Without a doubt, the only ones which come close are the earlier episodes where mason was ontop form (burglary, pushing drugs) This episode breaks the routine of the show a little bit, which was 99 percent accidentally deaths. Here there is a murder but unlike the previous one which was a mass shooting , we get a better story here and better details. Here George is meant to reap a singer. Georgie meets a woman at the show who tells her how to get closer to the singer. The way they layout the story is very impressive.
2 Reviews
A masterclass in writing, and a brilliant conclusion to Daisy's catholicism arc
yavermbizi10 May 2022
Warning: Spoilers
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 2: 7/10.
Sometimes the themes that a given "Dead like me" episode operates with seem like a little bit of a medley. George's musings occasionally have a very stream of consciousness quality to them, and tether only to a concrete scene; or to none at all. Other episodes have a singular prominent theme throughout: like life's and death's unhappiness in the great episodes 1 and 2 of this season, or the passage of time in all its forms and with all that follows in another good one, "Hurry". So does this episode, but the brilliance of its sublime, subtle writing is such that it maintains its theme almost entirely throughout - yet you'll only understand it past the midpoint, and then will be struck by the depth with which it is explored. Daisy's catholicism arc is also concluded, while maintaining said theme. And then, in the end, the theme is spelt out rather explicitly, just so you can be sure that you're not seeing patterns where none exist.
The theme is privilege, and its arbitrariness. It's a familiar theme to American media especially, but it's the implementation, not the novelty, that gives me such joy. Be warned, this is going to be a long essay: this episode has inspired me to consider making a YouTube channel in the future to record my musings about the show and suchlike, but for now this will have to suffice.
The episode begins with George's musings about why one star gets to become a part of the Big Dipper, and another just flames out. Initially one thinks that it's just yet another metaphor for death. George has commonly wonders about how death makes its selection after all. After a brief digression with the crazy grandma (an absolutely disgusting character who brings nothing to the story, but is at least not quite as bad in this appearance as in the next episode's one) we get a scene of Daisy reading the Bible to Mason and Roxy, with George soon arriving. It's interesting here that all three (as well as Rube later) explicitly associate themselves with death, like they are many embodiments of death. That's an interesting sentiment, as it's at least not how George usually thinks of herself and death, and not how she explained it all to the schizophrenic guy. Daisy notes that Moses got a special death from god - he wasn't taken by death, but kissed by god. She clearly seems to understand that not only as a sign of god's special favour to the prophet, but also of god's connection to the practice of reaping - god taking Moses' soul via a kiss. Rube later mocks her, noting that god also banished death from heaven, and as such her catholicism is pointless - she won't get in.
Rube brings to the meeting a VIPR package for George, with all the other reapers expressing chagrin at her getting one with only one year of service logged and little experience at handling complicated reaps. Each of the 3 makes arguments why George doesn't deserve the honour while they do, but Rube just swats them away. He explains why Mason didn't get it, but even as he himself doubts George and tries to enlist Roxy's help, the newbie gets the VIPR, and that's it.
Taking a bit of an aside, I have to praise the props makers for the (otherwise awful) scene with Reggie and the grandma - they've prepared a whole slew of "newspaper clippings", each with a different article. We'd only ever known that the event of George's death made her famous, but never saw any reporters, nor has the lawsuit against the Russian space agency been discussed or depicted in any way. Outside of that seeming discrepancy, I'm also iffy on how they've chosen to name the Russian spokesman quoted in these articles: I can sort of believe that the newspapers just randomly decided - in the respectful Russian way - to refer to him by name and patronym, or made an in-universe mistake by confusing his patronym with his surname, or even that he has a weird surname that just looks like a patronym (after all, Roman Abramovich and Svetlana Alexiyevich exist). Still, that's a bit of an additional annoyance.
In the concert subplot Roxy gets George in, and Mason has a difficult time proving that he has a valid reason, a permission to get in, to the guard until a goth bandmember (?) lady somehow points him out as dead to her crew, which gets him inside. It's interesting how "Dead like me" plays with these sorts of glitches in the world: a guy who just randomly can see Gravelings was an episode's subject, and now a girl (and her goth crew?) who can tell reapers apart from the living without quite realising their nature.
