Dead to Me

Dead to Me Recap: Sense of Occasion

“Sometimes people need a friend more than they need the truth.”

There’s typically something off-putting about a show’s overall theme being put so explicitly in the mouth of a character, but Dead to Me has been so strong through the first part of its second season that it gets away with it. It’s a line that both reflects the show and could end up being what ties these two seasons together: In the first season Jen Harding needed Judy Hale to help her get over her grief more than she needed the truth about what happened to her husband, and it seems possible that Judy now needs Jen to be there for her more than she needs to know exactly what happened to Steve. All it takes to bring them back together is the death of a possessed bird.

“Between You and Me” opens with a fantastic scene that illustrates how well Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate know these characters and how to balance their quirks. The way they go from sheer panic at thinking that Jen may have buried her phone with the body they just left in a national forest, to calm at finding the device, and then back to quiet terror when they see a cop car is pulling them over is just perfect in terms of timing. The ultimate punchline — that the cop stopped them when he saw a driver with a phone — is a bit easy to see coming, but Applegate and Cardellini sell the set-up so well that it doesn’t matter. The writing here is generally strong, but it’s often the two leads who sell stuff that wouldn’t work with a lesser cast.

Jen and Judy stop at Cindy’s Restaurant so Judy can pee and Jen can get into it with a waitress. Los Angeles National Forest appears to be only about an hour away from Laguna Beach, which makes the pit stop and the hotel layover a bit odd, but that hour trip according to Google is during traffic-light quarantine days. It could be 12 hours in regular L.A. traffic.

Whatever the reality of the situation may be, the key dynamic of this episode is in the fact that Jen doesn’t take Judy’s needs seriously. She wanted a moment with Steve’s body after the burial, but Jen wanted to just move on with it, reminding her that “We are not in Snow White here, we are in Scarface.” Jen’s extreme analogy of their situation illustrates how blind she’s been to the emotion of the other person strapped into this hell ride with her. What’s even more interesting is how the practical nature of Jen’s worldview is in opposition to Judy’s. For Jen, getting rid of Steve feels like a victory. Applegate brilliantly conveys the almost literal weight off her shoulders. The same isn’t true for Judy. Not only did she not get her “sense of occasion” after the burial, but she’s not done with her grief. Judy is a more spiritual person who won’t find (and doesn’t really want to find) the same distinct closure as Jen.more...

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Hi, Its me Hafeez. A webdesigner, blogspot developer and UI/UX Designer. I am a certified Themeforest top Author and Front-End Developer. I'am business speaker, marketer, Blogger and Javascript Programmer.

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