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When the first season of Dead to Me aired on Netflix back in 2019, it drew in viewers for its dark, romantic comedy vibes. However, the first season disproved this assumption and provided audiences with a comedy-drama with a suspense-filled story. Right after its initial release, Netflix immediately renewed the show and started production. The second season aired on May 8th, 2020, and it once again caught viewers off guard as it subverted their expectations of what seemed to be another show on Netflix.
What Is It About?
Dead to Me follows Jen, a real estate agent who lost her husband in a hit-and-run accident, and her friendship with Judy, an overtly positive art teacher. During the first season, Jen slowly unraveled the mysteries behind the hit-and-run and discovers secrets about Judy and her sudden connection to her.
The second season of Dead to Me picks up exactly where it left off after the season finale. It continues to follow Jen and Judy’s struggles of loss, but this time they are hiding a secret of their own.
Twists And Turns Like A Soap Opera
Dead to Me advertised itself as a dramatic comedy and the first season was filled with a lot of dramatic twists. The second season fully embraces that concept and has added many more twists and turns that make viewers think they are watching a modern day soap opera. These sudden developments in the show are reminiscent of typical story archetypes and tropes we see on outlandishly stereotypical soap operas such as affairs, identical twins, and love triangles.
Despite these sudden developments, all of these twists work excellently and surprise the viewers. Jen and Judy’s story lines are tied together by grief; their friendship is relatably dysfunctional and we witness how strong their bond is and what they would do for each other.
The show foreshadows enough narrative to have the viewers guess the obvious developments, but also manages to surprise them with twists straight out of left field. This is due to the show’s pacing as it balances comedic banter and narrative story-telling well enough to catch the viewer off guard when these twists are introduced. While Jen and Judy properly and fully acknowledge how ludicrous these sudden twists may be, they go along with it because they have larger concerns to be worried about.
This is arguably one of Dead to Me’s greatest strengths: it introduces these sudden, outlandish twists as a distraction from the core plot line. In addition to this, what the viewers will soon realize is that these narrative distractions have an impact on the story’s plotline and evolving character development.
Ethics And Morality
In a recent interview with the show’s creator, Liz Feldman, one of the allegorical notions they came up with when writing the show was, “Can a good person do a bad thing and still deserve to live a good life?” A clear case for this is how the viewers saw how Jen dealt with the loss of her husband.
She understandably mourns but eventually acts impulsively and conducts her own investigation to uncover her husband’s killer. In doing so, she intentionally damages someone’s car and breaks someone’s nose. This notion has been the main theme of the show, and it shows the depth and complexity with not only Jen, but with Judy and the rest of the main cast. With murder, betrayal, lies, and deception all on table, in addition to all of the main characters being extremely likable, it is hard to determine if they deserve to live a good life.
Even from an ethical perspective, it is still a perplexing situation as the show presents plots that are similar to examples straight out of a moral philosophy textbook. One example is its approach to basic consequentialism, an ethical theory that explains that if a consequence of an action is positive then whatever means it took is ethical. Judy’s storyline is based on this ideology because she has a subconscious desire to ensure people’s happiness above all else.
The viewer would eventually see that she does not care about the means, only the result. However, only caring about the results slowly takes a toll on her psyche as the show presents the flaws behind this ideology, and it also shows that means of a result are just as important.
Why You Should Binge Watch Dead To Me
Dead to Me started out as a show with a simple premise and crazy twists that made you want more. Season two gave viewers exactly what they wanted and added more twists to the process.
This was especially relevant in the season finale, properly setting it up for another season if Netflix wanted to renew it. If you haven’t seen Dead to Me, you can binge-watch all the episodes on Netflix and it will keep you entertained.