DEAD LIKE ME

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: foul language and sexual content

Rated:

Everyone wonders what will happen to them after they die. For non-Christians, it's a frightening concept. Will they become ghosts? Merely cease to exist? Transform into angels? As Christians we know the answer, but for secular audiences the stream is a little more murky. This unanswered question brought forth the Showtime series Dead Like Me, which has a fantastic premise, great characters, quirky dialogue... and also some of the foulest language I've ever encountered. Having grown up without cable and getting used to finding "bad language" on primetime to be not so bad at all, sitting down in excitement with a series I've heard raved about caused my mouth to drop when I heard not one, but three f-words in rapid succession in the first hour. Being hooked on the series, I was forced to finish the set but my ears were burning and nerves were frazzled by the end.

George Lass (Ellen Muth) has perfected the art of not caring. Her theory is that life is all relative and being good or bad simply isn't worthwhile. The bad people are punished by society, and the good people are punished by gravity. She doesn't believe in absolutes and God never enters the equation... well, except for her theories on death. When the world was created, God gave Death into the keeping of Toad, who foolishly let Frog play with it. The little urn was broken, and Death has wandered the world ever since looking for its next hapless victim. George is an unlikely candidate. Highly unpopular with her mother Joy (Cynthia Stevenson), who can't wait for her oldest daughter to move out, dealing with a lousy job because she managed to tick off the temp agency lady, and having dropped out of college because she just "didn't see the point," little does she know that her life is about to end. Literally.

The Russians are having a little trouble with their space station. The thing was supposed to land in the ocean, but bits and pieces of it have fragmented off re-entering the earth's atmosphere and around noon on her first day at work, George stops in the middle of the street and is hit by none other than a flaming toilet seat. A crater is created, and the nice-looking blonde girl that was complacently awaiting her demise is now... dead. So why is George wandering around disembodied? Because her soul was prevented from impact, and she's now in the company of a band of grim reapers: Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the leader, Betty (Rebecca Gayheart), Roxy (Jasmine Guy), and Mason (Callum Blue). Instead of tripping lightly either to heaven or hell, George has been recruited into their ranks to take the place of her own grim reaper, who filled his quota and went on to "bigger and better things."

George doesn't like it. Tough. She has no choice. Once you make a date with fate, there's no going back. Her new world involves a mostly-physical body, the ability to see gravelings (those nasty little creatures that prompt death through a series of violent accidents), and daily responsibilities. Every morning Rube gives her a post-it note. Her job is to find the person whose name is on the post-it, and reap their soul before painful disaster hits. They're mauled by a bear. Get hit by a falling piano. Choke on their ham sandwich. She can't prevent their death because that brings serious consequences: their soul is already dying and they will become evil if it's not reaped. She can't miss her appointment either, or the person's soul is trapped in their dead body, leading to serious psychological problems (you try watching the cornier cut into your limbs!). Reapers don't get paid, so most of them have to work for a "living."

Every reaper has their own style. Mason is all about what he can get out of it, selling drugs on the side to make his grocery bills. Betty takes photographs of everyone just before they die, to store in her box of memories. Roxy reads meters and usually likes to let the person suffer and die before reaping their soul. George eventually joins their ranks, takes on the massive responsibility the new job requires, and finds herself a part-time day job to pay the bills. In the meantime, her family is falling apart. See what I mean about a unique premise? It's totally anti-scriptural but is a lot of fun. The show really revolves around witty dialogue and humorous (but very morbid) interaction between characters and the living and dead. Some reapers come and go, others stay for the long haul, but all of them have adventures that they'd rather forget. The dry humor is fabulous. The characters are likable. The storylines are always funny. But I simply cannot condone two important factors: the show's cavalier atheism (the only time God is mentioned, they're using his name as a profanity), and the absolutely profane language.

Each episode averages from two to eight f-words, some of them used sexually, others as insults along with 'mother.' Jesus' name is often used as a profanity, along with GD. Almost every other word is s**t. There's also coarse anatomical slang; people are called c***suckers, d**ks, p***ks, and sluts. Jokes are made about masturbation, casual sex, homosexuality, and "blowjobs" (one reaper was a 1930's Hollywood starlet who claims to have given one to just about every famous male Golden Age actor, from Errol Flynn to Clark Gable). Actual sexual content is infrequent but the pilot episode treats us to a revolting scene of two co-workers getting it on in the bank vault, in various positions and stages of undress. The season finale has Mason doing it with a Gothic girl in a closet. Daisy flashes men twice (implied). When George has to "rescue" a soul from a dead boy, the man comes out of the morgue completely naked; the camera barely avoids his crotch. One story centers around an affectionate gay couple. Mason smuggles drugs on airline flights up his butt. The police force him to strip down (backside nudity) and it's implied they investigate (the drug is wedged up too far and they don't find it, but it leaks into Mason's system, causing him no end of anguish). The show has some gruesome elements but never shows the actual death of violent victims, just the aftermath with a touch of morbid irony. Blood spatters on passerby when two greenies are mauled by the bear they're trying to protect. A man is shown with a seriously mangled face after being hit by a car.

There are explosions, accidents, suicides, gun wounds, and every possible way of dying that you could ever think of -- and some you might never have considered. Then, and perhaps even more troubling, is the religious bashing. George states right off that she doesn't believe in God, putting him in the same category as the tooth fairy and Santa Clause. Later she compares her first job of reaping to pap smears, root canals, and going to church. When Roxy becomes infuriated by a man refusing to pay meter bills, she disembodies his soul momentarily. The man believes he's had a "religious awakening," and asks if she's God. Rudy tells her to put back the jerk the way he was, and she does so (by grabbing and jerking around a sensitive part of his anatomy, and telling him that God wants him to go back to being a "jack*** and an ***hole."). George's younger sister plays with an Ouija board on several occasions. The reapers set up a mock sance in order to swindle a young man out of twenty thousand dollars.

I really am sorry that this show was made by Showtime, because without the language it would be a lot of fun. George's dry humor really appealed to me, and I found myself liking the other reapers despite their lax ideal of morality (stealing from the dead, for example). Blatant Christian-bashing and frequent use of the f-word and Jesus' name make it unsuitable for discerning audiences.