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Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season
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Genre | Comedy |
Format | Anamorphic, DTS Surround Sound, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen, Box set |
Contributor | Helen Shaver, Kevin Dowling, Laura Harris, Greg Kean, David Straiton, Christine Willes, David Grossman, Mandy Patinkin, Callum Blue, Patricia Idlette, Talia Ranger, James Whitmore Jr., Britt McKillip, Peter Lauer, Ellen Muth, Jasmine Guy, Crystal Dahl, Robert Duncan McNeill, James Marshall, Cynthia Stevenson See more |
Language | English |
Number Of Discs | 4 |
Frequently bought together
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Product Description
Product Description
You're about to be collected. "Winningly eccentric" (LA Daily News) and "insistently irreverent" (People), this groundbreaking, original series delivers you into a realm of shockingly funny characters and twisted narratives you'll find completely "addictive" (NY Daily News)!When an errant toilet seat from the falling Mir space station puts an abrupt end to her life, George (Ellen Muth) discovers that death is nothing like she thought it would be. Recruited to collect the souls of others as they die, she suddenly finds herself an unwilling participant in a line of work she never knew existed: Grim Reaping!
Amazon.com
Pay cable's "other"show about life and death, Dead Like Me takes a darkly comic look at mortality through the eyes of someone stuck between this life and the afterlife. "Bail bondsmen for the disembodied" is how Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the often exasperated Reaper foreman, explains it to disaffected 18-year-old George (Ellen Muth) after she’s vaporized by a falling toilet seat from the Mir space station and drafted into the ranks of the Reapers. It's now her job to take the souls of the doomed, preferably before their mortal coil is damaged beyond recognition by the devilish machinations of the gremlin-like gravelings.
You wouldn’t mistake George's fellow Reapers for the do-gooders of Touched by an Angel, but they are anything but grim. Charming British shyster Mason (Callum Blue) always has some scam brewing, high-living, fun-loving former flapper Betty (Rebecca Gayheart) treats death as a cabaret ("Reaping Havoc"), and one-time starlet and wannabe actress Daisy (Laura Harris) still nurses her dreams of stardom. Even hard-bitten meter maid Roxy (Jasmine Guy) manages to find a way to let loose.
Dead Like Me puts a light touch on black comedy, but it has a sneaky way of using humor to explore loss, loneliness, and regret, as well as kindness, and courage, and responsibility. George gets a hard lesson when she tries to wriggle out of her assignments like some overgrown kid, only to see the damage of her (in)action in "Reapercussions." And as George's angry, tightly-wound mother (Cynthia Stevenson) and withdrawn little sister Reggie cope with death, she breaks the rules to watch over them: their own pouty, glum guardian angel. There's nothing like your own death to put your life into perspective.
The four-disc set features all 14 episodes of the debut season of Showtime's witty black comedy. The feature-length pilot includes optional commentary by cast members Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Jasmine Guy, Cynthia Stevenson, and Callum Blue. Other supplements include the nominal documentary featurettes Dead Like Me: Behind-the-scenes and The Music of Dead Like Me (with theme song composer Stewart Copeland), 32 deleted scenes, and a still gallery. --Sean Axmaker
Stills from Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season (Click for larger image)
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : Unrated (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 7.75 x 5.5 x 1.25 inches; 14.4 ounces
- Director : David Grossman, David Straiton, Helen Shaver, James Marshall, James Whitmore Jr.
- Media Format : Anamorphic, DTS Surround Sound, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen, Box set
- Run time : 10 hours and 27 minutes
- Release date : June 15, 2004
- Actors : Ellen Muth, Callum Blue, Jasmine Guy, Mandy Patinkin, Cynthia Stevenson
- Language : English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Unqualified (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
- ASIN : B0001GF2F6
- Number of discs : 4
- Best Sellers Rank: #71,284 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #8,295 in Comedy (Movies & TV)
- Customer Reviews:
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The idea of the afterlife created by Bryan Fuller, who also created the similarly quirky Wonderfalls," is that right before you die you soul is taken from your body by a Grim Reaper. Although they are replete in the opening title sequence these are not Grim Reapers as in figures in black hood carrying scythes. In fact, they look like regular folk, although not the regular folk they were when they were alive now that they are a peculiar variety of undead. We learn the rules of the game along with young Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth), an 18-year-old sourpuss called George. Having decided to forego the college experience George has been sent out into the world to find a job and during lunch she is passed on the street by a strange man who touches her. We see a light passing from her to him and within seconds a toilet seat from a disintegrating Russian space station strikes her dead.
George is surprised to see herself looking at the big hole in the ground where she had been standing a moment ago and even more surprised to be informed that she is now a Grim Reaper. This task is done by Rube (Mandy Patinkin), who is in charge of a cadre of Reapers in this particular town. This includes Mason (Callum Blue), an English bloke who has figured out that you cannot overdose when you are already dead so indulge in drugs to your heart's contextt; Roxy (Jasmine Guy), a meter maid for the police department with ample attitude to spare; and, at first, Betty Rhomer (Rebecca Gayheart), a former beauty queen who is ready to move on to the next level. We are not quite sure what that is, because while Grim Reapers get to release souls and head them in the right direction (bright lights that assume various pleasing shapes), they really do not know what the final destination is really like for the dead.
Of course, in the early episodes of the series George is not happy with being dead and not exactly thrilled with a job when she is given a post-it note with a name, address and E.T.D. (estimated time of death) so she can go reap a soul. The latter is taken care of when she gets a couple of hard lessons about what happens when she does not (your form in the afterlife is not how you look at the moment of death, but at the moment that your soul is reaped, so it is something you would want to have done before the autopsy). The former is more difficult, because trying to reconnect with her life from beyond the grave is hampered by the fact that she looks different (to everyone else) and she cannot say anything that would convince anyone who knew her before that she was still around.