In Daisy's subplot she finds the priest, her reap, renouncing the faith while drunk. She gives herself a stigma - a catholic phenomenon - with a knif,e to show off her undead healing, and tells him what is known to her of the reaper system. She hopes that perhaps her words will enable him to connect the dots in some scriptures, to discover the true secrets of the universe via esoteric christian knowledge, but to him nothing really falls in place. When he later dies, she again asks him a question with the same intention - whether the lights are as the christian afterlife has been described. However, he only says: "I'm as curious as you are". The lights he walks into are a nondescript blue corridor evoking mystery, perhaps, but not divinity. Daisy leaves her cross, a source of so much commotion, in the font with the dead priest. Rube, meeting her at the site, immediately notices that, and asks whether the reap went to her liking. Daisy is disappointed by two things: 1) is that the priest dispensed no deep esoteric knowledge that would help her make sense of the world - whatever christian scriptures he knew turned out to be insufficient; 2) which she says, and which finally states full-throatedly the theme of the episode: he was a priest, yet he got no golden angels and trumpets for his lights, no kiss from god Moses-style (which perhaps would've enabled Daisy to see him!), no honours at all above a secular man.
If the christian god exists in the "Dead like me" universe, he doesn't reward his servants, the men of cloth, even though they're so elevated in the hierarchic catholic faith. No honours are bestowed upon them in death. Mason is having a hard time getting in, but George gets an easy way. George gets the VIPR without having put the hours in, as arbitrary as anything else, as any other death. Some star arbitrarily ends up in a spot, which from Earth makes it a part of an imagined dipper; another doesn't. It all loops around. Privileges aren't earned, they're happenstantial.
It is however interesting in that light (pardon the pun) that the yoga guru whom Rube reaped in Season 1 did get a different kind of light, pink-ish, and a direct visage of a Hindu god; and the gay guy at the gay wedding seemingly had gotten some golden lights (?..) Perhaps in the world of "Dead like me" christianity is a false religion, and hinduism is the true one - hence, the first episode invokes god with a pointedly lowercase "g", as in, one in many?! Deepest lore indeed! Notably, Rube invokes a practice from Mumbai, the Tower of Silence on which sky burials are performed, to make his usual point to Daisy: nothing really has meaning beyond death, it's pointless to wonder about that. Daisy walks away from his offer of a ride, however. She has lost her faith, but still can't come around to Rube's grounded (or obfuscating) views.
Meanwhile, Mason, like Daisy, tells all, but unlike her he does that unprofessionally, to a group of goths none of whom are his reap. The goth leader wants to die and be made a reaper by Mason, and while Mason doesn't state it (and in fact mocks him, trying to take back his revelation), we know that it's impossible: reapers are chosen by fate, and only appear to fulfil a vacancy. Even if it was his time, the goth couldn't guarantee the privilege of becoming a reaper. Arbitrariness again.
George and her new friend, the future killer, discuss how fame changed Lowerdeck's stature, but that he's still a human. When he is shot on live television, he gets a candlelit vigil by at least dozens or hundreds (in spite, ironically, of his lyrical hero asking people not to mourn him in his songs). He asks if everybody gets that, perplexed; George, in what must be a golden example of reaper dad jokes that the poor reaped souls just don't quite get, replies: "No, no lights for me, not yet"; conflating the (candle)lights of the living world with the lights that beckon the departed souls. She does later note that it's easier to mourn somebody famous, whom you didn't know and, bookending the episode, that while some get a candlelit vigil, for others, for "nobodies like her", there's only a sky full of stars. Why do some get the one and others only the other? Well, quite arbitrary, isn't it? Now, of course, Lowerdeck was a famous singer, and Georgia Lass literally had accomplished nothing, and by design too, so it's not quite apples to apples, but the point is clear: nature inherently elevates some, but not others; dispenses honours on some, but not others; kills some earlier and others later, and to others yet offers undeath as a reaper; and none of it seems to take merit into account. After all, is there a reason why VIPRs with their money grants are a thing, beyond the reapers wanting bragging rights, and the difficulty of getting within touching distance of a celebrity?
