YMMV / Dead to Me

• Adorkable: Ben is quite goofy, dorky, and a bit awkward, which makes him all the more lovable.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Judy's extreme self-destructiveness, lack of self-esteem, bouts of extreme depression and (more rarely) extreme glee, and difficulty letting go of the people (and ideas) she's attached to give the impression that she might have some sort of mental illness, possibly manic depressive disorder.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Jen/Judy is easily the most popular ship in the fandom and overshadows their canon ones with Ben and Michelle respectively, due to the chemistry between their actresses and the loads of Les Yay between them.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jen is acerbic and short-tempered and her anger issues negatively impact everyone in her life, but she's also still reeling from the sudden death of her husband, and even before that, she held long-buried grief about her mom's death from cancer that she'd never managed to deal with. She also suffers from a lot of self-hatred, and is acutely aware of her anger issues and how much they hurt the people she cares about, but doesn't know how to even start dealing with them.
• Les Yay: Judy and Jen. Definitely. After Ted's death, Judy is the first person that Jen connects to emotionally and they often confide in each other even when they've only been friends for a short time. When Judy moves in (which Jen invites her to do after very little time), they grow even closer and Judy almost acts like Charlie and Henry's step-mother (another parent even asks her which of the kids is hers when she goes to Henry's recital with Judy). It also helps that Judy is canonically bisexual.
  • Jen as much as says she loves Judy in "I Can Handle It" when she says "The last time someone that I loved didn't call me back, he was dead." Judy hadn't answered Jen all day, and immediately feels awful when Jen says this. Jen also says she needed her. "And that's really hard for me to admit."
  • "We could be a three child mothering team."
  • When it's revealed that Judy can't have kids, Jen assures her that she's a part of her family. Later in the same episode, Judy calls them "my family".
  • After the truth comes out and she's planning to turn herself in, Judy says that the worst punishment is losing Jen and even tells her she loves her.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The ending of the first episode. Judy was the one who ran over Ted.
  • The entire Season One finale, but especially the last minute. Jen finds out Judy killed Ted, and after taking several unsuccessful steps to try and make amends, Judy tries to commit suicide... but is stopped by Jen calling her and telling her to come home. When she does, she finds out that Jen killed Steve.
• Special Effect Failure: The show's second season has a somewhat noticeable visual downgrade compared to the first; this is especially prevalent in the driving scenes, where the chroma key is very obvious.
• The Woobie:
  • Judy is self-destructive and made a horrible mistake (and continues to make them as the show progresses), but she's so wracked with guilt over the whole thing, is genuinely unstable, has had such a Dark and Troubled Past, and is overall so nice that you can't help but want to give the poor woman a hug.
  • Surprisingly, Ted's mistress, Bambi, is one. Jen (and the audience) are fully prepared to hate her, except when Judy talks to her, she finds out that she did know Ted had a wife and children... but he told her his wife was dead. She's utterly crushed when Judy tells her. Once you realize Bambi's a not-very-bright young woman who got tricked, it's hard not to feel a little bad for her.