Dead to Me (TV series)

Television series
German title	Dead to Me
Original title	Dead to Me
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Year (s)	since 2019
Production ; company	Gloria Sanchez Productions, ; Visualized, Inc., ; CBS Television Studios
length	26-34 minutes
Episodes	20 in 2+ seasons
genre	Dramedy ; black comedy tragic comedy;
idea	Liz Feldman
production	Joe Hardesty, ; Linda Cardellini , ; Peter Chomsky, ; Buddy Enright
music	Adam Blue
Initial release	May 3, 2019 on Netflix
; First publication in German	May 3, 2019 on Netflix
occupation
synchronization

Dead to Me is an American television series that premiered on May 3, 2019 on the video-on-demand provider Netflix . It is about two very different women who get to know each other in a self-help group for bereaved and slowly build a friendship. However, they have more in common than they think, this fact burdens one of the two, which is why she does everything possible to prevent the release of her secret.

The series is produced by the leading actresses Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini , the actor Will Ferrell and the director Adam McKay, among others . In early June 2019, Netflix announced that it would extend the series for a second season. This was published on May 8, 2020. In July 2020, Netflix ordered a final third season of the series.

action

season 1

Jen Harding is a choleric , sarcastic, and very direct real estate agent whose marriage to her husband Ted is not going to be a happy one after having a cancer preventive breast reduction surgery . When Ted is hit by a car and dies, Jen has to take care of her two sons Charlie and Henry and deal with the vagaries of her narcissistic mother-in-law Lorna. In a self-help group she meets Judy Hale, her exact opposite: Judy is extremely self-destructive, has almost no self-confidence and suffers from depression, despite which she remains optimistic and is friendly to everyone. She has suffered several miscarriages in the past , and her fiancé Steve Wood, an arrogant accountant and money launderer for the Greek Mafia, died of a heart attack , as she initially claimed , but, as she later admits, has recently left her.

Despite their very different personalities, Jen and Judy slowly develop a friendship, which threatens to fail when Judy finds out in despair that she is responsible for Ted's death. She had accidentally run over him and committed suicide at the urging of Steve, who also sat in the car, hit and run . While Jen discovers things about Ted that are troubling her and her personality destroys her longstanding professional partnership with Christopher Doyle, Judy finds her way back to Steve. He manipulates her by gaslighting and convinces her that she is solely to blame for the accident. She finally confesses what she did to Jen, whereupon she no longer wants anything to do with her. Therefore Judy wants to take her own life, but that fails. Eventually Jen forgives Judy and it appears Jen would shoot Steve in self-defense as the season ends with the two of them looking at Steve's body in Jen's swimming pool .

season 2

In season two, Jen and Judy try to cover up Steve's death, which is made more difficult not only by surveillance cameras in the neighborhood and investigations by Nick Prager and Detective Perez, but also by Steve's twin brother Ben, who suddenly shows up looking for his brother . Jen and Judy finally decide to bury the body in the woods. Jen also does not tell Judy that she did not kill Steve in self-defense, but rather beat him to death in a fit of anger because he made fun of Ted's death.

Judy spends more and more time with Jen and her sons, but also meets Michelle, who falls in love with, which is risky as she is Perez's ex-girlfriend and still lives with her. Charlie also finds Steve's car and takes him on a jaunt including Instagram photos, which is why Jen burns the vehicle. She feels more and more drawn to Ben, with whom she eventually has sex, which she regrets the morning after. While police chief Howard Hastings turns out to be a corrupt ally of the Greek mafia, Judy is confronted with her drug addict mother, who is in jail and tries to get out with the help of her daughter who has always been emotionally abused by her.

Jen finally decides, because her son suspects her and the investigators have also seen the photos and traffic cameras of the car to face the police. She leaves Judy and her sons farewell letters, then she wants to lead Perez to the corpse, but cannot find them. Because investigators are arresting Hastings for the murder and Jen, like her, is struggling with the loss of her mother at a young age, Perez decides to let her go and return Judy confiscated pictures. There are money hiding places in these, Jen settles her debts with Lorna and buys a car for Charlie, when she and Judy drive in it, they are rammed, the driver hits a hit. It turns out that this is Ben, who is also drunk. Jen and Judy survive but are injured and do not know what to do.

occupation

The series is synchronized at Film- & Fernseh-Synchron based on a dialogue book by Peter Wagner and Stefan Evertz, directed by Peter Woratz.