On one last note, Lowerdeck's song is interesting: "So that I may die easy; so that I may die young". He got his wish in the end, and it's arguably one of the best deaths receivable - George would disagree with the latter part, of course, but frankly for her it's especially true: would she rather have been a reaper in a decrepit body? Still, I suppose one has to find that life, with all of its undeserved honours and snubs, has a bigger draw than even dying young and leaving behind a pretty corpse.
Sometimes the themes that a given "Dead like me" episode operates with seem like a little bit of a medley. George's musings occasionally have a very stream of consciousness quality to them, and tether only to a concrete scene; or to none at all. Other episodes have a singular prominent theme throughout: like life's and death's unhappiness in the great episodes 1 and 2 of this season, or the passage of time in all its forms and with all that follows in another good one, "Hurry". So does this episode, but the brilliance of its sublime, subtle writing is such that it maintains its theme almost entirely throughout - yet you'll only understand it past the midpoint, and then will be struck by the depth with which it is explored. Daisy's catholicism arc is also concluded, while maintaining said theme. And then, in the end, the theme is spelt out rather explicitly, just so you can be sure that you're not seeing patterns where none exist.
The theme is privilege, and its arbitrariness. It's a familiar theme to American media especially, but it's the implementation, not the novelty, that gives me such joy. Be warned, this is going to be a long essay: this episode has inspired me to consider making a YouTube channel in the future to record my musings about the show and suchlike, but for now this will have to suffice.
The episode begins with George's musings about why one star gets to become a part of the Big Dipper, and another just flames out. Initially one thinks that it's just yet another metaphor for death. George has commonly wonders about how death makes its selection after all. After a brief digression with the crazy grandma (an absolutely disgusting character who brings nothing to the story, but is at least not quite as bad in this appearance as in the next episode's one) we get a scene of Daisy reading the Bible to Mason and Roxy, with George soon arriving. It's interesting here that all three (as well as Rube later) explicitly associate themselves with death, like they are many embodiments of death. That's an interesting sentiment, as it's at least not how George usually thinks of herself and death, and not how she explained it all to the schizophrenic guy. Daisy notes that Moses got a special death from god - he wasn't taken by death, but kissed by god. She clearly seems to understand that not only as a sign of god's special favour to the prophet, but also of god's connection to the practice of reaping - god taking Moses' soul via a kiss. Rube later mocks her, noting that god also banished death from heaven, and as such her catholicism is pointless - she won't get in.
Rube brings to the meeting a VIPR package for George, with all the other reapers expressing chagrin at her getting one with only one year of service logged and little experience at handling complicated reaps. Each of the 3 makes arguments why George doesn't deserve the honour while they do, but Rube just swats them away. He explains why Mason didn't get it, but even as he himself doubts George and tries to enlist Roxy's help, the newbie gets the VIPR, and that's it.
Taking a bit of an aside, I have to praise the props makers for the (otherwise awful) scene with Reggie and the grandma - they've prepared a whole slew of "newspaper clippings", each with a different article. We'd only ever known that the event of George's death made her famous, but never saw any reporters, nor has the lawsuit against the Russian space agency been discussed or depicted in any way. Outside of that seeming discrepancy, I'm also iffy on how they've chosen to name the Russian spokesman quoted in these articles: I can sort of believe that the newspapers just randomly decided - in the respectful Russian way - to refer to him by name and patronym, or made an in-universe mistake by confusing his patronym with his surname, or even that he has a weird surname that just looks like a patronym (after all, Roman Abramovich and Svetlana Alexiyevich exist). Still, that's a bit of an additional annoyance.
In the concert subplot Roxy gets George in, and Mason has a difficult time proving that he has a valid reason, a permission to get in, to the guard until a goth bandmember (?) lady somehow points him out as dead to her crew, which gets him inside. It's interesting how "Dead like me" plays with these sorts of glitches in the world: a guy who just randomly can see Gravelings was an episode's subject, and now a girl (and her goth crew?) who can tell reapers apart from the living without quite realising their nature.
