We open with some joyous George snark about sweets.
Honestly, I would watch this show just to hear the voice overs – normally voice
overs annoy me, they’re clumsy writing at its worse, but George’s sarcastic
commentary is a joy to hear.
The sweets in question are being eaten by Roxy whose
deadpan demeanour still leaves George questioning whether she likes George or
not. And they’re waiting and waiting – and the guy they’re waiting for doesn’t
show up
To Der Waffle House to report to Rube. Apparently it
happens and the guy will be rescheduled – much to George’s annoyance because it
has been rammed home in the last 3 episodes that she can’t change fate, she
can’t save people. She complains at how really unfair it is that there’s all
these consequences when she interferes, but people can escape through random
chance. Rube pretty much chalks it down to it is what it is and hands out his
post it – including one that sounds like a dream for Mason. Oh and Betty is
locked in a morgue drawer/guerney thing (what do they call those things? The
big body filing cabinets?) for some reason.
George continues to stalk her family and watches the
fraught relationship between her mother (Joy) and her sister (Reggie) remarking
that they’re exactly the same conflicts she and her mother had and how little
she knew her sister. And how… odd her sister was.
At work posing as Millie, the nauseatingly saccharine Delores wants to give “Millie” some more responsibility! She has to pick someone for a position – and prioritise the list. And in looking through the people Delores considered “the dregs” she found her old file – Georgia Lass. And she thinks again on her appointment – again considering whether she can cheat death, whether she can miss an appointment. She decides to move her lunch, changing her excuse with Delores which includes a completely unwanted sharing moment about pap smears!
Mason and Rube are heading off on their gambling trip
(it’s a reap, honest) and it seems Rube is taking it waaay more seriously than
Mason (the gambling, anyway. The rest kind of goes without saying) which turns
out all to be a metaphor for George screwing up and Rube venting to poor Mason.
George, meanwhile has to watch a painful, agonising infomercial, trying to see P.J. Monroe, her ETD (she’s 11 minutes early – but 2 miles from the place). She tries to get to see him at his office but the assistant won’t let her near him. So she makes up a story of being drugged by his son and being raped while unconscious.
What? No – this is not something to joke about. This is
not remotely funny and I have no idea why Dead Like Me decided to include this
ridiculous, awful line.
George keeps up this awful lie, throwing tears into the
mix while Monroe looks utterly horrified. Her reason? If she can stop Monroe
going where he needs to be at 2:00 – his ETD – then he hasn’t shown up for the
appointment and he gets to live. He cancels his appointment and, as a bonus to
George, gives her some money. As George leaves, the assistant apologises
profusely to her, offers her sister’s card who is a lawyer to help her sue
Monroe’s son and makes a gesture of solidarity with her.
Mason and Rube are in an airport, having reaped a bus
full of gamblers and are now returning home. Rube is annoyed by crying babies muttering
about killing them which excites one of his fellow passengers and Mason is
nervous about the sniffer dog. Very very nervous because he’s smuggling drugs
in… body cavities.
Back at happy Time, for some reason Delores’s receptionist,
Crystal, is licking her phone (do not want to know, do not want to know, do NOT
want to know). And Delores and George get to talk pap smears again and Delores
is her usual jolly self.
Fun times continue at the airport – Mason gets a cavity
search and Rube has to explain to the nice interviewer that he doesn’t want to
kill babies. What a fun time they have.
And back at George’s old home, poor Joy is desperately trying to bond with Reggie with some Fun Activities They Can Do Together.
While everyone else is having a miserable day, Delores is
paying “Millie” to the moon and back, gushing massively and encouraging her to
take more hours and come in an extra day. George is amazed that she’s failing…
upwards. Despite having to deal with Crystal the phone licker with her eternal
glares.
To the Waffle House and Rube has a whole sheaf of notes,
lots of them, many of them without times; and George slips in that her guy didn’t
show up. To which Rube hustles her in the bathroom to remind her how sad and repentant
she was a few days ago because she’d finally grown up (while Mason suffers
horribly in the same bathroom from the drugs packet bursting in unmentionable
places). George keeps trying to lie to Rube while her own internal monologue
admits how ridiculous it is.
She goes on a job with Mason (who is well and truly out of it from the bursting drugs package) to discover a man who died from using the new exercise gizmo that JP Morgan was selling. See, he had an appointment that day telling him that his exercise machine wasn’t safe – it actually sets people on fire. He would probably have paid attention to this and cancelled the release of the product, had he not been distracted disowning his son after George’s lies. Because of that, many many people have now died from the unsafe product. Ooops.