One of the strengths of this quirky series is that we do not ignore the family that Georgia has left behind as her mother (Cynthia Stevenson), little sister (Britt McKillip), and father (Greg Kean) try to deal with moving on after her death. Watching the Lass family disintegrate is almost a show within the show, capable of standing on its own, because their interaction with Georgia the Grim Reaper is infrequent and usually something indirect. We are as interested in what is going to happen to Joy and Reggie (and J.D. rather than Clancy) as we are to Georgia and her friends.
Another thing that makes "Dead Like Me" work is the actual friendship that springs up between George and Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes). Now known as Millie, George ends up going back to work at Happy Time, the employment agency that she was taking a lunch break from when the sky fell on her head (even when you are undead a girl has to eat). Dolores is extremely annoying, but "Millie" pretends to play along so long that she actually starts playing along with Dolores' weltanschauung.
The cherry on top with this show is Mandy Patinkin as Rube, who finally has a role in which he can say pretty much anything he wants, especially when it comes to what he is having for breakfast and how it is cooked. I like the way he calls George "Peanut" all the time as he imparts to her the facts of being undead. I also like the way Roxy gets mad at people who tear up their tickets, the moments of conscious that Mason has when doing his job, and the way Reggie honors the memory of her sister. But then it is a well- established fact that I like quirky.
Joining the cast during this first season is another Grim Reaper, Daisy Adair (Laura Harris), an actress who had a role in "Gone With the Wind" and makes no bones about how she got the gig before she died. She and George become roommates just to cause further trouble for our heroine (and her frog) and is most definitely the character who rubs me the wrong way. But in the end I have to say that the only thing about "Dead Like Me" that really bothers me is that the post-it notes only have the first initial of the person who is destined to die. You cannot tell a person's gender from just an initial.
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To fully appreciate a review I think it's important to know a little about the reviewer. This particular reviewer is about 25, male and likes when his TV-screen shows him something a little more intelligent. I've never really liked the mainstream shows like "Friends" and "Desperate housewives" even though I (still) watch "Lost" and "Prison break". My favorite shows are "Battlestar Galactica", "Heroes", "Wonderfalls", "The L-word" and off course "Dead like me". I should probably also mention that I'm Swedish so my English might not be the best at times.
This review is for both seasons of the show, since what I will write here also holds for the second season.
THE STORYLINE
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"Dead like me" is centered around a girl named Georgia "George" Lass, an eighteen year old with with doubts about the meaning of her life. She can't communicate with her mother, her father has an affair with one of his students and her little sister might as well be invisible, for all she cares. This could be the plot of a another mainstream teenage drama series, but instead George is hit by space debris and dies.
Instead of passing on or anything like that she finds herself having to work for the undead as a grim reaper, taking peoples souls before they die, saving them the unpleasantness of the actual death and helping them "pass on". Despite their good deed to society reapers don't get paid "through proper channels" and they still have to make a living, either by a day job or petty larceny what ever means they can find. They do get a new appearance though so they won't attract the attention of the people they knew when they were alive.
We get to follow George as she struggle to make a new life for herself, dealing with her new job, her day job, her old family and finding the meaning and purpose in (un)life she never found when she was alive.
THE REVIEW
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I could probably say a million things about this show but I will try to focus on the most important aspects.
First of all, it must be said that "Dead like me" is foremost a humor series, with a dark and a little twisted humor. But the show also deals with very serious questions like life and death, fate and circumstance, friends and family and the meaning and purpose of life. This mix of comedy and drama would normally scare me of, since shows like that have a habit of being over dramatic. Especially when dealing with these kind of "life and death" issues. I'm thinking about shows like Ally Mcbeal which I found quite funny to begin with but that soon tried a little too hard to get it's point across. Dead like me never has this problem, partly because the humor and drama scenes are well separated, and partly because all the deaths in the show are really silly and unlikely. This un-dramatizes it all. It also helps that the makers of the show doesn't try to shove some neatly packed, morally correct answer to all those life and death questions down your throat. In fact they don't try to answer any questions at all, they just seem to ask the questions in a different way. Also, the show never gets religious in any way. It is never assumed that God and Jesus Christ is waiting on the other side. Heaven and hell are mentioned a few times but most of the worlds religions include the concept of a heaven and a hell so that doesn't bother me in any way.
The actors in the show are really great. Normally you see a show with a couple of actors managing to bring their characters to life. In "Dead like me" all characters are marvelously interesting. Sometimes it's even a little bit disturbing that so many of them die in the show because you would like to know more about them. But you can rest assure that the you will be able to at least get to know the small group of reapers that George is part of; Betty, Roxy, Mason, Daisy and their leader Rube. The humorous nature of the show off course means that all the characters are quite stereotypical and strange but in many ways they are also very normal. They have personalities just like any normal person and their sometimes strange behavior is completely understandable given the fact that they have been dead for quite some time.
The dialog and setting (is that the right word) of the whole show is also absolutely spot on. There are many conversations that you really remember long after you've seen the show, and most of them are really funny. There is a particular dialog between George and Mason about frogs that I find very amusing, watch out for that one.
If I'm to complain about anything at all about this show it has to be that they sometimes rely a bit too much on computer animations. I really can't see why they couldn't use real props in some of the scenes and some of the animations are a bit sloppy. But this is definitely not of major concern and it definitely not something that is going to make me lower the five star rating of this show.
So if you like a strange and different show with a lot of humor and brains then you should really see "Dead like me", because this is probably the best show I have ever seen so far in my life. Or as George would probably have but it:
"This show is so good it would probably kill me... again"
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