In Daisy's subplot she finds the priest, her reap, renouncing the faith while drunk. She gives herself a stigma - a catholic phenomenon - with a knif,e to show off her undead healing, and tells him what is known to her of the reaper system. She hopes that perhaps her words will enable him to connect the dots in some scriptures, to discover the true secrets of the universe via esoteric christian knowledge, but to him nothing really falls in place. When he later dies, she again asks him a question with the same intention - whether the lights are as the christian afterlife has been described. However, he only says: "I'm as curious as you are". The lights he walks into are a nondescript blue corridor evoking mystery, perhaps, but not divinity. Daisy leaves her cross, a source of so much commotion, in the font with the dead priest. Rube, meeting her at the site, immediately notices that, and asks whether the reap went to her liking. Daisy is disappointed by two things: 1) is that the priest dispensed no deep esoteric knowledge that would help her make sense of the world - whatever christian scriptures he knew turned out to be insufficient; 2) which she says, and which finally states full-throatedly the theme of the episode: he was a priest, yet he got no golden angels and trumpets for his lights, no kiss from god Moses-style (which perhaps would've enabled Daisy to see him!), no honours at all above a secular man.
If the christian god exists in the "Dead like me" universe, he doesn't reward his servants, the men of cloth, even though they're so elevated in the hierarchic catholic faith. No honours are bestowed upon them in death. Mason is having a hard time getting in, but George gets an easy way. George gets the VIPR without having put the hours in, as arbitrary as anything else, as any other death. Some star arbitrarily ends up in a spot, which from Earth makes it a part of an imagined dipper; another doesn't. It all loops around. Privileges aren't earned, they're happenstantial.
It is however interesting in that light (pardon the pun) that the yoga guru whom Rube reaped in Season 1 did get a different kind of light, pink-ish, and a direct visage of a Hindu god; and the gay guy at the gay wedding seemingly had gotten some golden lights (?..) Perhaps in the world of "Dead like me" christianity is a false religion, and hinduism is the true one - hence, the first episode invokes god with a pointedly lowercase "g", as in, one in many?! Deepest lore indeed! Notably, Rube invokes a practice from Mumbai, the Tower of Silence on which sky burials are performed, to make his usual point to Daisy: nothing really has meaning beyond death, it's pointless to wonder about that. Daisy walks away from his offer of a ride, however. She has lost her faith, but still can't come around to Rube's grounded (or obfuscating) views.
Meanwhile, Mason, like Daisy, tells all, but unlike her he does that unprofessionally, to a group of goths none of whom are his reap. The goth leader wants to die and be made a reaper by Mason, and while Mason doesn't state it (and in fact mocks him, trying to take back his revelation), we know that it's impossible: reapers are chosen by fate, and only appear to fulfil a vacancy. Even if it was his time, the goth couldn't guarantee the privilege of becoming a reaper. Arbitrariness again.
George and her new friend, the future killer, discuss how fame changed Lowerdeck's stature, but that he's still a human. When he is shot on live television, he gets a candlelit vigil by at least dozens or hundreds (in spite, ironically, of his lyrical hero asking people not to mourn him in his songs). He asks if everybody gets that, perplexed; George, in what must be a golden example of reaper dad jokes that the poor reaped souls just don't quite get, replies: "No, no lights for me, not yet"; conflating the (candle)lights of the living world with the lights that beckon the departed souls. She does later note that it's easier to mourn somebody famous, whom you didn't know and, bookending the episode, that while some get a candlelit vigil, for others, for "nobodies like her", there's only a sky full of stars. Why do some get the one and others only the other? Well, quite arbitrary, isn't it? Now, of course, Lowerdeck was a famous singer, and Georgia Lass literally had accomplished nothing, and by design too, so it's not quite apples to apples, but the point is clear: nature inherently elevates some, but not others; dispenses honours on some, but not others; kills some earlier and others later, and to others yet offers undeath as a reaper; and none of it seems to take merit into account. After all, is there a reason why VIPRs with their money grants are a thing, beyond the reapers wanting bragging rights, and the difficulty of getting within touching distance of a celebrity?
On one last note, Lowerdeck's song is interesting: "So that I may die easy; so that I may die young". He got his wish in the end, and it's arguably one of the best deaths receivable - George would disagree with the latter part, of course, but frankly for her it's especially true: would she rather have been a reaper in a decrepit body? Still, I suppose one has to find that life, with all of its undeserved honours and snubs, has a bigger draw than even dying young and leaving behind a pretty corpse.
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