My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.
This episode makes it easy to dive into "Dead like me" and sets up a good amount of the show's overall plot threads and themes. It's perhaps "Dead like me" at its highest-pitched action note, what's with train crash - however this scene does not overshadow the others due to absolutely fantastic writing and acting in them, their emotional and philosophical depth easily measuring up to the spectacle. When "Dead like me" shines, it really shines, and completely alleviates my concerns that upon a rewatch I'd find this series, which has been so foundational to my personality and worldviews, lacking. The idea of avoidance of experiences being its own virtue had really resonated with me. George starts moving away from it a little bit as the series goes on, "My room" being, maybe, the main crack in this edifice, but it is here where she presents it perhaps with the most conviction and clarity. Now, while I don't believe absolutely in this idea, I do like it at its strongest as shown here. Perhaps it has to do with my tendency to like the characters more in the beginning of their character arcs, when what makes them them is not watered down or averaged out. George indeed has figured stuff out before her peers - not only about the tooth fairy, but about life itself, and the unhappiness people bring to themselves by clinging to arbitrary goals. I guess George takes it a step further than I would by dropping out of college, but the depth of this conviction (or, rather, lack of conviction?) is quite respectable. I guess unlike her I've always seen some activities as worthwhile, and university as being a part of them and a stepping stone towards them - if you don't have such goals, the value of which you can logically justify to yourself, there is indeed no reason why one shouldn't sabotage oneself.
The show addresses its main themes and concepts head-on from the very start. The value of life, the fear of death, and the pointlessness of it all. It's a very soft, comforting nihilism, not at all an aggressive one, but the show is deliciously nihilistic nevertheless. George's reaping of the young girl is not only an immediate allegory and reinterpretation of the events that have transpired in this very episode, of her very own life and death, it's also a middle finger to the more pearl-clutching audiences, which I love. What is brilliant about it is that unlike a lot of protagonists of fantasy series, George isn't going to be abolishing the "injust" system any time soon - she can't help but rebel, yes, but her rebellion is inherently futile, and not only is she made to do penance and actually carry out her job, she actually understands it rationally. The emotional need to rebel being quelled by an intellectual realisation of an impossibility to do so is not a common theme in Western media, and it's a brilliant piece of the wonderful puzzle of this series' worlbuilding and George's appealing character.
Going by this episode, I'd actually expected Mason to end up having a closer connection with George - they have wonderful chemistry in the scene at the bank, the actors are great even when clearly just having fun - but he actually ends up drifting away from her a little bit. In a way, maybe it's a reflection of George's relationship with her father as shown in "Sunday mornings" - she can hold a serious grudge, and Mason's too unreliable and prone to petty betrayals to really be worth putting faith in, even if he's fun to be around. Maybe that's reaching, Betty's not dissimilar and it goes very differently with her after all, although there's also the fact that George specifically wants girls' company.
Really, this episode is just great. Yes, it's not without cringier or unexplained moments (so what exactly happens between the autopsy and the funeral, what does George do all that time while a disembodied ghost with the reapers? Is most of that time just walking to her home, if it's far away enough?), nor without my usual nitpicks such as usage of the imperial system, but that doesn't overshadow true greatness, and not at all is it an one-off shot.
This episode makes it easy to dive into "Dead like me" and sets up a good amount of the show's overall plot threads and themes. It's perhaps "Dead like me" at its highest-pitched action note, what's with train crash - however this scene does not overshadow the others due to absolutely fantastic writing and acting in them, their emotional and philosophical depth easily measuring up to the spectacle. When "Dead like me" shines, it really shines, and completely alleviates my concerns that upon a rewatch I'd find this series, which has been so foundational to my personality and worldviews, lacking. The idea of avoidance of experiences being its own virtue had really resonated with me. George starts moving away from it a little bit as the series goes on, "My room" being, maybe, the main crack in this edifice, but it is here where she presents it perhaps with the most conviction and clarity. Now, while I don't believe absolutely in this idea, I do like it at its strongest as shown here. Perhaps it has to do with my tendency to like the characters more in the beginning of their character arcs, when what makes them them is not watered down or averaged out. George indeed has figured stuff out before her peers - not only about the tooth fairy, but about life itself, and the unhappiness people bring to themselves by clinging to arbitrary goals. I guess George takes it a step further than I would by dropping out of college, but the depth of this conviction (or, rather, lack of conviction?) is quite respectable. I guess unlike her I've always seen some activities as worthwhile, and university as being a part of them and a stepping stone towards them - if you don't have such goals, the value of which you can logically justify to yourself, there is indeed no reason why one shouldn't sabotage oneself.
The show addresses its main themes and concepts head-on from the very start. The value of life, the fear of death, and the pointlessness of it all. It's a very soft, comforting nihilism, not at all an aggressive one, but the show is deliciously nihilistic nevertheless. George's reaping of the young girl is not only an immediate allegory and reinterpretation of the events that have transpired in this very episode, of her very own life and death, it's also a middle finger to the more pearl-clutching audiences, which I love. What is brilliant about it is that unlike a lot of protagonists of fantasy series, George isn't going to be abolishing the "injust" system any time soon - she can't help but rebel, yes, but her rebellion is inherently futile, and not only is she made to do penance and actually carry out her job, she actually understands it rationally. The emotional need to rebel being quelled by an intellectual realisation of an impossibility to do so is not a common theme in Western media, and it's a brilliant piece of the wonderful puzzle of this series' worlbuilding and George's appealing character.
Going by this episode, I'd actually expected Mason to end up having a closer connection with George - they have wonderful chemistry in the scene at the bank, the actors are great even when clearly just having fun - but he actually ends up drifting away from her a little bit. In a way, maybe it's a reflection of George's relationship with her father as shown in "Sunday mornings" - she can hold a serious grudge, and Mason's too unreliable and prone to petty betrayals to really be worth putting faith in, even if he's fun to be around. Maybe that's reaching, Betty's not dissimilar and it goes very differently with her after all, although there's also the fact that George specifically wants girls' company.
Really, this episode is just great. Yes, it's not without cringier or unexplained moments (so what exactly happens between the autopsy and the funeral, what does George do all that time while a disembodied ghost with the reapers? Is most of that time just walking to her home, if it's far away enough?), nor without my usual nitpicks such as usage of the imperial system, but that doesn't overshadow true greatness, and not at all is it an one-off shot.