main characters


role	actor	Voice actor
Jen Harding	Christina Applegate	Claudia Lössl
Judy Hale	Linda Cardellini	Shandra Schadt
Steve Wood Ben Wood	James Marsden	Markus Pfeiffer
Christopher Doyle	Max Jenkins	Julian Manuel
Charlie Harding	Sam McCarthy	Benjamin Weygand
Henry Harding	Luke Roessler	Niklas Gebendorfer

Minor characters


role	actor	Voice actor
Karen	Suzy Nakamura	Sonja Reichelt
Ana Perez	Diana-Maria Riva	Michèle Tichawsky
Abe Rifkin	Edward Asner	Berno from Cramm
Pastor Wayne	Keong Sim	Jakob Riedl
Yolanda	Telma Hopkins	Angelika Bender
Parker	Sadie Stanley	Maresa Sedlmeir
Linda	Lily Knight	Michaela Amler
Wendy	Blair Beeken	Alisa Palmer
Kyle	Edward Fordham Jr.	Paul Sedlmeir
Heidi	Chelsea Spack	Anna Ewelina
Nick Prager	Brandon Scott	Sebastian Winkler
Lorna Harding	Valerie Mahaffey	Dagmar Dempe
Kayley	Haley Sims	Catherine of Daake
Shandy Adams	Adora Soleil Bricher
Michelle	Natalie Morales

Episode list

season 1

No. ( total )	No. ( St. )	German title	Original title	Director	script
1	1	Pilot episode	pilot	Amy York Ruby	Liz Feldman
Jen Harding mourns the loss of her husband, Ted, who died after being hit by a car whose driver fled the scene without helping him. Because of this, Jen joins a support group for those grieving a loss. There she meets Judy Hale, who is mourning her fiancé Steve. Although they have completely different personalities, the two slowly become friends. To cope with grief Jen examines each car in detail, the body damage is based on a hit and run might indicate. She confronts Judy when she finds out that Steve is alive and well. Judy apologizes and admits that she is actually grieving over her miscarriages, which she blames for the breakdown of her relationship with Steve. At the end of the episode, only the viewer finds out that Judy's car has as much damage that indicates a hit and run.
2	2	Maybe i'm crazy	Maybe I'm crazy	Amy York Ruby	Liz Feldman
Jen meets with Steve because she works as a real estate agent and he wants to sell his house. When she mentions that Judy has moved into her guest house, Steve warns her emphatically about his ex-fiancé, because wherever she turns up, there will always be chaos. Meanwhile, Judy stalked Steve, who obtained an injunction against her. Shortly thereafter, Judy has ongoing flashbacks from a car accident in which she hits someone and Steve forces her to just keep driving. Meanwhile, Jen demolishes a car whose driver is hurtling through her neighborhood at far too high speed.
3	3	It's my fault	It's All My Fault	Abe Sylvia	Anthony King
Jen is stressed about preparing a memorial for Ted's birthday and clashing with her narcissistic mother-in-law, Lorna. Meanwhile, Judy claims to Steve that Ted is the person they killed in their car. Steve urges her to keep the act to herself, adding to her guilt. A flashback shows that Judy was present at Ted's funeral from afar. Meanwhile, Jen is questioned by the police about the wrecked car. Since she wants to punish herself and protect Jen, Judy takes the blame for it. Steve pays her bail and asks her to be silent again, whereupon the two make up. At the end of the episode, Jen logs into Ted's laptop and receives messages from bambi88 that Ted apparently had an affair with.
4th	4th	I can't go back	I can't go back	Abe Sylvia	Kate Robin
Steve tries to persuade Judy to move back in with him and forget about Ted's death. Judy also manages to track down bambi88 , a young woman who works as a waitress and is actually called Bambi. Jen and Judy arrange to meet at work, where Judy explains to Bambi that Ted is dead. Bambi reacts completely distressed, also because Ted had told her that he was a widower. Jen is extremely angry and says that she is happy about his death. In another flashback, Judy tries to help the injured Ted, but is prevented by Steve from returning to the scene of the accident.
5	5	Forget everything	I've gotta get away	Minkie Spiro	Abe Sylvia
