Friday, July 12, 2013

Dead Like Me, Season 1, Episode 8: A Cook


The opening theme is stopping and smelling the roses – enjoying life while it happened and George’s regret that she didn’t do just that. Before going to the Waffle House and having to endure Daisy’s endlessly annoying presence. And Rube continues to have problems with the shoddy food produced by the new cook. Though the waitress hates the cook and his foul mood already and the poor wait staff always get it in the neck. Of course, being Rube he doesn’t resolve his feud with aggression but by talking to the cook, Angus Cook, drawing him out and getting him to confess his money troubles. Yes, I like Rube

Leaving Rube to his feud, George has an appointment with an old person who she thinks is sweet and it’s a shame (Daisy asks if she’d rather it be a teenager, which is, perhaps, the first sensible thing that Daisy has ever said. The second is her saying that if she thinks the old woman is sweet, then be kind and sweet to her before she dies.) One Reap later and she has a ghost who is very very worried about her dog which kicks George’s guilt into overdrive. She accepts the dog – despite her misgivings due to her terrible history with pets. The pet cat that choked on the pet bird was my favourite.

Just after I said how nice Rube was, usually pretty patient – he gets a letter from his bosses that makes him chase after them swearing. That’s a bad sign. To the Waffle House and Rube takes his bad mood out on George and her new dog – do not get emotionally involved! While he takes the dog out even Mason realised Rube was more than a little out of character so they check his folder – he has a Reap for Angus Cook – the cook (who he just spent time getting to know so is, of course, emotionally involved).

George muses about being emotionally involved and how they aren’t just hitmen, how death happened a lot and how the chances are that sooner or later they would Reap someone they knew. And Reggie is quickly catching up with George with dead pets having tried to teach her gerbil to swim (her dad didn’t even know she had one, her mother is very unsurprised by this news). 

Rube compliments Angus on his latest meal – and Reaps him. A few near misses in the lethal kitchen later and he chokes to death on a sandwich

That night Daisy vetoes George bringing the dog to their flat (hah, I would totally have rammed through that), and one unpleasant night bunking with Mason who wanders around in his underwear (no problem detected with that!), George ends up going to work exhausted – falling asleep at her desk and being covered in sticky notes by her colleagues. As you do. Delores moves in – caring and concerned and, hearing the predicament, offers to let George stay with her until she figures things out. Half naked Mason vs Delores? Is that even a choice?

At the Waffle House there’s lots of sadness over Angus’s death and Rube offers to take over since the owner has the bus boy failing to cook at the moment. Rube rushes in eagerly and starts being chewed out by the bus boy for assuming he speaks Spanish and not English because he’s Latino.  And he’s joined by Angus’s ghost – that’s not supposed to happen. And it turns out that his job, a cook alone in the Waffle House, is actually really hard (are we surprised) and Rube is really out of his depth with Angus hovering over him telling him how badly he’s doing and trying to guide him. Except Angus’s criticism is much harsher than Rube’s ever was. Poor Rube.


George actually takes Delores up on her offer! Apparently she’s quite willing to open her home to strays- proving that she may be intensely annoying but she’s also intensely caring. Of course, that doesn’t change that living in Delores’ one room apartment is going to be like a time share in hell. Especially since Delores is meticulous, works a lot and had infinite energy. And she livestreams  all that energy to fans on her website using wall to wall cameras – yes George may actually be in a lower circle of hell. Especially when she imagines exactly why people were watching Delores and her frenzy of housework – and what they were doing while watching (this is a mental image that is going to stick with me for some time).

Cracked by another night of no sleep, George goes to the Waffle House and chews Daisy out, says she’s the guest and a freeloader and doesn’t get to veto George’s pets (GO GEORGE!) she also attacks Mason for her own twisted imaginings but I think that’s the sleep deprivation. Alas, while Rube is getting the hang of cooking, he’s also taking Angus’s advice on customer service which is less “the customer is always right” and more “the customer can screw themselves” (admittedly, if someone sent their cheeseburger back because they wanted the cheese melted on the bread and not the patty… yeah I’d throw it back at them as well). Apparently watching Rube, his strongest critic, chew out a customer was just what Angus needed to actually pass on. At the same time the owner has a new chef coming in.

At work poor Delores has to tell George that all her creepy webcam people were not big fans of George and she tries to find a super-nice way of kicking her out.

Time to the return to the beginning theme – whether people stop and smell the roses, wandering around because that’s just what they want to do and how they live not because they’re lost. George decides to give the dog to Reggie, leaving her on the Las household’s doorstep. Of course Reggie then gives the dog her bed (though I like her name for JD) but Joy takes it.


This episode really emphasised how nice some of the characters are even if we’re not always predisposed to see their kindness. Rube is often gruff and impatient with George, especially after her strings of mistakes and rebellions. But this really emphasises the kindness underneath that. The same applies to Delores – she’s comic relief, extremely weird and excessively annoying, but under all that is a genuinely good person.

My same irritation continues - where is Roxy? I mean we had an excuse for Betty leaving – Roxy just fell off the planet.


It’s a decently fun episode but I don’t know if it’s going anywhere