DVD of the Week: Dead Like Me The Complete Collection

Week Two of my DVD of the Week post is....

Dead Like Me is my all-time favorite Showtime television show. Sadly, the show only lasted two seasons, with a total of 29 episodes. The show, however, did come back four years later with most of the same actors returning to do a movie. The two seasons and film, entitled Dead Like Me: Life After Death, are all included in the complete collection box set.

The show revolves around five people. All of which....are dead. Georgia Lass(the show's protagonist) was killed by a falling toilet seat from an exploded space ship in 2003 in the series's pilot episode and her struggles brought on by her new found duties as grim reaper are what keep the show funny, and sometimes very depressing. When someone dies, they are taken to the afterlife(portrayed as a blue light that takes the shape of what the heart desires), unless you happen to be the last soul a grim reaper needs to take for them to go into the afterlife themselves. If that's the case, you take their place as grim reaper. Grim reapers then go around taking the souls of people who are about to die, until they get to their last one, a number of which they don't know. 

The show spoofs the idea that grim reapers walk around in cloaks with a huge scary scythe slashing out the souls and torturing their victims with the opening credits and box set artwork. However, they are not the ones that do the killing. There are evil demon-like creatures called Gravelings that set up each and every person's death. The job of the reaper: get the soul out of the body before the graveling kills the human so no pain is felt. There are also children reapers who have the tasks of taking the souls of household pets. And the thing about reapers is that they are not invisible, they take on the form of an altered version of themselves. And this can make their jobs very difficult sometimes.

^Graveling^

Grim Reaper with a scythe and some bubble gum :)

The show stars Ellen Muth as Georgia Lass, Mandy Patinkin(from Criminal Minds) as Rube-bank robber from the early 1900s, whose death is unknown, he acts as the leader of the five grim reapers, Callum Blue as Mason-a British drug addict who drilled a hole in his head in 1966 thinking he could achieve the permanent high, Jasmine Guy as Roxy-Meter maid who was strangled to death in 1982 by a jealous roomate after she invented leg warmers, and Laura Harris as Daisey Adair-spoiled actress who died in 1938 due to a fire on the set of Gone with the Wind.