Jen and Judy go to a funeral retreat in Palm Springs to relax and gain new courage. Jen gets drunk and flirts with Jason, who is also recently widowed. They want to sleep together, but Jason has not yet overcome the grief of his late wife, so it will not be a pleasant experience for either of them. Meanwhile, Judy meets investigator Nick, who is privately in Palm Springs. They get along well, which is why Judy introduced him to Jen. She asks him if he has ever solved a hit-and-run situation, which he replies in the affirmative.
6th	6th	Oh my God!	Oh my god	Minkie Spiro	Njeri Brown
Nick meets with Jen and Judy at the scene of Ted's death. He offers them to talk to then investigator Ana Perez about the case. During the conversation, Nick mentions that the body was found by a nine-year-old classmate of Jen's son Henry, which puts additional strain on Judy. Meanwhile, Jen discovers that her son Charlie is dealing with drugs stolen from Ted's medicine cabinet, and that he carries a gun that belongs to Lorna. Henry also behaves conspicuously at school. Shandy Adams, the girl who discovered Ted's body, gives Jen a piece of the car she found on the ground. Judy goes to the storage cupboard in which the murder vehicle is, but is shocked to discover that it has disappeared from there.
7th	7th	I can take it	I can handle it	Kat Coiro	Emma Rathbone
Jen brings the vehicle piece to Perez, who with the help of Nick finds out that it belongs to a Ford Mustang built in 1966. A short time later, Jen loses her nerve with a couple during a sales pitch and describes the woman as a cunt , which is why the purchase fails and her business partner Christopher Doyle terminates her professional collaboration. Meanwhile, Judy asks Steve where the vehicle is. He shows her the car that is being dismantled and explains his plan to get rid of what is left of the Mustang.
8th	8th	Try to stop me	Try to stop me	Kat Coiro	Kelly Hutchinson
Jen, Judy, and Nick visit people who have a 1966 Ford Mustang registered. Judy panics because of this, she is also convinced that she is pregnant again. She wants to tell Steve this and is disappointed to find that he has started a new relationship and cheated on her. She leaves without telling him that the police identified the car. A doctor later explains to her that she is not pregnant, but that she may have had premature menopause . Meanwhile, Nick finds out that a suitable vehicle is allowed on Steve's and Judy's art gallery.
9	9	Honestly	I have to be honest	Geeta Patel	Rebecca Addelman
Nick goes to the gallery where he meets Steve. He questions him, but Steve denies knowing anything about the vehicle. Meanwhile, Jen is forced to ask Lorna for a job due to financial difficulties. Perez is unimpressed by Nick's theories when Judy shows up and charges Steve with money laundering. Looking back, it becomes clear that Jen is guilty of Ted's death, because they had an argument the night he passed away, he left the house because of it and was driven over a short time later. Judy finally confesses her act to Jen, which angrily tells Jen to die. At the end of the episode, Perez is looking for clues in Steve's closet when she notices an oil stain on the floor while Jen retrieves Ted's gun from a safe in the guest house.
10	10	You have to go away	You have to go	Geeta Patel	Liz Feldman & Abe Sylvia
Jen cleans the now vacant guest house and gets rid of Judy's leftover possessions, then installs a security system and carries Ted's gun with her. She also shares Perez Judy's confession, but she does not want to deal with it as it would only hinder the ongoing investigation against Steve. Then she meets Judy, who offers her to face the police. Jen just replies that if they meet again, she'll kill them. Judy then empties the account that she and Steve owns and gives the money to Jen. While looking for Judy, Steve goes to Jen's house, where he admits that he was also in the car when Ted was killed. The two get into an argument while Jen draws her gun and tells him to leave. Judy goes to the crime scene again and is about to commit suicide by running in front of a car when she receives a call from Jen asking her to come to her house immediately. At the end of the season, the two women stand in Jen's garden and look at Steve's body floating in the swimming pool.
On May 3, 2019, all episodes of the season were released simultaneously on Netflix.