As an added Bonus, Rube has a whole Waffle House full of souls who died from the machine who are delayed because none of them were expected to die. This is terribly awkward for Rube. Awkward for Roxy who has dozens of people rammed into her little cart and Mason is still twitching in a corner. Roxy’s amusing herself by the whole drama and realises what an utter mess Mason is.
And George is crying piteously in the bathroom and still
trying to maintain her lie. Which isn’t convincing Rube at all; he’s followed
the link back to see where all these deaths come from and recognised PJ Monroe.
Rube tells her to “start sleeping with the lights on” which she doesn’t know
whether it’s a threat and a warning and storms out on her.
That night, George has to duel with Gravelings playing
gremlin with her for breaking the rules.
And poor Rube has to carry Mason to his home so he can look after him. Poor Rube – as George’s voice over points out, Rube would have her back if she hadn’t turned it on him.
The next day dawns –Mason wakes up unmentionably awful,
Joy finds the dead bird Reggie has kept and George goes to work at the keyboard
where Crystal has purposefully sneezed on it. Ick ick ick and so much ick. Ew,
ick. And the gravelings are still playing with her – causing her to swear in
front of Delores – oh the horror! The horror!
She still has to go to the Waffle House and find that she’s still very
much not Rube’s favourite person at the moment (Mason still likes her – but that
comes from someone quietly dying in a corner) and, as he kind of rightly says,
will continue to dislike her until he forgives her and she stops doing stupid
crap. She asks why he never questions anything and he leaves –but he does give
her money to get her a waffle. Mason reassures her – in his rambly and still
kind of high way.
I think I’m quite touched by this scene – yes Rube is
hella pissed at her and he’s showing it – but still cares.
Another poignant scene follows with Joy, several glasses
of wine down, confronting Reggie, her fear and how disturbed she is about the
dead bird she found and how frustrating she finds every conversation where she
tries to talk to her, how it hurts her and how tired she is. It’s painful and
probably in every parenting book on how not to raise a child – but it’s really
well acted and feels real.
And at the Waffle house, poor Roxy is nearly brained by a
sign (she curses at the gravelings) and, after an awful week, she rants to
George – who has an epiphany about Roxy, how terrible her job is and how tough
she is to keep going and handle it as she does. And the one time she changed
someone’s fate – after days after days of constant abuse at her job there was
one man who was kind and generous and graceful; and she then got his name on a
post it. And by cutting off the power to his flat, cutting off his alarm, she
changed his fate and saved him. Which is why she had a no-show at the beginning of the episode
At work, George/Millie has a brief war with Crystal before finally raising the white flag and acknowledging Crystal as the victor – and possibly reluctant ally. And Joy and Reggie find a common cause – not the pottery class Joy wanted, but a taxidermy class.
And Rube – he cooks a special dinner, an impressive one –
and when the packages arrives from his shadowy boss, he offers it to them. But
they leave – and we still don’t get to see them and Rube eats alone.
One of the most pervasive problems in our culture and justice
system is an assumption that rape victims lie. It’s an assumption that clings
to rape more than any other crime – victims are not believed, they’re assumed
to be lying (or, at very least, exaggerating). It’s a stain that stops many
rape victims reporting their rapes because they don’t think they will be taken
seriously. It follows that any depiction of someone lying about rape in the
media needs to be extremely carefully done – and preferably avoided – because they’re
perpetuating this myth.
Another pervasive problem in our culture is regarding
rape as a joke. This, again, reduces the severity of rape, downplays it as a
shocking event and makes it a casual giggle. Again, this is something any
fiction needs to tread extremely carefully about.
And yet another problem with our culture with regard to
rape is the idea that victims are making it up in order
Dead Like Me, that one throw away joke was problematic on
multiple levels. She could just have easily punctured his tires, pretended to
have an urgent delivery or any number of other lies to delay Monroe.
On the story, I can get behind George trying to find a
way around her role as a Reaper, reaping people is hardly fun and the instinct
to save people is strong. But, having her attempts to circumvent fate go
horribly wrong repeatedly, it’s, perhaps, now time to move past this and stop
repeating the storyline. They were good, they were needed, they were natural –
but I’d kind of like them to be done now.
I also quite like Rube’s statement about not liking
George. It doesn’t mean he won’t like her in the future, it doesn’t mean he won’t
forgive her, but her and now, he’s angry at her and that’s not just going to go
away with a sorry. I want more depictions of forgiveness like this. And I did
like the development of Roxy. I do worry that her actually successfully changing fate may lead to George trying it again.
Joy’s battles as a parent remain one of the more understated
but powerful scenes in the show.
