Dead Like Me

Dead Like Me
File:Dead Like Me - intertitle.jpg Dead Like Me's intertitle
Created by	Bryan Fuller
Starring	see below
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	29 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	47 minutes (approx) 1 hour 13 minutes (Pilot)
Original release
Network	Showtime
Release	June 27, 2003 – October 31, 2004

Dead Like Me is an American television comedy-drama created by Bryan Fuller for the Showtime network starring Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin as grim reapers in Seattle, Washington. Fuller has stated that the series was loosely based on the Piers Anthony novel On A Pale Horse.

Eighteen-year-old Georgia "George" Lass (played by Muth) is the show's protagonist and narrator. George dies early in the pilot episode, leaving her parents and younger sister behind at a point when her relationships with them were on shaky ground. She is tapped to become one of the "undead", a grim reaper. She soon learns that a reaper's job is to remove the souls of people, preferably right before they die, and escort them until they move on into their afterlife. The show explores the "lives" and experiences of a small team of such reapers — a team led by Rube (played by Patinkin) — as well as the post-mortem changes in George and George's family as they deal with George's death.

Fuller, the show's creator, left early to co-create Wonderfalls; the creative direction of the show was taken over by executive producer John Masius.

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler Georgia Lass was aloof and emotionally distant from her family and shied away from her life. After dropping out from college, she took a job at Happy Time Temporary Services. On her lunch break of her first day, she is hit and killed by a zero-G toilet seat from the de-orbiting of the Mir space station. The front page of the newspaper has an article and picture under the heading "Mir's Fiery Plunge".

She is informed shortly after her death that, rather than moving on to the "great beyond," she will become a grim reaper in the "external influence" division, responsible for reaping souls of people who die in accidents (many of which are of Rube Goldberg-style complexity), suicides, and homicides. It is learned in the deleted scenes of the first season DVDs that a Reaper is placed in the division of the factor that killed them: those who died from external influences are placed in the external influences division; those who died as a result of the Plague are in the Plague division and so forth.

Through the first season, George has trouble adjusting to her circumstances: collecting souls, while holding a day job at Happy Time. By the second season, she has mostly adjusted to her new role in the circle of life, though still has unresolved issues with her life and her afterlife.

George's family is struggling to deal with her death. Joy is depressed and visibly repressing it, while Clancy is cheating on her. Reggie acts out — stealing toilet seats from neighbors and school and hanging them on a tree — before being sent to therapy by Joy. She clings to the belief that George visits her but is starting to lie to cover this up. At the start of the second season, the family began to break apart as divorce proceedings began.

Nearly all of the main characters have some form of depression, however they cope with it in different ways: Mason resorts to alcohol and drugs, Daisy puts on a veneer of perkiness, and Roxy is physically and verbally aggressive. Rube and George are more open about their sadness, as they both tend to be brooding loners.

Cast and characters

Main article: List of Dead Like Me characters

Reapers

File:Dead like me header.jpg

Dead Like Me cast photo showing reapers George, Rube, Roxy, Mason and Daisy.

• Georgia "George" Lass (Ellen Muth): The show's protagonist. In addition to being a grim reaper she has a day job at Happy Time Temporary Services, under the assumed name "Millie". She is killed by the seat of a zero-G toilet from the Mir space station. She is affectionately called "Peanut" by Rube.

• Rube Sofer (Mandy Patinkin): The head of the group of reapers; becomes the role-model father for George in her grim-reaping afterlife. He died in 1927 and had a daughter named Rosie. It is hinted that he died while on the run after a robbery, though his actual manner of death is never made explicit during the run of the series.

• Mason (Callum Blue): Despite being an alcoholic and a thief, and being prone to drug abuse and occasional dealing, he is a likeable fellow and serves as an "older brother"-type figure to George, and cares for Daisy. He is originally from London, England, and is revealed as being an atheist in episode 202. He died in 1966 by drilling a hole in his head to achieve the permanent high. His last name is never revealed.

• Roxy Harvey (Jasmine Guy) : A strong-willed, sassy, independent character. She begins as a meter maid as her day job, but later on becomes a cop as soon as she realizes she is with the wrong job. She was killed in 1982 by a jealous room-mate; strangled to death with leg warmers - which she invented. Ironically she is said to be the "mother" of the group, but is in fact the youngest reaper before George

• Daisy Adair (Laura Harris) : A spoiled actress who often tells stories about (alleged) sexual escapades with classic film stars. She is transferred in from SoHo, New York City after Betty disappeared. She died on December 13 1938 in a fire in Marietta, Georgia, supposedly on the set of Gone with the Wind. Her last thought was "Why has nobody ever loved me?"

