Fads, Obsessions and Muses
Apr. 29th, 2005 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuA while back I rented the first disc of Season One of Dead Like Me from Hollywood Video. I'd heard good things about the show and wanted to try it out.
The first disc was the two hour pilot episode in which Our Heroine, "George" (Georgina) Lass, begins as an unmotivated 18 year-old slacker who feels alienated from the world and from her family. After George decides to put off college, her mother demands that she find a job. She does, and promptly gains posthumous infamy as "Toilet Seat Girl" on her first lunch break when she's killed by falling debris (specifically, a toilet seat) from a deorbiting Soviet space station. She is shocked to find that she isn't dead, she's undead. No pearly gates for her. "You bastard!" she tells Rube (the undead Grim Reaper who breaks the news to her), "You're sending me to hell?"
No, no flaming pitchforks either. She's going to be a Grim Reaper like Rube, collecting the souls of people fated to die. In her case, people fated to die of accidents or violence--other reapers take care of other sorts of deaths. George isn't thrilled by this revelation, and even less thrilled to learn that the job comes with no perks. No salary, even. Grim Reapers, who are corporeal and have no special powers aside from a) taking souls and b) being unkillable what with being dead already, must fend for themselves, squatting in the homes of the recently deceased and obtaining money however they can, whether it's holding down a mundane job or looting the bodies of their, uh, clients.
George, not surprisingly, does not take easily to her new situation. She grumbles, she complains, she balks, and she ignores the advice of her mentors, causing trouble for herself and others. It's a very dark comedy but I enjoyed it. I decided I would rent more of the series and continue watching it. That was several weeks ago and I hadn't yet gotten around to following up.
Today I dropped by the video store and rented the second disc, containing another five episodes. I spent the evening watching them, one after another. All five episodes. Tomorrow I'll return that disc and rent all the others they have available. I want to see them all. I'm hooked now in a way I wasn't after watching the pilot. That was amusing and mildly interesting, but the regular series episodes are even better. I'm intrigued and I really want to see what happens next.
George is slowly settling into her new life. She still questions and objects, but she's finding out--usually the hard way--that things in the afterlife are done the way they're done for good reasons. Violating the rules can cause a lot of problems. But she also discovers that, occasionally, violating the rules is worth the shitstorm that follows.
We continue to follow the story of George's mother and younger sister (and her father, who is seldom seen), who were seen quite a bit in the pilot. Her sister, Reggie, who is probably eight or ten years younger than George, and for whom George never made time while she was alive, is clearly badly hurt by the loss of George, though she expresses it entirely in her behavior and not in words. The battle between mother and daughter--as much over their completely different ways of dealing with grief as over Reggie's disturbing behavior--is believable and interesting.
George finally gets a job as an office assistant and we see quite a bit of her mundane environment. Her superior, a woman I thought would be a throwaway character in the pilot, is the same woman we saw there--middle-aged, a stereotypical office drone with a brittle smile--but also more. Over the course of these five episodes (and I hope future episodes) George (and the audience) begin to see her as a real person--even a friend of sorts, to George's surprise as much as ours.
So...I really like this series. I didn't intend to watch all the episodes in one sitting, but I just kept watching because I was fascinated. And I'll watch more of them tomorrow night.
And...I'm feeling an urge. A lot of fanfic writers talk about their muses, some even go on at length about the muses taking up residence in their heads and holding extensive conversations with them. I don't care for that conceit. I don't have muses. I just get ideas. And right now, I'm seeing some serious possibilities for a Dead Like Me/Highlander crossover story. After all, George handles deaths by misadventures or violence--and there's no violence quite like getting your head chopped off....
Will anything come of it? I dunno. I'll let you know.
The first disc was the two hour pilot episode in which Our Heroine, "George" (Georgina) Lass, begins as an unmotivated 18 year-old slacker who feels alienated from the world and from her family. After George decides to put off college, her mother demands that she find a job. She does, and promptly gains posthumous infamy as "Toilet Seat Girl" on her first lunch break when she's killed by falling debris (specifically, a toilet seat) from a deorbiting Soviet space station. She is shocked to find that she isn't dead, she's undead. No pearly gates for her. "You bastard!" she tells Rube (the undead Grim Reaper who breaks the news to her), "You're sending me to hell?"
No, no flaming pitchforks either. She's going to be a Grim Reaper like Rube, collecting the souls of people fated to die. In her case, people fated to die of accidents or violence--other reapers take care of other sorts of deaths. George isn't thrilled by this revelation, and even less thrilled to learn that the job comes with no perks. No salary, even. Grim Reapers, who are corporeal and have no special powers aside from a) taking souls and b) being unkillable what with being dead already, must fend for themselves, squatting in the homes of the recently deceased and obtaining money however they can, whether it's holding down a mundane job or looting the bodies of their, uh, clients.
George, not surprisingly, does not take easily to her new situation. She grumbles, she complains, she balks, and she ignores the advice of her mentors, causing trouble for herself and others. It's a very dark comedy but I enjoyed it. I decided I would rent more of the series and continue watching it. That was several weeks ago and I hadn't yet gotten around to following up.
Today I dropped by the video store and rented the second disc, containing another five episodes. I spent the evening watching them, one after another. All five episodes. Tomorrow I'll return that disc and rent all the others they have available. I want to see them all. I'm hooked now in a way I wasn't after watching the pilot. That was amusing and mildly interesting, but the regular series episodes are even better. I'm intrigued and I really want to see what happens next.
George is slowly settling into her new life. She still questions and objects, but she's finding out--usually the hard way--that things in the afterlife are done the way they're done for good reasons. Violating the rules can cause a lot of problems. But she also discovers that, occasionally, violating the rules is worth the shitstorm that follows.
We continue to follow the story of George's mother and younger sister (and her father, who is seldom seen), who were seen quite a bit in the pilot. Her sister, Reggie, who is probably eight or ten years younger than George, and for whom George never made time while she was alive, is clearly badly hurt by the loss of George, though she expresses it entirely in her behavior and not in words. The battle between mother and daughter--as much over their completely different ways of dealing with grief as over Reggie's disturbing behavior--is believable and interesting.
George finally gets a job as an office assistant and we see quite a bit of her mundane environment. Her superior, a woman I thought would be a throwaway character in the pilot, is the same woman we saw there--middle-aged, a stereotypical office drone with a brittle smile--but also more. Over the course of these five episodes (and I hope future episodes) George (and the audience) begin to see her as a real person--even a friend of sorts, to George's surprise as much as ours.
So...I really like this series. I didn't intend to watch all the episodes in one sitting, but I just kept watching because I was fascinated. And I'll watch more of them tomorrow night.
And...I'm feeling an urge. A lot of fanfic writers talk about their muses, some even go on at length about the muses taking up residence in their heads and holding extensive conversations with them. I don't care for that conceit. I don't have muses. I just get ideas. And right now, I'm seeing some serious possibilities for a Dead Like Me/Highlander crossover story. After all, George handles deaths by misadventures or violence--and there's no violence quite like getting your head chopped off....
Will anything come of it? I dunno. I'll let you know.
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Date: 2005-04-29 03:11 pm (UTC)Goody!
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