My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.
Going by the "popular vote" on this site, this episode is the least liked one of the show, and for a good reason: much of it is just randomly recycled short clips from prior episodes. That really sucks, not much to discuss here. But my personal least liked episode of the series' Season 1 is a different one, "A cook", even though I've ended up rating it higher. The reason being "A cook" is just very lame plot-wise and doesn't actually give much food for thought, whereas when "Nighthawks" stops self-plagiarising it's actually a damn good episode. While some things seemed a bit contrived to me, it has its own mood, and it very much taps into these themes and questions that "Dead like me" so brilliantly explores, so it's just sad to see the clipshow weigh it down to drown.
One thing that I've enjoyed would be the delightful bit of continuity with George's insomnia - in "Reaper madness" Mason did warn Georgia that insomnia is an occupational illness for the reapers. Now you may say: "Hold on, that's not really been shown before!", but what Rube suggests in this episode rather clears things up: his take is that George only cannot sleep because she's "standing too close", emotionally connecting with her "reaps". Is it true is an open question: Rube not only sees nothing wrong with concealing information from George, he actually thinks it's the right thing to do; and he's the sort of person who in general would associate an illness with a person's failings, rather than with it just being the state of things. However, the other reapers indeed don't seem to have these difficulties, so either Mason's supplies really go around, or emotional and mental self-discipline does at least help. It's interesting then that in a way that characterises Mason as also "standing too close", something we don't actually see in him - if nothing else, other than George you would at most expect Daisy to react that way, and she's probably usually too busy rifling through the dead's pockets on most days to get emotionally contaminated. Mason is not at all without his sentimentality, but you'd think he's way too desensitised by the job, and nevertheless...
The other thing is, of course, the main plotline, which I'd absolutely score a 7 or something on its own merits. Rube is acted out brilliantly in again teaching George the lessons that she absolutely understands, but cannot quite internalise: you cannot meddle with death, and you cannot let it bring you down. He's both paternal and patronising; and George is likewise brilliantly shown as an incredibly confused and conflicted person, who wants to rebel against the system where in her past life she'd just swum along, but now it's even more futile, as the system is not the beatable (or relatively ignorable) social expectations or soullessness of corporate job, but the unavoidable death itself, and absence of information caused by the physical world itself (lying on her porch George has to admit to Rube that she doesn't _actually_ know if her family is OK). That whole scene is just excellent, and is a storylet worth imbibing. Now, of course one would have preferred to see it standalone, but outside of "Pilot", "Dead like me" doesn't seem to like to play with variable episode runtimes - a blemish of the old series of course, slaves to their dedicated slots and not yet free to spread their wings on the on-demand media as they were.
Going by the "popular vote" on this site, this episode is the least liked one of the show, and for a good reason: much of it is just randomly recycled short clips from prior episodes. That really sucks, not much to discuss here. But my personal least liked episode of the series' Season 1 is a different one, "A cook", even though I've ended up rating it higher. The reason being "A cook" is just very lame plot-wise and doesn't actually give much food for thought, whereas when "Nighthawks" stops self-plagiarising it's actually a damn good episode. While some things seemed a bit contrived to me, it has its own mood, and it very much taps into these themes and questions that "Dead like me" so brilliantly explores, so it's just sad to see the clipshow weigh it down to drown.
One thing that I've enjoyed would be the delightful bit of continuity with George's insomnia - in "Reaper madness" Mason did warn Georgia that insomnia is an occupational illness for the reapers. Now you may say: "Hold on, that's not really been shown before!", but what Rube suggests in this episode rather clears things up: his take is that George only cannot sleep because she's "standing too close", emotionally connecting with her "reaps". Is it true is an open question: Rube not only sees nothing wrong with concealing information from George, he actually thinks it's the right thing to do; and he's the sort of person who in general would associate an illness with a person's failings, rather than with it just being the state of things. However, the other reapers indeed don't seem to have these difficulties, so either Mason's supplies really go around, or emotional and mental self-discipline does at least help. It's interesting then that in a way that characterises Mason as also "standing too close", something we don't actually see in him - if nothing else, other than George you would at most expect Daisy to react that way, and she's probably usually too busy rifling through the dead's pockets on most days to get emotionally contaminated. Mason is not at all without his sentimentality, but you'd think he's way too desensitised by the job, and nevertheless...
The other thing is, of course, the main plotline, which I'd absolutely score a 7 or something on its own merits. Rube is acted out brilliantly in again teaching George the lessons that she absolutely understands, but cannot quite internalise: you cannot meddle with death, and you cannot let it bring you down. He's both paternal and patronising; and George is likewise brilliantly shown as an incredibly confused and conflicted person, who wants to rebel against the system where in her past life she'd just swum along, but now it's even more futile, as the system is not the beatable (or relatively ignorable) social expectations or soullessness of corporate job, but the unavoidable death itself, and absence of information caused by the physical world itself (lying on her porch George has to admit to Rube that she doesn't _actually_ know if her family is OK). That whole scene is just excellent, and is a storylet worth imbibing. Now, of course one would have preferred to see it standalone, but outside of "Pilot", "Dead like me" doesn't seem to like to play with variable episode runtimes - a blemish of the old series of course, slaves to their dedicated slots and not yet free to spread their wings on the on-demand media as they were.