• Betty Rohmer (Rebecca Gayheart) : A confident, well-adjusted reaper. She keeps Polaroids of each of the souls she reaped in department store shopping bags, organized by personality type. She is beginning to bond with George when she "hitches a ride" with one of the souls George had reaped and is never seen again. She died in 1927 while cliff-diving.

• Charlie (Spencer Achtymichuk) : Pet Reaper. He is a 7 years-old boy. He has been "hit by a car. Some drunk girl" as he says to George in "Rest in peace" when he first meets her. He died around 1997 (seven years before the second season).

Family

• Joy Lass (Cynthia Stevenson): George's mother. She likes to have order, rules, and control in her life. An example of this is how she labels many items throughout the series. Other characters in the show, such as her own mother, mentions that her obsession with control is how she copes with denial of her own out-of-control life, such as her daughter George's death, her younger daughter's Reggie Lass grieving with with sister George's death, and her divorce from her husband, Clancy Lass.
• Clancy Lass (Greg Kean): George's father. He distances himself from his family while has an affair with one of his college students as he copes with the loss of George.
• Reggie Lass (Britt McKillip): George's younger sister. Though George ignored her while George was alive, Reggie is very much affected by the death of her sister. She believes that her ghost still roams about the city and visits their home from time to time.

Setting

Is implied to be in Seattle, Washington, and in fact a map at Happy Time showing their temp placements is of Seattle. But the aerial view in the first episode, where the toilet seat descends, is of downtown Vancouver, BC (and the picture must predate 1983, as BC Place Stadium is not visible). The Lass' live in a house on Beatrice Lane; there is no such name in Seattle, but there is a Beatrice Street in Vancouver, BC. The reapers' regular hangout, Der Waffle Haus, is said in one episode to be at 782 Oak St., which is not an address in Seattle but there is such an address in both Victoria and Vancouver, BC. Scenes in both Vancouver and Victoria can be recognized in various episodes. Also notable is that the uniforms of police officers have American flags on the left shoulder. Also, the red Ford Mustang convertible that George takes in the second season episode "The Ledger" has a Washington license plate.

Happy Time Temporary Services

• Delores Herbig (Christine Willes): George's boss. Delores Herbig becomes the supportive, maternal figure that George never had when alive.
• Crystal Smith (Crystal Dahl): the lurky Happy Time receptionist.

Grim reapers

Grim reapers, portrayed without the traditional black cloak and scythe (except humorously during the opening theme), are an integral part of the cycle of life and death. They remove the souls of the living shortly before death and escort them until they move on into their afterlife, making them a type of psychopomp.

Death has a list of who is scheduled to die and when. The foreman periodically receives an extract of the upcoming events on the list, transcribes certain information to a yellow Post-it note (first and middle initial and last name of the person, where they are to die, and their estimated time of death), and assigns them to the reapers; this assignment is non-transferable — only that reaper can remove that soul. That person must be reaped at the time of their intended death, or the soul will remain in the dead body until reaped. If the events surrounding a person's death are interfered with by a reaper and they do not die at their "appointment," the soul will "wither and die and rot inside" them. Deaths can also be stopped without risk to the soul by interfering well in advance, thus reapers would not be interfering with the events that lead to the death, however such actions do have consequences which can result in many more people dying before their time. Reapers collect souls until they reach a quota, though they do not know in advance what their quota is. Once that quota is reached, the reaper moves on and the soul collected last takes his or her place.

Reapers have a physical body and may interact with the living and the dead. They do not age, but reapers cannot fly, disappear or walk through walls, so they need to find their reap by conventional means of transportation. In fact, the only real power besides collecting souls is an ability to heal quickly, indeed, a complete inability to die (again), allowing a quick recovery from any physical harm incurred on the job, and as stated by George "We (reapers) can drink as much tequila as we want without waking up with a hangover.". Reapers also have the same emotional and physical needs and drives as living humans, such as eating.

