Review of Dead Like Me: Season 1 on DVD

Pilot: In the pilot episode of this Showtime original series, the viewer is treated to a feature length introduction to the life and death of Georgia Lass, a college dropout who is afraid that the rest of her life will be rife with mediocrity. Fortunately for her, her life won’t go much longer than her first day at her office job. A piece of a Soviet space station (the space toilet, a reference made throughout the series to introduce her to other reapers) falls to Earth and lands directly on Georgia and she is introduced to the afterlife by sage reaper Rube (Mandy Patinkin). Rube tells her that instead of moving on to her final destination, she must spend time as a grim reaper, taking souls of the soon-to-be-dead and living in the margins in her home town. Georgia learns about the community of reapers that live in Seattle, including Rube, Mason (Callum Blue), the beautiful Betty (Rebecca Gayheart), and the no-nonsense Roxy (Jasmine Guy). Rube takes Georgia to her own memorial service, where she discovers the pain her death caused her family, especially her uptight mother Joy (Cynthia Stevenson). Georgia’s first reaping jobs allow her to learn the process of taking a soul, how to stay away from the attention of the living (she can still be seen, only in a different body), and the difficulty of taking a life unfulfilled when she has to reap the soul of a young girl in a train wreck.