Dead to Me

Dead to Me‘s later episodes try to lean on character drama whenever possible, and Applegate and (especially) Cardellini get some strong moments as various truths come to light. But the season concludes with a cliffhanger that left me less interested in where things go next, and wishing we could go back to the grief retreat for some more laughs and tears.

[An expert cast] helps make palatable a relentlessly twisty scenario that is rarely as shocking as it seems to think it is. Still, it's a brisk ride to a cliffhanger end. [29 Apr - 12 May 2019, p.11]

The structure of the show, which leans hard on cliffhangers and the charm of its leads, keeps it zipping along; every episode ends with enough immediate intrigue that letting it autoplay into the next quickly becomes second nature. But by the end, its persistent attempts to surprise us dulls the impact of its overall story.

There is a winning comedy along the lines of The Golden Girls and a poignant coming-of-middle-age story like Better Things hidden in Dead To Me; the real mystery is why they aren’t the focus of the show.

I’m pretty sure there was a Lifetime version of this story and the best part was it was over in two hours. Cardellini does the best she can, but the writing for her character and her motivations make no sense.

There’s some ingenuity in the ways Feldman works out the story’s complications. ... But at the heart of the story, things don’t really add up or carry the emotional weight they should, because Judy and Jen are ideas more than characters.

Dead To Me is too committed to its plot and too unaware of its tone. It rides its big secret — a secret the audience knows from the end of Episode 1 onward — all the way to the finale, demanding you invest in characters who refuse to honestly invest in each other.