To remove a soul, a reaper must touch the body of the person to be reaped. When possible, the touch is done before death to minimize emotional harm to the soul, especially in cases of violent death. After death, the soul sometimes exists for a short time as a ghost. These ghosts retain the physical image of the being as it was reaped. If reaped before death, the ghost does not show any injuries suffered during death and usually doesn't remember dying. Souls reaped after death often manifest wounds corresponding to the manner of their deaths and may be heavily traumatized by the experience. (A soul cannot leave its body without being reaped. If the Reaper doesn't take it, it is trapped in a corpse, completely aware. This is as horrific as it sounds, especially when the deceased goes through an autopsy.) Ghosts cannot communicate directly with the living, only with and through the undead reapers. The passage into the afterlife is shown as a brightly lit scene towards which the newly-deceased is drawn. The portal/scene is unique to each soul: for a child, it may be a wonderful carnival, but for a yoga master, it may be a Deva beckoning from within a Divine Lotus. Souls cannot be forced to enter the portals and can be downright stubborn about it if they feel it is not yet time for them to move on. A big part of the Reapers' job is to convince such souls to do so.

Reapers do not get paid, so they must find ways to get money, whether a day job, or "living off the land". Reapers often take things from their reaps, sometimes with permission from their ghosts. Of the reapers featured in the show, only George and Roxy hold steady jobs, with Daisy getting occasional work as an actress.

It is important that the living do not realize that reapers are among them. This makes it taboo for reapers to enter into romantic relationships with the living; it is allowed (though frowned upon) for reapers to develop platonic friendships, and there appears to be no explicit taboo on reapers engaging in sexual relations with the living (or each other). It is likewise frowned upon for a reaper to gain notoriety among the living (for example, when George receives a promotion at work, she is encouraged not to accept it). Apparently, reapers are never noticed in the immediate aftermath of a death, even when arguing with their reap. Ronnie, a person suffering from schizophrenia, could apparently see reapers at work, as well as gravelings, another normally unseen creature involved in deaths (see below).

When seen by the living, a reaper's physical appearance is different from the one they had when alive, though fellow reapers see their original appearances. This remains true as long as any of the reaper's contemporaries still live (Betty and Rube have apparently regained their original appearances). George says her appearance resembles someone familiar "with crack cocaine, ten-dollar blowjobs, and maybe even a trick baby or two". On Halloween, however, reapers regain their original appearance for the day, meaning the recently deceased need to wear masks. This effect continues into All Saints' Day; George's sister, Reggie, and even Crystal apparently recognizes her on that day. Although she had been dead for 60 years, Daisy was recognised by an elderly man who remembered her.

However, it is also possible that you can only be recognized by those who knew you when you died, as Kiffany at the Waffle house had no problems recognising the alter-egos of the reapers. Another possible explanation is that a person regains their original form after a set amount of time, which could explain why Daisy was recognized and how Rube had been previously recognized twice before.

To date, only George's and Mason's assumed faces have been shown on screen; the DVD commentary track for the pilot episode suggests Fuller's departure led a de-emphasis of this aspect of the reaper's back-story.

As part of the system, Reapers are forbidden to tell anyone about Grim Reapers or to reveal that they are dead people who have been returned to life. If they try, various bad things happen, including the spontaneous loss of any memory they try to use as proof that they know something only the dead person could have known. However, various psychically aware persons in the Dead Like Me universe can sense that there's something not right about Reapers, and are even sometimes dimly aware of what's happening if they see a soul Reaped. While some people claim to love Death and would seem to be ideal Reaper "groupies," the reaction to actually seeing a Reaper at work or suspecting what they are is usually fear, horror, and immediate flight. However, Mason meets a record store worker in the episode "Rest in Peace" who gets turned on by the fact that he is a reaper.

Pet reapers, who collect animal souls, also appear during the series, but it is unspecified how they are chosen or replaced. For that matter, it is unclear if these reapers are only for pets, rather than animals in the wild.

There are also "Plague Reapers", who are apparently left over from the Middle Ages, when the plague took many. Only being able to take plague victims, they have very little to do in the modern world. A group of them was once pointed out to George playing bocci in a park. However, that scene was deleted and the only evidence of this group of reapers remaining in the series is in the scene in which Daisy acts as a clairvoyant in order to scam the son of her recent reap. A group of cops rush in to bust her in the middle of her séance, and, while leaving the building, are thanked by Rube for coming in to help him play a trick on Daisy. The cops reply that they don't have a lot of anything else to do, being plague division.

Gravelings

File:Dead Like Me -- Episode 112 - Vacation.jpg

Gravelings on vacation

Reapers do not actually kill people. That is actually done by the gravelings which cause "coincidences" that make sure people die when they are supposed to.