season 2

No. ( total )	No. ( St. )	German title	Original title	Director	script
11	1	You know what you did	You know what you did	Liza Johnson	Liz Feldman
Jen lets Judy move in again the day after Steve's death. A little later it turns out that Steve, when he arrived at Jen's front door, was recorded by her neighbor Karen's surveillance camera. Jen gets into an argument with Judy because she is still hurt and angry about their lies, which is why she throws her out and Judy becomes briefly homeless. They finally get along, but Jen does not tell Judy that she did not kill Steve in self-defense, as she claims, but rather struck him in a blind rage when he was about to leave.
12	2	Where have you been?	Where Have You Been	Liza Johnson	Elizabeth Benjamin
Jen and Judy get a visit from Steve's half-twin brother Ben, who is worried that Steve has not contacted him for a long time. Jen panics because of his questions, but Judy is able to put him off with the lie that his brother fled to Mexico because his money laundering business was exposed . A little later, Jen receives an injunction back from Perez, which she wanted to have against Judy, whereby Perez warns her about her friend, whom she describes as the sea tide.
13	3	You can't exist like that	You Can't Live Like This	Tamra Davis	Cara DiPaolo
Jen struggles with memories of Steve's death night while hiding his body with Judy in a freezer in their garage. When rats suddenly appear, the two argue about what to do next. While Judy wants to bury the corpse in a dignified manner, Jen finds a bottle of industrial pipe cleaner with which she wants to decompose the body, but decides against it when she tests the agent on a rat and sees the result. The two decide to bury Steve in the Angeles National Forest at night .
14th	4th	Between you and me	Between you and me	Tamra Davis	Jessi Klein
After the removal of Steve's body, Jen and Judy go on vacation together and check into a luxurious hotel for a few days to switch off, where wedding celebrations are taking place all weekend. There is also Karen's husband Jeff, who Jen and Judy find out is having an affair with another man. On their return they have to take care of Henry, who is mourning a dead bird, in his opinion the reincarnation of his father.
15th	5	The price to be paid	The Price You Pay	Liz Allen Rosenbaum	Kelly Hutchinson
Charlie, who dearly wants his own car, finds Steve's old vehicle in Jens Storage Cabinet. Thinking this is a birthday present from his mother, he takes his girlfriend Parker for a spin. While Judy befriends Michelle, the daughter of a client, Jen seeks out Ben, who works as a chiropractor , because she suffers from back pain. During treatment, Jen again suffers flashbacks of Steve's death. When she goes home and sees Charlie in the car, she scolds him for stealing and then sets it on fire.
16	6th	You must not	You don't have to	Liz Allen Rosenbaum	Celeste Hughey
Jen bribes Parker to delete photos she posted online of her ride with Charlie so no one can spot the car. Judy falls in love with Michelle, who reciprocates her feelings and spends the night with her, Jen and Ben also have a nice evening together. During Judy and Michelle's meeting, it is revealed that the latter is Perez's ex-girlfriend and roommate. The next day, Henry suffers from stage fright before his first solo with his church choir. Jen persuades him to skip the gig and invites him to go to an arcade with her, Charlie, Judy, Ben and Michelle. A little later, Nick and other investigators find Steve's burned-out vehicle.
17th	7th	If you only knew	If only you know	Jennifer Getzinger	Dan Dietz
Jen and Judy decide to hold a vigil for Steve to avoid being suspicious. Jen also demands that Judy break up with Michelle, as her proximity to Perez could be dangerous for both of them. On the Vigil, Judy meets Steve's fiancée Heidi, who is four months pregnant, which makes her feel guilty. Ben offers a reward to anyone who has information about his brother's disappearance, and later he kisses Jen. When Charlie arrives at the Vigil to support his mother, he recognizes the car during a slide show about Steve's life.
18th	8th	It must have been you	It had to be you	Jennifer Getzinger	Emma Rathbone
While Jen helps Ben and his mother Eileen sell their mansion, she talks to Ben about the meaning of their kiss together. Charlie finds items in the garage that were in Steve's car, including a small suitcase that contains a USB stick and a disposable cell phone. When he dials a number on it, he reaches Chief Hastings, the police chief. Meanwhile, Judy visits Michelle's mother in the hospital, where she meets Perez, who threatens her in relation to her mother, which is why Judy goes in search of this and is abandoned by Michelle. Finally, Ben visits Jen and confesses his feelings to her. The two kiss and hug in the doorway, then they enter the house.
19th	9	It's not you, it's me	It's Not You, It's Me	Silver tree	Liz Feldman & Kelly Hutchinson
After sleeping with Ben, Jen tells him the next day that she made a mistake and that he should go. Afterward, Charlie accuses her of burning the car as he saw her holding a gas canister. Jen advises her son to forget about it, as Steve had business relationships with dangerous people. Meanwhile, Judy visits her manipulative, drug-addicted mother, Eleanor, in prison, who asks her to help her release. Judy Jen later admits that Nick saw Charlie and Parker's Instagram photos with the car, and that there were traffic photos of the two in the car on the day it was burned. Jen argues with Judy, confessing that she killed Steve for insulting her and claiming that Ted deliberately threw himself in front of his car. She also accuses Judy of falling in love with anyone who pays her a little attention, but eventually gets along with her. The next morning, Jen leaves envelopes for Judy, Charlie, and Henry before heading to Perez's house.
20th	10	How will we go on?	Where Do We Go From Here	Silver tree	Cara DiPaolo & Liz Feldman
Judy is asked by Jen in her letter to take custody of the children. Jen confesses to Perez that Steve was killed and drives her into the woods, but they cannot find the body. Perez receives a text message from Nick that they have found Chief Hastings, the killer who was involved in Steve's business. After Jen and Perez have an intimate conversation about their late mothers, Perez lets Jen go and gives Judy back her confiscated paintings, in which several hundred dollar bills are hidden. She visits her mother again and refuses to support her. At a meeting of her support group, Jen realizes that she never came to terms with her mother's death. Meanwhile, Ben learns that a stroller has found Steve's body, while Charlie comes across Jen's letter to Judy. After Jen and Judy settle her mortgage debt with Lorna, she buys a car for Charlie. As they drive home with it, they are rammed by Ben, who drives away drunk. After a while, Jen and Judy come to, hurt and shocked.
On May 8, 2020, all episodes of the season were released simultaneously on Netflix.

