It’s time for another Bryan Fuller creation, which means it’s time for another wonderful mess. George was Fuller’s first protagonist, but she would be special even without that distinction. From the opening scene of Dead Like Me, she captures my attention with her deadpan pourquoi narrative, and like so many characters in that show, she keeps me invested in the later episodes when the series loses its way a little.
George is our eyes into Dead Like Me, the voice of this macabre tale that’s an arresting mix of black comedy and surprisingly honest emotion. Our first look at her is of a scowly, disconnected teen who’s not sure where she fits into this whole growing-up business. She chafes against her mother’s particularly involved parenting, but at the same time, she’s hesitant about venturing into the adult world of nine-to-five grinds. She doesn’t know what she wants or what her life is heading towards, but all those decisions are made for her pretty decisively when she’s killed by a stray pieces of falling space junk (a toilet seat.)
Her life is over, but her afterlife is just beginning – seemingly at random, she’s been selected to become a grim reaper who takes souls from the soon-to-be-no-longer-living. The sullen girl who shirks responsibility and doesn’t like to make decisions now literally holds life and death in her hands, and it’s no surprise that she’s terrible at it at first. Some of it is the steep learning curve, of course, the difficulty of identifying her mark from the scant information she’s given or the trick of finding an excuse to get close enough to reap the soul, but much of it is her own stubbornness and refusal to fall in line. Early in the first season, she tries to buck the system at every turn, because she simply can’t face the towering duty of the horribly unpleasant job she’s been tasked with for who-knows-how-long.
She does this for a lot of reasons. She’s a surly brat who doesn’t like being told what to do. She’s an overwhelmed kid who’s unused to having any genuine weight on her shoulders. She’s a scared girl who thinks taking someone’s soul is the same as killing them, and she can’t bear it. She’s a young dead woman who regrets that she didn’t do anything with her life when she had it. These and other motivations swirl through her actions, and even as I gape at her selfishness, her lies, and her attempts to cheat death, I appreciate the complicated baggage that informs them.
And just as importantly, George grows. She never loses her attitude or her distaste for authority, but she matures tremendously over the course of the series. She realizes she needs to take her calling seriously, learning to reap like a pro and respecting the final moments of the living. She matures as a woman as well, which is an even more impressive feat, since she’s not actually alive. However, her day job – grim-reaping is strictly gratis – provides ample opportunity to stretch her wings. I like watching her struggles at Happy Time, first to avoid her work and later to do it well, and it’s striking to compare season 1 George with season 2 George. Even her work wardrobe is so much more professional and put-together; I love it.
In short, I love George. I love her ballsiness, her immaturity, her snark, and her anger. Whether she’s floundering or succeeding, tough or vulnerable, she’s hugely entertaining and rootable. I wouldn’t have thought a dead girl could have a coming-of-age story, but, as is so often the case with George, she proves everyone, herself included, dead wrong.
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