Dead Like Me (TV Series) Pilot (2003) User Reviews

Flawed but promising start to an intriguing show

[brimfin · 7/10 · 2 October 2008]

Having watched the series all the way through a couple of times now, I can appreciate the pilot more than I initially did. It effectively sets up the show's concept and introduces us to all the characters in this quirky universe. The cast all excel at making each character unique – the reapers themselves are a hodge-podge of differing backgrounds and attitudes. And George's off-screen narration makes some clever satirical comments about life and death – her opening story about how death came into the world is a delight.

The main flaw of the episode is that it lacks a really likable character. The lead character George is a self-confessed shirker who's lost interest in the world. Her fellow reapers are aloof at best, downright mean at worst. Even her own family is unpleasant to watch. The story isn't funny enough to be a real comedy; it's more of a light-hearted drama with occasional touches of genuine pathos. If you stick around for the series, you'll grow to like these characters – even for some of the very flaws that make them undesirable in this outing. My advice is to watch the pilot with low expectations. Just get to know the characters and the setup and proceed on to the next episodes. If you like a show that's truly different, you'll enjoy this in the long run. And later, when you watch this pilot again, you'll find it was better than you first thought.

Brilliantly establishes the threads and themes

[yavermbizi · 7/10 · 25 April 2022]

My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.

This episode makes it easy to dive into "Dead like me" and sets up a good amount of the show's overall plot threads and themes. It's perhaps "Dead like me" at its highest-pitched action note, what's with train crash - however this scene does not overshadow the others due to absolutely fantastic writing and acting in them, their emotional and philosophical depth easily measuring up to the spectacle. When "Dead like me" shines, it really shines, and completely alleviates my concerns that upon a rewatch I'd find this series, which has been so foundational to my personality and worldviews, lacking. The idea of avoidance of experiences being its own virtue had really resonated with me. George starts moving away from it a little bit as the series goes on, "My room" being, maybe, the main crack in this edifice, but it is here where she presents it perhaps with the most conviction and clarity. Now, while I don't believe absolutely in this idea, I do like it at its strongest as shown here. Perhaps it has to do with my tendency to like the characters more in the beginning of their character arcs, when what makes them them is not watered down or averaged out. George indeed has figured stuff out before her peers - not only about the tooth fairy, but about life itself, and the unhappiness people bring to themselves by clinging to arbitrary goals. I guess George takes it a step further than I would by dropping out of college, but the depth of this conviction (or, rather, lack of conviction?) is quite respectable. I guess unlike her I've always seen some activities as worthwhile, and university as being a part of them and a stepping stone towards them - if you don't have such goals, the value of which you can logically justify to yourself, there is indeed no reason why one shouldn't sabotage oneself.

The show addresses its main themes and concepts head-on from the very start. The value of life, the fear of death, and the pointlessness of it all. It's a very soft, comforting nihilism, not at all an aggressive one, but the show is deliciously nihilistic nevertheless. George's reaping of the young girl is not only an immediate allegory and reinterpretation of the events that have transpired in this very episode, of her very own life and death, it's also a middle finger to the more pearl-clutching audiences, which I love. What is brilliant about it is that unlike a lot of protagonists of fantasy series, George isn't going to be abolishing the "injust" system any time soon - she can't help but rebel, yes, but her rebellion is inherently futile, and not only is she made to do penance and actually carry out her job, she actually understands it rationally. The emotional need to rebel being quelled by an intellectual realisation of an impossibility to do so is not a common theme in Western media, and it's a brilliant piece of the wonderful puzzle of this series' worlbuilding and George's appealing character.

Going by this episode, I'd actually expected Mason to end up having a closer connection with George - they have wonderful chemistry in the scene at the bank, the actors are great even when clearly just having fun - but he actually ends up drifting away from her a little bit. In a way, maybe it's a reflection of George's relationship with her father as shown in "Sunday mornings" - she can hold a serious grudge, and Mason's too unreliable and prone to petty betrayals to really be worth putting faith in, even if he's fun to be around. Maybe that's reaching, Betty's not dissimilar and it goes very differently with her after all, although there's also the fact that George specifically wants girls' company.

Really, this episode is just great. Yes, it's not without cringier or unexplained moments (so what exactly happens between the autopsy and the funeral, what does George do all that time while a disembodied ghost with the reapers? Is most of that time just walking to her home, if it's far away enough?), nor without my usual nitpicks such as usage of the imperial system, but that doesn't overshadow true greatness, and not at all is it an one-off shot.

Promising pilot

[Red_Identity · 14 May 2014]

Overall, this is a pretty promising Pilot. The show does a good job of establishing the lead character and making her more likable as the episode goes by. Along with that, it solidly introduces us to all of the other reapers that are sure to be regulars in the series. I do appreciate that they didn't overdo the sentimentality with George's family, and even after death they aren't afraid to not show them as the perfect family. As of now, the character development is spot on. I'm interested to see how the show will handle long-running arcs with the episodic "Reaper Case of the Week" that I'm guessing will be part of the show. But yes, I'm intrigued.