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I'm going to tell you a story. Not my story, that's later...This is just a story... Ready?
Once upon a time, (or more specifically at the dawn of time), god—lower case "g"—was getting busy with creation, as the kids these days are saying. He gave Toad a clay jar and said,
"Be careful with this. It's got death inside".
Pleased as punch and oblivious to the fact that he was about to become god's fall guy on the whole death issue, Toad promised to guard the jar. Then one day Toad met Frog.
"Let me hold the jar of death, or whatever you call it", Frog begged. With a nod to Nancy Reagan's pearls of wisdom, Toad just said 'no'. But Frog was determined, and after much whining, Toad finally gave in.
"You can hold it, but only for a second", he said.
In his excitement, Frog began to hop around and juggle the death jar from one foot to the other.
Frog... was an asshole. ''
Dead Like Me was a Black Comedy television series created by Bryan Fuller. It aired on Showtime from 2003 to 2004.
Georgia ("George") Lass is an unmotivated eighteen-year-old slacker; a college dropout, she's returned to live with her unhappily-married parents and withdrawn younger sister in her family's Seattle home. To make her miserable existence even worse, her father is cheating on his wife with one of his students, and her mother is so uptight that she thinks the word 'moist' sounds pornographic.
On George's first day at the Happy Time Temp Agency, she loses an important file down an elevator shaft, unwittingly insults the boss, and to top it all off, is killed on her lunch break by a toilet seat that detached from the deorbiting space station Mir.
Instead of going off to the afterlife, however, George is drafted to serve as a "grim reaper" (not the Grim Reaper, a Grim Reaper; it's a team effort, with a supervisor and assignments handed out via Post-It Notes), in the 'External Influences' division — which handles suicides, homicides and fatal accidents like George's own. A perfect job for a depressed teenage reaper.
On her team:
- Roxy (d. 1982), tough-as-nails meter maid (and, later, cop) strangled to death by a jealous roommate for inventing legwarmers
- Betty (d. 1926), a cheerful mostly-adjusted reaper who keeps photos of her reaps in shopping bags which she organizes by category. Early in Season 1, she went on Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence.
- Mason (d. 1966) a 60s druggie who trepanated himself (ie, drilled a hole in his head) to try and reach the Ultimate High.
- Daisy (d. 1938), a Hollywood starlet who may (or may not) have slept with Clark Gable and nearly all of 1930s Hollywood. She replaced Betty..
- Rube was the boss who affectionately calls George 'Peanut' and is constantly trying to manage his very unorthodox employees.
In the other corner: Gravelings. Dark, mysterious, and (apparently) unwilling or unable to harm George for reasons never explained, they're responsible for causing the deaths that the reapers have to clean up.
Oh, and did we mention that reaping is a 'public service', and reapers don't get paid? That's right, George pays the bills by holding down a 9-to-5 job, under a different name, at the Happy Time Temp Agency.
Because it was Too Good To Last (and, at least according to Word Of God, due to Executive Meddling) it was canceled after the second season with much of the side-story and back-plot unresolved.
A DVD movie came out in February of '09. It aired in Canada on January 1st. Fan response to it was mixed, but it did well enough to renew interest in networks considering to pick up the series again, especially after the cult success of Bryan Fuller's other (and then recently canceled) series Pushing Daisies.
Provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: According to Word Of God, George's Dad was originally going to be gay, as evident in the Pilot, and this would have led to a storyline where George learned to appreciate her existence because she "wasn't meant to be". After Bryan Fuller departed the show the college student her father was said to be having an affair with was changed to a female.
- This also caused a Plot Hole. George's narration in the first episode implied that her dad was shagging a college student at the time, yet the affair didn't actually start until some time after the girl is introduced in the first season.
- I insist on believing that he was in fact having the affair with the male student who has a few cameos. There's just enough ambiguity in his relationship with the girl that an intrepid troper can just about retain her delusions.
- A Father To His Men: Rube. A brusque, eccentric father, but like a father nonetheless.
- Age Appropriate Angst: George died at just 18, after all.
