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YMMV / Dead Like Me

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  • Accidental Aesop:
    • The first few episodes seem to have the lesson of making sure your new employee in any job, volunteer or otherwise, understands all of the rules. George courts trouble by trying to find ways to not reap, and each time it backfires on her. Rube sitting her down and explaining everything would have avoided this.
    • Doubtful. George is stubborn late teen. She wouldn't have listened to him.
    • The movie has one: Reggie is dating a guy in secret, and his friends don't know. They belittle her for visiting him in the hospital because she's lower on high school social status. George later tells her she should fall in love with someone who's not a dick, expressing her opinion on the guy in question, but the alternative aesop could be "Don't date someone that wants to keep you a secret because it shows they don't respect you even if they like you".
  • Awesome Music:
    • The catchy theme tune played during the show's opening credits.
    • Here's an example of the original score by Stewart Copeland.
    • Pink Martini doing "Que Sera Sera" as George has to learn that she can't prevent people (a little girl) from dying. "Whatever will be, will be..."
    • "Hell" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers is used to great effect during several scenes in the pilot.
    • "Boom Boom Ba", the song used in various episodes and the last scene of Life After Death.
    • "Nomah's Land", played as a pre-transition transgender woman reap rants against God.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Bryan Fuller has stated that all of his shows take place in the same universe. This has some nasty implications for Dead Like Me after Ellen Muth guest-starred on Hannibal, playing a woman named Georgia who suffers from a mental illness that makes her think she's dead and drives her to kill people.
    • In the pilot episode, Joy's last words to George before her daughter's death were pretty harsh...
    George: Those are funeral clothes.
    Joy: There's going to be a funeral if you don't get your ass out of bed! Now move it!
    • George even narrates "Boy, is she going to be sorry." Later in the same episode, she gets crushed to death by a toilet seat from a Soviet space station. It does count as an Establishing Series Moment.
    • In the episode "Shallow End," George reflects on the fact that in a fair world, assholes would finish last. But they have followers and acolytes, over which is a montage of several dictators across the 20th century, starting with Adolf Hitler. The montage ends with, of all people, Donald Trump.
    • In a similar vein the group of Reapers for death by illness- pandemics in particular, who haven't had much work since the black plague. In light of the COVID-19 Pandemic, they might finally be meeting their quota.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The pilot has Rube state that he thinks the afterlife will be like Der Waffle Haus. The Stargate SG-1 episode "Threads" has Daniel contemplate either becoming fully ascended or descending again... In the series' set for Der Waffle Haus.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Daisy's Actress being replaced in Life After Death. Plus 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. Also, she, Mason, and Roxy appear to be written by someone who'd never seen the show and was only given brief character sketches.
  • Unintentional Period Piece:
    • The clothes, hairstyles, cars and computers really pin point it to the late 1990's/ early 2000's.
    • The then-recent Iraq invasion is mentioned.
    • Smartphones are a half a decade away, while camera phones were just coming out.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While all the characters are obviously meant to be flawed and rough around the edges, it's hard to have any sympathy for any of the Lass family beyond George. Clancy comes across as kind and emotionally connective, but he does orchestrate the meltdown of his family through an affair with a student the same age as his dead daughter. Joy tries to be a good mother and struggles with a family that seems to despise her, but she is also a badgering, overbearing hypocrite who mercilessly needles everyone else in the family for not living up to her expectations while often portraying exactly the same behaviors she dislikes out of everyone else. Reggie is hurt by the death of her big sister and her parents splitting up, but she's also constantly rude to both of her parents, mouthing off to them and playing off their desire to connect to her to get what she wants, then acting ungrateful when she gets it.

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