Relationship Spotlight: Rube Sofer & George Lass (Dead Like Me)

 

If there’s one thing a newly-undead girl needs, it’s someone to guide her through the unique challenges of being a reaper and the hassles and headaches of her afterlife.  Though George would argue that it doesn’t always feel like it, Rube is just the ticket.  There’s a lot of shouting, a lot of aggravation, but when it comes down to it, she and Rube care deeply for each other.  Under his supervision, she grows as both a reaper and an undead person, and she gradually finds her way into the regard of the somewhat-closed-off man.

 

When George first becomes a reaper, she’s an absolute mess, no question about it.  She’s furious at a world that let her die when she was only 18, and the last thing she wants is someone calmly explaining her new role in society.  She doesn’t want the nine-to-five grind her afterlife turns out to be, she doesn’t want to take souls from the living, and she definitely doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of Rube’s homespun, usually food-metaphor-based advice.  And so, she acts up and out.  She tries to cheat the system, sometimes to save herself the work or responsibility, sometimes in the mistaken hope of “saving” someone, and to her, Rube is the quiet-voiced warden forcing her to toe the line.

 

This is, of course, because Rube has already been where George is now.  He’s learned what happens when an expired soul sits in a heart, when someone dies with their souls still in their body, or when you bend the rules of fate to make someone miss their “appointment.”  He knows how important their work is, and he does whatever he can, not just to get George to do what she’s supposed to, but to help her understand why she has to do it.  Sometimes, he gives her big, confrontational “shape up, little girl” moments, which is what the obstinate, self-centered George often needs.  She gives him lip, and he gets in her face, letting her know exactly how her irresponsibility or meddling affects people’s lives, and more importantly, their deaths. 

 

But that isn’t Rube’s only tactic.  He also realizes that, for all of George’s attitude and defiance, she’s still a confused dead girl trying to make sense of an impossible situation, and there are times when she can’t deal with hard truths delivered bluntly.  In these moments, he’s surprisingly gentle, fatherly, with her.  They often come after he’s warned her of the thin ice she’s on and she’s ignored him, causing the catastrophe he was trying to prevent.  They’re the moments when she most expects the full force of his ire, but he instead offers her quiet support and concern.  I think of when, against his explicit instructions, she tries to make contact with her mother and gets burned for it, or his considerate advice to think of everything she likes about being on Earth and decide if it’s worth sticking around for.

 

I’d imagine Rube prefers these caring scenes with George over the ones where he has to yell at her – it’d be much nicer for both of them if she would just learn to believe him when he tells her she can’t avoid her duties.  However, I think he knows that the strong-willed George has high enough defenses that she’s only receptive to such conversations when she’s taken a hit.  So, he instead gives her what she needs when she needs it: he’s tough on her to try and protect her from making serious mistakes, and when she falls anyway, he’s there to pick up the pieces and let her know she can come back from it.