- Animal Motifs: Frogs generally symbolize "death" or "moving on".
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Reggie, in George's eyes.
- Anti Hero
- Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence: The "Lights" spirits go into.
- Attending Your Own Funeral
- Backstory: We learn how Mason, Betty, and Roxy died in the first season, with Rube's gradually being revealed over season two.
- Banana Peel: "Pilot"
Mason: Well, what do you know? It really WAS the banana peel!
- Black Comedy
- Bloody Hilarious
- Breakfast Club
- Butt Monkey: Mason
- George, as well.
- The Reapers in general as far as the Gravelings are concerned.
- Cancellation.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: Implied to exist.
- Character Development.
- Clip Show
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Mason, quite often. According to him, college is a plot by bacteria to transmit themselves more effectively.
- Cluster F Bomb: Mason, who probably swears more than actually speaking.
- Everybody swears quite a bit.
- Conspicuous CG
- Cool Big Sis: Reggie looks up to George, despite the lack of affection she gave back.
- Creepy Child: Reggie's way of coping with her sister's death was a little... freaky.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: Gravelings taking the day off. Cut to scene of Gravelings taking what could be best described as a smoke break. They then spend the rest of the day harassing the Reapers. Roxy said it best...
Roxy: Don't they have something better to do on their day off?
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: The theme tune played during the show's opening credits.
- Cruel And Unusual Death
- Curse Cut Short: "Oh shi....".
- Only in the broadcast edit.
- The Daria: George
- Dawson Casting: George, but it's not too obtrusive since she's the only teenaged character we regularly see.
- Deadpan Snarker: George and boy does she deliver some gems.
George: You feel that, that's the IQ in the air dropping.
- Death By Falling Over: Many of the deaths on the show seem like something most people would walk away from.
- Well of course. If someone had just walked away, there wouldn't really be a reason to call in the grim reapers.
- Death By Irony
- Death By Looking Up: George
- Death Is Such An Odd Thing
- Death Is A Sad Thing
- Death Takes A Holiday: Literally, in one episode.
- Deaths Hourglass: A central theme to the series.
- Direct To Video: Life After Death, a much-delated continuation finally released in 2009.
- Dysfunctional Family
- Edited For Syndication.
- Elephant In The Living Room
- Executive Meddling: The Behind the Scenes reason for Betty's disappearance. Creator Bryan Fuller recounts numerous problems with them.
- First Episode Resurrection: George
- Five Stages Of Grief: Everyone, at some point or another, but primarily George and her family.
- Flanderization: Daisy in The Movie.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Most of the reapers.
- Gratuitous German: Der Waffle Haus.
- Goggles Do Nothing: Literally: Mason's death. He fails safety forever.
- Gory Discretion Shot
- Greasy Spoon: Der Waffelhaus, where the Reapers meet and eat. Famously re-used in Stargate SG 1as a higher plane of existence.
- The Grim Reaper
- Healing Factor: one of the perks of being a Reaper.
- Hey Its That Guy: Hey! Rube is Inigo Montoya!
- Homage: to Hill Street Blues, down to use of theme music when the meter maids roll out onto the streets.
- Imagine Spot: Every now and then.
- Immortal Immaturity: Mason. Oh, Mason.....
- Inner Monologue
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Only for regular ol' dead folk; Reapers can (and do, and should) change their clothes.
- Killed Mid Sentence: "Oh Shi...." again.
- Again, only in the broadcast edit.
- Last Day To Live: Mason gets a purple post-it and becomes convinced his time as a reaper is up, but it then turns out they were just out of Yellow ones.
- Mood Whiplash: The show regularly shifts between black comedy, drama, office comedy and Urban Fantasy. It does it well though.
- Mundane Afterlife: At least for Reapers, life after death continues on more or less as normal.
- Nakama
- The Name Is Bond, James Bond: "Daisy; Daisy Adair."
- Necro Non Sequitur: Very, very often.
- Never Got To Say Goodbye
- Not That Theres Anything Wrong With That: Mason trips over himself during the reap of a gay couple.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts exist, but they're the result of a sloppy reaping where the soul is allowed to wander off instead of getting its lights, instead of emotional trauma or unfinished business or any of the other usual causes.
