3 out of 5

Created by: Liz Feldman

covers season 1

Two great lead performances and an excellent balance of flawed and realistic characteristics amongst its leads helps to overcome Dead To Me’s ridiculously pedestrian story telling and some wishy-washiness with its side characters.

Christina Applegate plays Jen, widowed in the past year by an uncaught hit-and-run driver.  Dead To Me’s writers use ‘I’m from Brooklyn’ as shorthand for Jen’s tough-and-cynical attitude, which has her always ready with a rude, four-letter-word-filled retort to pretty much anything – as shown to us right away, flippancy full-on during a grief meeting she attends.

At which she meets Judy, played by Linda Cardellini – flighty and friendly to Jen’s cold exterior – and with whom she eventually bonds, surface-level over the losses they both discuss during the meeting, but also because Judy’s playfulness and relative openness allows her to keep up with Judy’s banter, putting them on an equal playing field.

The show really wants to milk this dynamic for humor – pairing up an odd couple, sending them out into the world, both prepared to go off (in their own ways) on a hair trigger – but it rarely amounts to more than a smile’s worth of charm.  It’s not bothersome, but it’s not the payoff of the series.  Instead, it’s the surprisingly balanced characterizations both actors are given (and with which they imbue their roles) throughout the show, fully willing to indulge in some crass or crazy behavior, but always tied to reasons we can respect and understand.  So, yes, the Brooklyn shorthand, and Judy is ‘nuts,’ but there’s a mini-speech after a few episodes about how calling someone crazy should be as much of a red flag as other hate speech, and Dead To Me – with its leads, both male and female – remains very much true to that.  Yes, there are characters you’ll side with or side against, but none of them come across as one dimensional, or unbelievably good or bad.

The side characters don’t get this fair play, and are employed more for humor’s sake.  Unfortunately, this humor falls into the same shoulder-shrug effectiveness as Judy and Jen’s banter, which doesn’t distract from the hypocrisy of Jen wrinkling her nose at certain beliefs or interests when, if she were the side character, her behaviors would merit the same.

Note that I haven’t really discussed the plot…  In part, that’s because it’s hard to discuss: yes, there’s more to Judy and Jen than we’re initially told, and the show tries to parse that out beat by beat, so saying much beyond that is, essentially, spoiling what there is to spoil.  And while I’ll respect that, none of those beats were particularly intriguing.  The story takes a few interesting zigs, but nothing truly unpredictable, and it ends, really, the only way it could have, once you’re aware things are open for a second season.  So I was never hanging around for the cliffhangers; I was more interested in watching Judy and Jen interact, and seeing if the writers could maintain the balance in their characters throughout, which they successfully did.  The story wholly served as background, otherwise – one huuuuge MacGuffin – and felt like it was hitting its marks, just to have something that show could be “about” and claim to have some twists.

Don’t worry: I didn’t laugh at the trailer either.  It’s indicative of the tone.  But if you’ve liked either one of these leads elsewhere, you’ll get to see them shine here, and there’s a good possibility you’ll want to hang around with them either way.