Great TV shows not only reflect the current culture, but also offers a subtle critique of it — avoiding heavy-handed, simplistic moralism in favor of deeply comic and profound reflections on the nuanced power structures and characters that create what issues the show critiques. Others are wholesome depictions of society as we wish it would be.
There is not a lot of room for nuance on shows like “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” – our heroine is easy to like and easy to sympathize with, which makes it easy to follow the many ways in which society often leaves her disadvantaged – yet she triumphs nonetheless.
Other shows try hard to ascend to that plane of great TV shows but wind up trying too much. Such is the fate of “Dead to Me.” Created by Liz Feldman, the show is a mighty affirmation of the power and importance of female friendship. This is its strongest attribute.
Jen (played by Christina Applegate) and Judy (Linda Cardellini) are two middle-aged, well-to-do California women who meet at a support group – Jen’s husband, Ted, was recently killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident; Judy’s fiancé, Steve, “died” of a heart attack, though it’s quickly revealed that it’s just their relationship that died, after five miscarriages and the pressure of sharing the secret of vehicular manslaughter.
The series skillfully depicts women reacting to a world frustratingly controlled by men. It begins months after Ted’s death, yet his choices and actions (often selfish ones) leave Jen struggling to provide for her two sons and grieving for her husband, even as she learns more and more unsavory truths about him (including an extramarital affair). Judy, too, struggles to live with the choices forced upon her by her former fiancé — it was Steve who convinced her to run after the hit, and who manipulates her with the absurd dream of getting back together and returning to their life as it was before.
The show is at its best when it concentrates on the relationship the two women build together, despite the mounting tension that what brought them together (shared grief) must drive them apart when Judy’s role in Ted’s death is eventually revealed (and Judy is so genuinely wracked with guilt over this that it’s never a question of if but of when).
There are tender moments that remain oddly incongruous to the rest of the show. When Jen and Judy stalk Ted’s lover, Jen reveals to Judy that she had a double mastectomy, a plot line inspired by Applegate’s own experience. In the show, Jen says she had the gene, and she didn’t want her boys “to grow up without a mother,” as she did. The scene is moving, and deeply reflective of the bind women often are caught in — the pressure to conform to the time-consuming and unhealthy societal expectations of beauty and that of being a perfect mother and wife. Ted’s lover, Bambi, is a young, aspiring singer (Ted was a musician. It’s not clear how successful); when she enters the scene, one can almost see the script notes calling for a buxom twentysomething.
The implications of Jen’s mastectomy are never shared with anyone else, and the other characters (mostly her gay business partner and her oldest son) perceive Jen as suffering from violent, incomprehensible episodes of rage. When Jen confesses to not being the mom she should have been; her son tells her it’s ok: “Just try not to be an asshole anymore.” To the viewer, the moment feels more confusing than cathartic. The audience realizes how much Jen sacrificed for her husband and family; her acceptance of the blame in this situation feels deeply misguided. She blames herself for her husband’s death, for their imperfect marriage, for her lack of maternal dexterity — and her son and mother-in-law blame her as well. It is only in her relationship with Judy, who is capable of fully expunging Jen’s guilt that the reasons for her rage are fully explained.
This contradiction is best explored in a scene when Jen admonishes Judy for calling herself crazy. “It should be illegal to call women crazy,” she says, since women are so often forced to react to men’s actions and choices. Indeed.
But the show leaves the viewer in a nebulous space — understanding why Jen and Judy lean so heavily on each other, even while forcing their characters to accept blame and punishment from the supporting cast. Their relationship is a closed circuit; together, they build their own little world, which takes them nowhere.
Briana Murphy is a writer and editor by way of Wasilla, Alaska.
One Comment
People watch shows like “Dead to me,” because they enjoy escaping into a layered, surreal and suspenseful story-line that is easy to follow and has characters viewers can identify with. The author’s title “Dead to me is Dead to me,” seems poorly chosen considering she doesn’t present a cogent argument as to why the show is unworthy of viewership. Although the relationship between Jen and Judy may, at times, be a “closed circuit,” the window the show gives us into the intimate details of their struggles is like a train-wreck that viewers cannot turn away from. Similarly, the author’s claim that the show’s strongest attribute is its “affirmation of the power of female friendship” entirely discounts the high-quality character acting and contributions of supporting actors that make “Dead to me” highly binge-worthy. Overall, this review misses the mark because the author’s analysis does not seem to support her conclusion that viewers are left struggling to “understand why Jen and Judy lean so heavily on each other.” It seems obvious that they have entered into a co-dependent friendship- one that Jen and Judy both pursue as a means towards abating their guilt feelings about Ted’s death.