Mark Watches ‘Dead Like Me’: S01E08 – A Cook

In the eighth episode of the first season of Dead Like Me, Rube and George both experience difficulty with their latest reaping jobs. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Dead Like Me.

HELP, I ADORED THIS EPISODE. HELP.

• This is the first episode of the show that spends a great deal of time focused on Rube. He’s always been this father figure to George, and we don’t ever see him struggle beyond a few brief scenes scattered about the series. However, “A Cook” puts him front and center AND IT’S KIND OF SAD.
• Both George and Rube get assigned to take souls that affect them in alarming ways, and it causes both of them to continue their growth in their undead life.
• In George’s case, she takes the soul of a woman who sticks around until she agrees to take care of her dog, JD. This is a particularly sore spot for George, as she’s not had a good track run with having pets. Plus, what does that make her? Sure, there are logistical problems to keeping a dog, and the writers explore that IN THE BEST WAY IMAGINABLE. (I’ll get there, I swear.) But we get another chance to see George engage the idea that she hasn’t opened herself up emotionally much in the past. Can she do that with a dog?
• It’s through this, though, that George finds that Daisy has pretty much taken control of her apartment. She tries to keep the dog at Mason’s, but that’s a disaster. Let the record show that Mason’s house is a disaster purely based on imagined conjecture. Mason didn’t actually do anything, but the guy is so strange and careless that she just assumes he’ll use the dog in some ploy to get laid. Which… you know, that’s probably not that far off the mark. STILL. A DOG IN A HOT TUB. I can’t. IT’S SO GREAT.
• But it is not as great as what will now be known as my favorite set of scenes in Dead Like Me history. I honestly don’t know how this show is going to beat Delores’s studio apartment. I am still in awe of what I saw. It explains absolutely everything forever about Delores. There is no private version of this character that contradicts who she is at Happy Time. She is genuinely the peppy, over-the-top, openly sincere person we see at work. Which is extremely satisfying to me because I enjoy the depiction of Delores as a real person, not an ironic caricature. On top of that, the entire bit about the cameras in her room is just so goddamn fitting that I don’t know how to deal with a world without Delores in it. OF COURSE SHE WOULD DO THAT. Delores is not the type of woman to live gloriously in the past. Yes, she loves a good puzzle and an intense round of scrapbooking, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t evolved.
• MY GOD, I LOVE DELORES SO MUCH.
• Obligatory mention: WHERE THE FUCK IS ROXY.
• After experiencing a rather unsettling night with a bunch of cameras, George stands up for herself, and this time, it looks like it works! Good for you, George. And an extra five for coming up with the best home for JD: with Reggie. Ugh, I can’t cope with the fact that Reggie decided that JD stood for Just Dog. IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL.
• And that leads me to Rube. It’s nice to get a chance to see him struggle. It feels like the veneer around him is pulled down, and he appeared more vulnerable than we’d ever seen him. After giving the cook at Der Waffle Haus a hard time about his cooking, he discovers that the man lost most of his money in a pyramid scheme. So it’s especially hard for Rube that Death has decided that the very next day is when Angus Cook has to die. I understand that Rube has a certain finesse about collecting souls, so it was a big deal that he collected Angus’s soul without any fanfare at all. He was trying desperately to follow the exact same advice he’d already given to George: Don’t get attached.
• That becomes a problem after he agrees to take on the job of cook after Angus’s death. Because, like the woman George reaped, Angus isn’t ready to move on. His soul wanted to stay and make sure Rube knew how to cook. I admit that I expected Rube to be a master chef, so it was endlessly hilarious to me that he was actually quite abysmal at it.
• For me, this was about closure. People need some sort of closure to move on. That’s a big reason why Reggie has had such a hard time with George’s death. Her sister’s death was so sudden that there was no way she could get closure. So she ends up being just as lost as George and Rube are in this episode.
• Y’all, I am really liking this show.

The video commission for this episode is now archived on MarkDoesStuff.com for just $0.99!

Mark Links Stuff

– I have been nominated for a Hugo in the Fan Writer category! If you’d like more information or to direct friends/family to vote for me, I have a very informational post about what I do that you can pass along and link folks to!
– I have announced what the next books I am reading on Mark Reads will be, as well as updated y’all on the events, cons, tour dates, GOING TO EUROPE OH MY GOD, and general shenaniganry going on in my life. I have a similar post up on Mark Watches, detailing the next two shows I’m doing as well as the return of Double Features, and I finally explain what happened with my Vimeo account. Check these posts out!
- Mark Reads Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is now published and available for purchase! It’s available in ebook AND physical book format, and you can also get a discount for buying the ENTIRE SET of digital books: $25 for 7 BOOKS!!!
- Video commissions are open, and you can commission a Mark Reads/Watches video for just $25!