Hollywood Video has been running a special. Everything in the store is available to rent for ninety-nine cents for one night. This isn't a Blockbuster night either. If you rent it at ten a.m. on Monday it isn't due back until midnight on Tuesday. So, you really have two nights if you're willing to make a late night trip. While Lexie and the kids were gone I watched Office Space, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Bad Santa, and Kill Bill, Vol I. There's a reason why only one of these movies has a sequel.
I also rented a Showtime series called Dead Like Me. This was on four discs. The first has only the eighty-something minute pilot. The second has five episodes, and the third and fourth have four episodes each. The episodes run about forty minutes. I guess they have commercials on Showtime. Or maybe they made them with syndication in mind.
The premise is that this girl gets killed and after her funeral, her soul does not pass on. She becomes a grim reaper. Reapers are folks who usher souls from their dead bodies to whatever their next destination might be. Reapers have an unspecified number of souls to harvest, but when their quota is filled they get to move on. That last soul takes the departing reaper's place.
The show follows the stories of the girl, the group of reapers she works with, and the family she left behind. Mandy Patinkin plays the foreman of the reaper group. Cynthia Stevenson is marvelous as the alcoholic bereaved mother. Christine Willes is a superb cast as the temp agency supervisor with the plastered on smile.
The show has some real potential. What it has done, it has done pretty well and it is entertaining. I just feel like it has been kind of light weight so far. There are some plot holes. I can forgive those, but I want a little more meat. More philosophy about death and grieving and values, please.
Oh well, they got renewed and will begin broadcasting a second season in a few weeks. I guess that means that about this time next year I can rent 'em. Of course it may cost me more than four bucks.
Posted to Movies and TV at July 7, 2004 10:47 PMSo, what are the destinations of these dead people? Do they go to heaven or hell? To Nirvana or reincarnation as frogs?
Posted by: Susan McJilton at July 8, 2004 4:01 PMFunny you should mention frogs. But the answer is that the reapers, and therefore we, don't know.
The pilot opens with a myth featuring Frog and Toad. Toad is entrusted with a clay jar containing death. Frog bugs him to hold the jar for just a little while. Toad finally agrees and Frog of course drops the jar, breaking it, and releasing death upon the world.
Posted by: jmmj at July 8, 2004 9:57 PMI've always liked Cynthia Stevenson's work. But maybe it's that lisp. Or her Canadian accent that pops up when she's playing New Yorkers. Sounds like this could be worth a SciFi Night rental.
But what was your beef about Office Space?