June 1, 2009: Dead Like Me: Life After Death
Dead Like Me was an HBO series which ran for two seasons back in 2003-2004, about a young woman (Georgia, played by Ellen Muth) who dies at age 18 in a freak accident, but rather than completely dying she goes into an intermediate state where she is a “reaper”, walking among the living (in a new body) and collecting the souls of the doomed just before they die. Philosophy, comedy and tragedy combine in this meditation on death and its impacts, and I would highly recommend this excellent show.
Dead Like Me: Life After Death is an HBO made-for-cable movie which comes along nearly five years later to extend the story. One main plot thrust of the new movie concerns the loss of the previous boss of our small group of reapers (the previous boss having been played by Mandy Patinkin, who is sorely missed here), and how they deal with their new supervisor who at first seems far more understanding but in the end turns out to be a disaster. The other main story explores Georgia’s reunion with her still-living sister, which while strictly taboo, nonetheless helps them both to move on from Georgia’s death.
A bunch of time is spent rehashing the carefully constructed world of the show, which includes a lot of established language and conventions, so it takes a while to set the stage. Ultimately, the movie turns out to be effectively like an extended or two-part episode of the show, allowing it to delve into a couple of more in-depth plotlines, but it doesn’t really approach feature significance. The movie, unfortunately, was wildly uneven in tone and quality, even though I liked the story and where the character arcs ended up.
Movie for fans of the show.
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