History Series / DeadLikeMe

** Mason reaped former Music/TheRollingStones member Brian Jones.

* GarageSale: Joy holds one after George dies, much to George's horror as a good chunk of the stuff for sale is George's. Mason also holds one ([[WhatAnIdiot on somebody else's lawn]]) when he thinks he's about to [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascend]]; [[ContinuityCavalcade pretty much all the items present are things he picked up in previous episodes]].

* {{Yandere}}: In one episode, George [[spoiler:[[{{Fingore}} severs her own middle finger]] in Happy Time's paper shredder, in a last-ditch effort to invoke BandageBabe and win her love interest's attention from a rival. Of course, she [[FlippingTheBird flips said finger]] at her bested opponent behind the interest's back, as he carries her off to treat the wound]].

* AdultFear:
** No one in George's family knows how to deal with her death. Joy is devastated over the fact that the last thing she said to George was, "It will be your funeral if you don't get out of bed." Clancy seeks solace in his grad students, and Reggie starts developing a phobia of their family bathroom, stealing toilet seats from the school, and trying to talk to George using an Ouija board. She only gets better when Joy takes Reggie to therapy, and said therapist is very sympathetic to a little girl who lost her big sister.
** George reveals she dropped out of college because she couldn't deal with the increased course load or people engaging in casual drug use and stupid antics. To prove her point, a college student dies in front of her from some idiots setting off a fire extinguisher.

* SkewedPriorities: In "Curious George", Betty accompanies George on a reap of a man whose body is stuck in a tree. Unable to get up the tree by herself, George asks Betty to boost her up. Betty refuses on the grounds that she just had a manicure. Since souls are known to suffer from remaining in the body after death, this means that Betty is prioritizing her manicure over alleviating the suffering of the man they're there to reap.

Instead of going off to the afterlife, however, George is drafted to serve as a [[{{Psychopomp}} "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.

Instead of going off to the afterlife, however, George is drafted to serve as a [[{{Psychopomp}} "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.

''Dead Like Me'' was a MundaneFantastic BlackComedy television series created by Creator/BryanFuller, with John Masius and Stephen Godchaux taking the creative reins halfway through season one. It aired on {{Showtime}} from 2003 to 2004.

* InfantImmortality: Averted. Charlie, the Pet Reaper, is a ten or eleven-year-old who was killed by a drunk driver. George's first reap is also a little girl, which makes it very hard for her to do.

* GoOutWithASmile: Mason died with a big dopey grin on his face. [[DrugsAreBad Probably literally dopey]].

* MisplacedKindergartenTeacher: Ms. Herbig, of that particular variety that thinks children are happy little elf-things rather than real people with the capacity to actually think. And she tries to talk to her employees like they're children. You see where I'm going with this. It gets hard to tell if she's being passive-aggressive or if she really thinks offering up "her big brown eyes" as a mnemonic to remember her name is a perfectly acceptable way to address adults.

* AntiHero: George is cynical, snarky, constantly complains, and tries to shirk her duties at first; she's not a typical hero.

* {{Adorkable}}: Mason. Oh, Mason. To the majority of characters his hopeless stupidity managed to be endearing in their eyes at times.

* [[AloofBigBrother Aloof Big Sister]]: Generally, what George was to Reggie in life. Only after her death does she actually seem to really notice Reggie's existence for the first time.

--> '''Ed Barphin:''' Can I ask you a question?
--> '''George:''' That ''is'' a question. Would you like to ask me ''another'' one?

--->'''Mason:''' I've got illegals in my bottom.
--->'''Roxy:''' Why do you do this to yourself?
--->'''Mason:''' [''whimpering''] I don't know.

* [[ButHeSoundsHandsome But She Sounds Pretty]]: While Delores and George (as Millie) go over Georgia Lass' job interview files from a year before and see that they don't have a lot of positive things to say about her, George says that at least she was pretty. For Joy's sake, the two decide to alter them to sound more positive... with Delores deciding to base the new information off of "Millie".

--->'''Mason:''' Crazy fucking fuck.
--->'''George:''' I wish the words just rolled off my tongue like they do yours.

--->'''George:''' You can't smoke in here.
--->'''Rube:''' Ah, fuck that bullshit, they can blow me.

* FanDisservice: One episode has a shameless old man die wearing nothing but a towel. His ghost promptly frolics around naked, much to the displeasure of all Reapers present.

* {{Flanderization}}: Daisy in TheMovie.

** Daisy initially appears to be a ditzy starlet who is as promiscuous as it gets, who is selfish and full of it. But as George notes, she seems to simply be putting on an act. And her final thoughts when she died in a fire was [[spoiler: "Why has no one ever loved me?"]]. Combined with her psychological problems with seeing women being attacked by men and she seems to be a pretty troubled character.
** George's mother is this in a huge way. Absolutely everything in her life must be perfect, fitting every single stereotype of suburban life exactly. No variation allowed. This makes it hard for George's sister to actually come to terms with her sister's death.