- Out With A Bang: A newlywed husband cheats in an Airplane Bathroom, and chokes to death.
- Porn Stash: The previous owner of George's apartment in the first few episodes had a collection of octogenarian porn.
- Pulling Themselves Together: George reattaches her finger after an accident with a shredder.
- Quick Nip: Mason, when he's Off The Wagon.
- Quirky Household
- Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits
- Rasputinian Death: Cameron in The Movie. It's really difficult to kill a reaper.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Reapers stay the age they were when they died, and all but George have been dead for at least a few decades.
- Scotireland: in "Reaping Havoc", an Irish-American saw Ireland's Cliffs of Dover waiting for him in the afterlife... while the soundtrack played "Scotland the Brave".
- Ship Tease: Mason gives George a quick peck on the lips when he thinks his time as a reaper is over. It's not.
- Shout Out: At one point Rube mentions that he doesn't like Salmon because he had a bad can of Salmon Mouse once. If you ever seen Monty Python and The Meaning Of Life...
- Stealing From The Till: something that comes up both at Happy Time and amongst the reapers taking art, jewelry, houses, cars, drugs, etc. from those they just reaped. The morality of the stealing from the dead appears to be pretty gray.
- Supernatural Soap Opera
- Talking To The Dead
- Tear Jerker: Seeing how this show deals with death and often its impact on others, the Tear Jerkers are bound to come in heaps at times. This Troper recalls an early episode where George goes to visit her family and decides to tell her mother who she really is. She plans to tell Joy a story about a moment the two of them shared when George was little, because then she will surely realize that this is her daughter! And everyone will be happy! George walks confident up to the door, but when a mourning, angry Joy opens, she freezes up and the little of her story that she manage to stutter out is barely coherent. Joy ends up screaming at her to get the hell away from here then slams the door in her face. Shocked and saddened by the reality of the situation, finally realizing that she can't ever go back to her family, makes George cry her heart out later on the same day. Rube consoles her despite the fact that she went against his wishes, and the implications, vague as they may be, that Rube had tried the same thing makes it even sadder.
- They Changed It Now It Sucks: Daisy's Actress being replaced in Life After Death
- It could also be the fact that they took a whole season's worth of growth and development for Daisy, and casually flushed it. She went from becoming a rather introspective and interesting woman to a diva with all the depth of a puddle all over again.
- The Chosen One: George seemed to be picked by the Gravelings to be important somehow, revealed in a flashback to an early near-death experience in a swimming pool.
- Tomboyish Name: Georgia "George" Lass (and her little sister Regina "Reggie" Lass). Creator Bryan Fuller seems to like this trope; his other series (Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies) also have female leads with "boy" nicknames.
- Tomboy And Girly Girl: Roxy and Daisy, respectively. Lampshaded in the last episode of season 2 where they dress up as a princess and a cop, respectively.
- Too Good To Last: This was Bryan Fuller's first series. His other two pretty much followed the same path.
- Tsundere: Roxy.
- Un Cancelled: The Movie.
- Undeath Always Ends: Death is a transient... I mean, transitory thing. Or both, if you count Mason.
- Urban Fantasy: Implicit in the very premise of the show, of course.
- Visit By Divorced Dad
- Waking Up At The Morgue: Somewhat. George tries to avoid a reap but the person dies anyway, and had to experience his autopsy before she reaps him at the Morgue.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You
- Yank The Dogs Chain: In the thirteenth episode of the second season, we see that Reggie's dog J.D. has managed to run away from home because a previously visiting neighbour didn't close the gates. When Reggie is out looking for J.D., we spot Charlie, the animal reaper and also a car that has pulled over. George, who is visiting home once again, realizes that Charlie has been there to reap J.D.'s soul and panicks, but then we suddenly see J.D. running happily towards Reggie who's looking at the car... just for him to run through her and up to Charlie. Cue many tears, at least for this dog person troper.
- You Cant Go Home Again
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