Gravelings are mischievous gremlin-like creatures that cause the accidents and mishaps that kill people. They make their home in graveyards. The living cannot see them, though in one episode, a schizophrenic seems to be able to. A reaper can see them, but only "in the corner of his or her eye," and while they appear to understand human speech perfectly well, they don't communicate verbally with Reapers (although they do talk to each other in a hushed and unintelligible babble.) Reapers can apparently communicate with them to some extent (Daisy once shushed a graveling, and when the reapers stand around George's grave at her funeral, Rube sees a pair of gravelings playing on a statue, and yells "Get outta here!" at them). George appears to be able to see them more clearly than the rest, and it has been shown that she encountered them at least twice as a child.

File:RayIsAGraveling.jpg

Birth of a graveling

In "Forget Me Not", one was produced from a character's death at the hands of a Reaper, implying that they may come from either evil or rotted souls, from the un-reaped soul of a person who dies before their destined time, or from someone who is killed by a Reaper. When Rube learns that someone died without a Post-It, i.e. without a predestined time of death, he clearly knows this means something very bad is going to happen and is not surprised to learn of the creation of the graveling. In a later episode, "Always", George vanquished it by a touch similar to that used during reaping. It is unclear if any reaper can eliminate any graveling, or just this particular one because it was killed ahead of time by a reaper, or just by George because she might have a special power that we can suppose is recognizable by gravelings, as hinted in the final swimming pool scene in "The Shallow End" .

The Reapers know when people are supposed to die and can sometimes interfere. (The trick seems to be diverting them from their fate with enough margin that they don't "make their appointments". A person who makes their appointment, even if not killed, is doomed and must be reaped.) This infuriates the gravelings and they will unmercifully harass a Reaper who does this. The reapers have all been plagued by graveling vengeance during the series, although how and why the Gravelings harassed Rube and Betty was not seen during the run of the series.

Every so often, gravelings take a "day off". It is not known whether nobody dies of external causes because the gravelings are taking the day off, or if the gravelings take a day off because nobody is scheduled to die of external causes.

Episodes

Main article: List of Dead Like Me episodes

Airings

Dead Like Me premiered in North America on June 27 2003; the second season began airing on July 25, 2004. The show was cancelled and the last episode aired on October 31, 2004. The show was one of the few high definition TV productions at the time. Season 1 has also been shown on Channel 6 in Ireland, Sky One in the United Kingdom, America Plus in the Middle East, Sony in Latin America and Catch On in South Korea and go in South Africa. The series was also aired in Croatia (HRT), currently on Showcase in Canada (in both English and French), and it's being aired in Spain on Cuatro (since November 2005) (in Spanish) and Sci Fi Channel (since June 2006). Both seasons were aired in Iceland on Skjár einn in Israel on Extra hot and Fox8 in Australia. Season 1 aired in New Zealand on Prime Television New Zealand on 6 December 2006.

As of January 2006, Swedish SVT2 has started rerunning the series. HDNet did likewise later in May. It premiered on Channel 6 in Ireland on April 1 2006.

The series has begun rebroadcast as a second-run series on the Sci Fi Channel (United States) beginning July 18 2006.. Sci-Fi originally aired episodes in pan-and-scan, but later aired them in their original widescreen aspect ratio.

Direct-to-DVD film

On April 18, 2007, MGM announced that they are developing an ambitious slate of direct-to-DVD movies and sequels. Mentioned among them is a brand new film based on Dead Like Me. The article mentions that the film will be written by Dead Like Me writer and producer Stephen Godchaux and will be directed by Stephen Herek. Through use of her website and her Myspace profile Ellen Muth has said she is to return for the film.

DVD releases

DVD Name	Cover Art	R1 Release Date	R2 Release Date	Ep #	Additional Information
Season One	File:Dead Like Me Season 1.jpg	June 15, 2004	June 20 2005	14	This four disc box set includes all 14 episodes from Season 1. Bonus features include a commentary by members of the cast, thirty minutes of deleted scenes, two behind-the-scenes featurettes and a photo gallery.
Season Two	File:Dead Like Me Season 2.jpg	July 19 2005	April 16 2007	15	This four disc box set includes all 15 episodes from Season 2. Bonus features include deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a photo gallery.

Season One is available on Region 1, Region 2, and Region 4, whereas season two is only available in Regions 1 and 2.

External links

• Dead Like Me at MGM
• Dead Like Me's Scifi Channel page
• Dead Like Me at Showtime (link not accessible outside United States)