Dead Like Me - The Ledger, 2.02

Dead Like Me could have done so much. An incredible, attractive, bunch of actors, including Mandy Patinkin and Callum Blue, played with quick, witty dialogue. A quirky, Pie Hole-esque diner specializing in waffles served as their meeting ground. The premise was fascinating -- newly dead girl adjusts to being undead, finds herself employed as a grim reaper. Joins a motley bunch of reapers, each with their own story, while at home, her family copes in their own ways with her death. It explored of the nature of death itself, how the living deal with death, and most interestingly, the specific schematics of what Dead-Like-Me-death really is. Fantastic creatures known as Gravelings, only visible out of the corner of your eye, roam about killing people -- but why some people over others? George Lass was only eighteen when she was killed by a falling toilet seat meteor, but Why her?

Unfortunately, this question spanned far too many episodes. While it would be natural for her character to question Why at first, I feel this should have been, in turn, one of the first issues dealt with so that other stories could be explored. Or, it could have been pushed to the side, resurfacing with an emotional eruption or breakdown. Either way, it shouldn't have been a red button issue into the second season. "The Ledger" begins with George bursting into Rube's apartment and demanding to know Why she had to die, and it feels incredibly tired.

The last half of the first season, in fact, feels too long and repetitive. The reapers receive their post-it death assignments in the beginning of the episode, reap their stuff, question death a bit, and the episode ends with a George voiceover. In the middle somewhere there are a couple of boring scenes that feature George's mother and sister, being generally boring and argumentative. The story never goes anywhere.

What the show should have done was to continue questioning, through George's newly dead inquisitive eyes, the Why behind the post-its and Gravelings and rules of death from an unknown source. Less commentary about dead things and more exploration of what was surely a darkly fantastical dichotomy behind the scenes. The first season begins this way, with George even trying to cheat the system by not reaping, but she soon becomes uncharacteristically complacent with her situation and mindlessly reaps souls like the rest of her Waffle House cohorts. Overall, there is too much sitting around eating waffles not doing anything. Where are the dramatic showcases for each of the actors when they finally open up about their lives and subsequent deaths and subsequent after-death ennui? Dead Like Me should have been bigger, should have aimed higher. Instead, it was stuck in a diner.

The most fascinating part of the series so far was when Betty, a reaper, follows one of the souls she reaps into their afterlife. Rube warned George to never do this, to never break the rules. The episode ends with a satisfying, heart-pounding moment as Rube sticks a post-it on his door, a note for the higher-ups: "Where did she go?"

What happens when you break the rules? What are the rules in death, and who makes them? What are Gravelings? Where did Betty go?

Alas, all these questions are dropped after this episode, all consequences forgotten. Betty's departure took place in the fifth episode of the first season ("Reaping Havoc") which, incidentally, is the last episode Bryan Fuller was associated with. Had he been in charge the rest of the way, the rest of the season would have doubtless been propelled by these questions.

Things Dead Like Me should have done:

• Less Happy Time, less Waffle House.
• More in-the-field reaping, more creative wacky death situations.
• Spotlight episodes for Mason, Rube, Roxy, Daisy. Looking at their past lives and therefore motivations and current state of mind. Opening up to George, showing how broken they are about death and how they learned to cope, for better or for worse.
• A-Team, caper-style episodes in which the gang teams up to find out who's giving the orders, preferably with the leadership of George who is the least jaded.
• Give George's family something interesting to do, or omit them entirely.
• Character development. Any character development.
• Reapers bonding with their reaping targets before and after death. Learning lessons, moral-of-the-story, episode theme type of thing.
• A musical episode (they said they wanted to do one!) or some sort of deviation in the typical episode structure.