* TomboyishName: Georgia "George" Lass (and her little sister Regina "Reggie" Lass). Creator Creator/BryanFuller seems to like this trope; his other series (''Series/{{Wonderfalls}}'' and ''Series/PushingDaisies'') also have female leads with "boy" nicknames.

* ConspicuousCG: Mostly averted with the gravelings and the lights, but a little too obvious on things like the train derailing in season one and other causes of death.

* {{The Grim Reaper}}s: Duh.

* LastDayToLive: Mason gets a purple post-it and becomes convinced his time as a reaper is up, but it then turns out [[spoiler:they were just out of yellow ones. This is also a case of FridgeLogic, since in an earlier episode Rube was shown to keep a huge supply of yellow post-its in his apartment]].

* '''Betty Rhomer''' (d. 1926), a cheerful mostly-adjusted reaper who keeps photos of her reaps in shopping bags which she organizes by category. She died after diving off a cliff into a river for a thrill. Early in Season 1, [[spoiler:she [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended]]...maybe]].

* MoodWhiplash: The show regularly shifts between black comedy, drama, office comedy and UrbanFantasy. [[TropesAreNotBad It does it well though]].

** One episode sees an untalented stand-up comedian, literally, die on stage by inexplicably exploding after one of his bad jokes.

* AuthorAppeal: After Creator/BryanFuller left, the show was taken over by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux. What ironic is the show is sometimes called a dark sarcastic ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel'': John Masius was in fact the original creator of Touched By An Angel. However CBS threw out his original pilot because it was considered too dark: fueled by his anger at the time at God for having his two kids be disabled, it had the Angels be foulmouthed and argumentative and cynical. Sound familiar? The show was {{Retool}}ed into a very preachy lighthearted Christian drama, but he profited from the royalties. A decade later, he ended up writing for essentially a very similar idea..... but he actually took up the task of lightening the tone of the show a little bit from Fuller's episodes, as his perspective on life and spirituality softened a bit in the years since, comparing Fuller to where he was 10 years prior.

-->'''Daisy:''' I'm looking for a girl. She's about yay big, brown eyes, pretty... angry... pretty angry, actual—Oh! That's her.

* CatchPhrase: "Delores Herbig, as in, her big brown eyes."

* CharacterDevelopment: Plenty, especially George, Daisy and (surprisingly enough) Rube. In a behind the scenes DVD interview the actor playing Mason revealed that he demanded that his character ''never'' be allowed to develop [[RuleOfFunny because it was funnier]] to let him remain a lovable idiot.
* TheChosenOne: {{Implied}}. 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. In another flashback (second season's finale), she seems to be able to see the gravelings in the house of her neighbor, at least on Halloween, and the next to last episode showed [[spoiler:she can reap them]]. The last scene in the DVD movie, [[spoiler:she is showered with Post-It notes from the sky in slow-mo, and her final line is, "I am so fucked..." implying "Upper Management" has chosen her to be the new leader of the team.]]

** Reggie's way of coping with her sister's death was a bit disturbing.

* DeathTakesAHoliday: Literally, in one episode.

* DontFearTheReaper: The first several episodes revolve around George learning that Reapers don't actually kill anybody; they make death easier for people to handle. They pop souls out of their bodies so they don't have to experience the moment itself, nor carry the scars and emotional trauma into the afterlife. Reapers also provide a comforting presence to help the recently deceased understand their fates and move on. Most early episodes include a key scene wherein Rube berates George for her well-intention efforts that ultimately make things harder for the dead. Betty herself was tired of the image of the grim reaper being "black hooded skeleton with a scythe". So she wanted to help change the stereotype to being "fashionably dressed pretty lady holding a camera saying 'happy thoughts!' " instead.

* FirstEpisodeResurrection: George, who dies and becomes a Reaper in the pilot.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Despite the fact that they are extremely human like, the reapers themselves are in a way zombies based on the fact that they are technically reanimated dead people. The show even uses the term "undead" to refer to their state of being.

-->'''Mason''': *''hefting a fire exinguisher''* I just remembered what I hit my teacher with.

** Daisy initially appears to be a ditzy starlet who is as promiscuous as it gets, who is selfish and full of it. But as George notes, she seems to simply be putting on an act. And her final thoughts when she died in a fire was [[spoiler: Why has no one ever loved me?]]. Combined with her psychological problems with seeing women being attacked by men and she seems to be a pretty troubled character.

* NeverMyFault: Georgie flat out refuses to show up for her second reaping, thinking maybe the victim just wouldn't die then. Never mind one of the first things she was told was that grim reapers don't kill people, they just take souls out of people who are dead or about to die, and if the soul is left in the body, it rots. The guy died anyway, and he was awake and aware for his autopsy (he couldn't physically feel it, but imagine the psychological scars). Georgie just insists it's not her fault.

'''Rube''': Onward not upward. No pearly gates for you, no choirs of angels neither.\\
'''George''': You dick! You're sending me to hell?\\

''Dead Like Me'' was a MundaneFantastic BlackComedy television series created by Creator/BryanFuller, with John Masius and Stephen Godchaux taking the creative reigns halfway through season one. It aired on {{Showtime}} from 2003 to 2004.