one point, she threatens to pick up and toss away the banana peel that ultimately will be the demise of her first victim. Later in the story, she is told what happens to a soul if it is not taken at its time; it will wither and go “sour” (bad, very bad).
And this is where I had some problem with the whole procedure.
1] They can, and do, claim souls seconds before death,
2] They can interfere with events leading up to the death, including preventing it from happening,
3] Souls not taken at their time will stay in the living body, withering and turning “bad”.
Anybody else see a problem with this?
I would say, this is not so much a ‘loophole’ in the system, I would call this a ‘fundamental flaw’. If there is a possibility that the death could be accidentally prevented, don’t take the soul until it’s a done deal. This show must be the prequel to such movies as 'Heaven Can Wait'.
Anyway, now that they’ve got some of the rules down, I will be interested to tune in next week and see what direction they take the story in.