It’s never entirely fair to judge a TV show based on the series you wish it were, rather than the one it actually is. You don’t want to be the one to argue, for instance, that Ballers would be much better if the Rock fought zombie Vikings every week. But it’s hard to avoid in the case of Netflix’s Dead to Me, because the version of the show I prefer in my head is also, periodically, the one creator Liz Feldman actually made. The series stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as Jen and Judy, respectively, strangers who bond at a grief support group. Jen is a sharp-edged realtor specializing in multimillion-dollar palaces; her husband Ted was killed in a hit-and-run. Judy is a flaky sweetheart who lives in the retirement home where she teaches art classes; her boyfriend Steve recently died from a heart attack. They seem to have nothing in common except their pain, but that’s enough to get them through marathon late-night phone calls where they watch The Facts of Life together, or intense neighborhood drives where Jen looks for the vintage Mustang that killed Ted. Read that description, or watch Dead to Me‘s early scenes, and you would assume the show is a bittersweet female buddy comedy — as a friend put it, “Gen X Grace & Frankie.” And that show seems quite appealing. Applegate’s long been a comic Swiss Army knife. And while Cardellini’s better known for grim dramatic work on shows like ER and Bloodline, anyone who discovered her on Freaks and Geeks knows just how funny and weird she can get. For the most part, though, that’s not the show that 2 Broke Girls vet Feldman is interested in making. We soon find out that Steve is very much alive, and while Judy has a more genuine reason for her grief, she’s also lying about many other things. Then, very quickly, Dead to Me reveals itself to be less odd-couple dramedy than a lightly comic take on a thriller like The Girl on the Train. There are mysteries, cliffhangers, plot twists and even a very literal version of Chekhov’s Gun. That’s the show Feldman created, and the one I should be judging. But that show is a very mixed bag. Even though the episodes are roughly a half-hour each, for instance, Dead to Me suffers from the usual serialized Netflix problem of not having enough story to fill 10 of them. The tonal shifts back and forth between deadpan comedy and psychological drama are rarely smooth, with the two halves tending to undercut one another. Cardellini, in one of the best performances of her career, works wonders in making the comic and tragic halves of Judy feel like the same character. Jen, though, feels like she’s trying to exist in two different shows simultaneously, even though Applegate is good in each. The best episode by a wide margin is the fifth, “I’ve Gotta Get Away,” where Jen and Judy head to a grief retreat — Judy hoping to work through her emotional issues, Jen just needing a break from her miserable life and maybe a hot guy (Steve Howey from Shameless) to seduce. That one puts the season’s plot almost entirely on hold and just focuses on who these two characters are and what makes them tick. It’s not aiming for wall-to-wall laughs — one of its most effective scenes has Judy struggling to recite the mantra “I am not broken” during one of the seminars — but it feels much more of a piece than the rest of the show, on top of displaying how much chemistry the two leads have together. But soon we’re home again and back to the thriller story. And even though James Marsden (as a sketchy guy tied to both women) throws himself into his shallow and lightly nefarious pretty-boy role with aplomb, the plot’s just not as interesting as getting to spend time with Jen and Judy. It’s yet another of Peak TV’s many quicksand dramas, where the harder the characters struggle to get out of a bad situation they’ve put themselves in, the deeper they sink in. There’s obviously a market for that kind of show. Netflix itself has made a bunch, including Bloodline and Ozark. But there’s also a much higher degree of difficulty to make them work, because they burn through plot so quickly as each solution creates three new problems. 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. Which, again, isn’t entirely fair. But Feldman gave me just enough of that Dead to Me to prefer it over the rest. Season One premieres May 3rd on Netflix. I’ve seen all 10 episodes.