reception

In the Internet Movie Database, the series received a rating of 8.1 out of ten stars based on 34,606 votes. On Rotten Tomatoes , the first season achieved a critical rating of 86 percent and an audience rating of 93 percent. At Metacritic , a critic value of 68 100 and a viewer rating of 7.3 out of ten showed. The second season achieved a critic rating of 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a viewer rating of 92 percent. Metacritic gave a critic rating of 71 out of 100 for the second season (as of May 9, 2020).

“Applegate exudes enormous actor power in the series, which cannot quite choose between thriller, black comedy and drama. Not quite enough to completely overlook the annoying platitudes in the script, the weaker jokes and the expected plot. Not that one. But so much that the comic aspect of the series clearly predominates. This is Applegate's credit, because as a series that takes itself too seriously, Dead to Me would n't work. As a long-earned parade of the two leading actresses, however, it works very well. The creator of the series, the American comedian Liz Feldman, chose two women in their mid-forties with them, whose path to seriousness was very bumpy. Linda Cardellini also had to fight her way through romantic comedies and all sorts of Scooby-Doo crap before she was allowed to play the strong-willed beauty in Mad Men as Sylvia Rosen. Dead to Me lacks the 360 degree rotating baseball bat cynicism of Larry David or the toe-tipped drama of Mad Men inventor Matthew Weiner to be a series that sticks in pop culture memory for more than half a year. Nevertheless, it is very worth seeing. Not only because you see Christina Applegate, who has been reduced to her physicality for twenty years, to free herself. But also because of the paradisiacal images in which cameraman Daniel Moder captures the west coast of the USA on which the action takes place. "

- Theresa Hein : Süddeutsche Zeitung

Lucy Mangan compared the series in The Guardian negatively to Desperate Housewives . This series is a “shiny, funny confection” that is kept on the ground by four strong leading actresses and “sufficient dramatic weight”. With Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me also had quite good leading actresses, but the series was "neither dramatic meat nor funny fish". The dramatic scenes are "pale imitations" of previous productions, including the Facebook watch series Sorry for Your Loss . Even the funny moments don't offer much and aren't innovative. Mangan closed her review by saying that Dead to Me had "bad pace", was "inconsistent and deadly boring". She rated the series two out of five stars.

Daniel Fienberg, an editor of The Hollywood Reporter , thought Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini's portrayals were "fantastic" and called them " sundaes ". However, the twists in the plot are "not surprising", the mystery elements are "mediocre and rushed", which is why the mixture of comedy, drama and mystery is actually unsuitable for a series with ten 30-minute episodes. For this, Fienberg praised the chemistry between Applegate and Cardellini, which together are "pretty funny". Applegate is better in her role, as she can portray a grieving, choleric widow as well as master jazz dance , which is probably why she and not Cardellini would be nominated for an Emmy . In addition, thanks to its "bleak, strychnine- containing" sensitivity , the series does not seem sweet like the television series After Life , which is also produced by Netflix and has a similar theme, but this is not necessarily a good thing due to the positive response to this series. Dead to Me is ultimately worth seeing because of Applegate and Cardellini, the negative aspects are " gravy on the sundae".

Justin Kirkland wrote in Esquire that after watching the first episode, one might think that all the twists and turns have already been revealed. However, the best twist in the series is much more differentiated. The first episode might seem like a crime thriller staged by Nancy Meyers for impatient viewers , especially since the supposed climax of the five-hour series was reached after just 30 minutes. But everything that happens between the first and tenth episode is what makes the series so remarkable. Applegate and Cardellini are "unbelievable" as women struggling with their grief. Applegate convinced after ten years in small supporting roles as a desperate mother, while Cardellini's role as a woman plagued by various manias was after her films Green Book - a special friendship and the " embarrassing " Lloronas curse a "peace offer of the universe". After watching the series, the dramatic aspects that were probably used "to attract viewers" seemed superfluous. If you take a closer look at Dead to Me , you will discover an “irresistible” story about two women who find each other through extremely unfortunate circumstances. There are enough shocking twists and turns in the plot, but these are not nearly as “satisfying” as the moments in which the two main characters grapple with the “incredibly authentic burden of grief”.