<doc-sep>Netflix’s new 10-part series Dead to Me reminded me how much I miss Desperate Housewives – that perfect soapy, shiny, comic confection anchored by four great female performances and just enough dramatic heft to keep it from floating away. Dead to Me is anchored by two fine female performances. Christina Applegate is the affluent, uptight Jen, recently widowed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver. She spends her time looking after her kids and calling in the number plates of any cars she sees with “person-sized dents” in them. When she reluctantly attends a grief support group, she meets generous-hearted Judy (Linda Cardellini, who can do this sort of thing in her sleep), who explains that she is trying to come to terms with the loss of her fiance, Steve, a few months before. They bond during sleepless nights on the phone watching TV and discussing John F Kennedy Jr’s hotness. But Judy is harbouring a Dark Secret in exactly the Wisteria Lane tradition. Actually, two Dark Secrets. One comes out halfway through the opening episode, when Jen discovers Steve is still alive; the couple broke up after Judy’s fifth miscarriage. Apologies and forgiveness ensue and Judy moves into Jen’s guesthouse. The second secret remains hidden to Jen, though is revealed to us in the closing scenes. Criminally underused … James Marsden. Photograph: Saeed Adyani/Netflix There, alas, the similarities end. For Dead to Me is a leaden thing, neither comic fish nor dramatic fowl, soapy delight nor knife-edge thriller. Aside from the leads, who do as much as they can with very little and are dedicated in their efforts to do justice to the pain of bereavement, it has nothing to recommend it. Its serious, grief-stricken side is a pale imitation of dramas gone before – most recently, Facebook’s astonishing Sorry for Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen – and its lighter side consists of … not very much. A few zingers from Jen’s gay business partner, Jen saying no to offers of consolatory hugs (I always enjoy these moments of normal British behaviour being pathologised over the pond), Jen making a rude remark in the grief circle about “Xanax-Ambien zombie moms” before the camera pans to show one right next to her. Innovative it is not. As well as the gay zinger-delivery system, there is the sarky teen son, Judy cleansing the guest house (which used to be Jen’s husband’s music studio) with burning sage, the fundamentally good-guy ex (the underused and ever-excellent James Marsden, still awaiting the role that will make him a star) and the parcelling out of background information and plot drivers with little regard for realism. Whenever Steve mentions Judy, you can practically see the writer’s hand coming down to stop him saying any more until a second series is commissioned. There can be comfort in the familiar, but for it to be entertaining and engaging it must be well made. Dead to Me is badly paced, tonally inconsistent and – above all – deadly dull.<doc-sep>Deep into “Dead to Me,” Judy (Linda Cardellini) screws her entire face up in wrenching pain, eyes brimming with nascent tears as her best friend Jen (Christina Applegate) stares on in cold fury. It’s a pivotal moment that the entire first season has been building towards, and even though Cardellini and Applegate sell the hell out of it, a nagging feeling swiftly undercuts it. At this point, this show’s already hammered this exact dynamic and conflict so hard, and in exactly the same way, that it’s hard to take this final straw as seriously as it should warrant. That “almost, but not quite” vibe is what plagues “Dead to Me.” Produced in part by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s Gloria Sanchez Productions, Liz Feldman’s black comedy works hard to balance comedic impulses with bleak subject matter. 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. “Dead to Me” follows Judy and Jen, who become best friends after bonding over the depth of their grief and the inability of most anyone else to understand it. Jen is furiously mourning her husband by playing amateur sleuth around their wealthy Orange County neighborhood, inspecting every jerk’s cars for evidence that could tie them to the hit-and-run that shattered her life. Meanwhile, Judy’s hopes for a family have fallen apart in a way that has shocked her to her core, leaving her reeling, rudderless and even scared for what might be yet to come. Without getting into the show’s specific twists and turns, it’s safe to say that neither Jen nor Judy are being completely truthful with each other or themselves. But as they drink wine, swap stories of happier times, and encourage each other to go outside their comfort zones, they still grow to love each other as only two people connected by tragedy can. It’s undeniably exciting to see Cardellini and Applegate, two rock-solid TV veterans who have rarely gotten roles worthy of their skills in recent years, play off each other and rip into material that asks so much of them. In any given episode, Judy and Jen can be doing anything from stumbling into a screwball misadventure to screaming and crying when their pasts come back to haunt them. Jen’s half-hearted attempts to keep her anger to a manageable simmer and Judy trying to handle the unique pain of fighting infertility issues are particularly compelling, and not just because the actors are so good at portraying them. On a show starring a woman who sighs that “money’s tight right now” while sitting next to the sunken hot tub outside her giant Laguna Beach house, it’s nice to occasionally find something more relatable to grasp. (Seriously: Jen’s kitchen alone is enough to make a Nancy Meyers movie weep.) Accordingly, Applegate and Cardellini do most of the heavy lifting as the series keeps vacillating between tones instead of fleshing out the characters beyond their traumas. Cardellini in particular makes the most of her ample screentime, making Judy empathetic even as she makes terrible decision after terrible decision. The same goes for James Marsden and Brandon Scott, both playing thin roles that Netflix nevertheless forbids me from revealing at this time. Just about every character is stuck in looping patterns of their own making, which, as Netflix’s “Russian Doll” proved earlier this year, is decent story fodder if you can find something new to say about it. But in order to do that,”Dead to Me” needs to break its own narrative loops first. “Dead to Me” premieres Friday, May 3 on Netflix. (10 episodes; all reviewed.)<doc-sep>[This post contains spoilers about season 1 of Dead to Me.] If you’ve already ripped through the first season of Netflix’s Dead to Me, you probably have a lot of questions. If you haven’t watched it yet...please stick a pin in this, go binge, and return once you’re as delightfully confused as the rest of us. It’s a super-dark comedy about Jen (Christina Applegate), a widow whose husband was just killed in a hit-and-run. She’s trying to solve his murder when she meets Judy (Linda Cardellini), a woman who seems like a super-positive ray of sunshine...at first. This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Netflix hasn’t confirmed a second season of the show just yet, but c’mon. This thing ended with too many cliff-hangers to be over for good. We absolutely need at least one more. Anyway, while I’m out here subtweeting Netflix, why not spend all your time trying to figure out what TF just happened? Here are the biggest questions the finale left unanswered. How did Steve die? As you know, Judy’s ex Steve (played by the unreasonably hot James Marsden) is dead. The finale ends with him floating in Jen’s pool. It would seem safe to assume that Jen shot him, because she just asked her neighbor about how to use a gun. The neighbor told her that in California, it’s not illegal to shoot someone on your own property if you ask them to leave first. Saeed Adyani / Netflix But if you think about Steve floating in the pool, you’ll realize he was actually shot in the back. Liz Feldman, the creator and showrunner, said, “I’ll just say that you don’t know that she shot him.” Which is basically a really sneaky way of saying “you guys have NO IDEA what actually happened.” What are they going to do with Steve’s body? I have a hunch that Jen and Judy are about to do something stupid with Steve’s body. I don’t have much evidence to back this up other than the fact that Judy’s on the verge of being caught for a hit-and-run when only 8 percent of people ever get tracked down. I just don’t trust that she’s going to suddenly become a skilled criminal now that she’s (most likely) involved in another murder. Speaking of the hit-and-run...what’s up with that? Don’t forget that Judy literally killed Jen’s husband and we still have yet to see how that’s going to be resolved. Jen’s understandably very upset about that...but she seemed to change her perspective when she realized that Steve was also in the car that hit Ted. Jen has already told the police about Judy, but she seems to realize that if Judy were in the car by herself, she might have actually stopped to help Ted. Okay, and...how about Nick? Nick (Brandon Scott), aka the adorable (and much nicer than Steve) investigator that Judy had a quick fling with, just found out she’s the one responsible for the hit-and-run. He also just got dumped by Judy because she still had feelings for Steve and thought she was pregnant with his bb. Will she try to go back to him? Feels like a Judy move, if you ask me. Netflix Is Judy going to get charged for the hit-and-run? Detective Perez (Diana Maria Riva) has mentioned so many times how difficult it is to charge someone for a hit-and-run that it’s almost ridiculous. It’s like, okay! We get it! It’s going to be a lot of work to put the person who killed Ted behind bars. This was a bummer when we didn’t know that person was Judy...and we liked Judy, but now it’s oddly comforting? Follow-up question: Why are we all rooting for Judy? Netflix Fingers crossed that Netflix not only hooks us up with a second season but also blesses us with it as quickly as humanly possible. Hannah Chambers Hannah Chambers is an entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>
Spoiler alert: This story contains plot details of Netflix's "Dead to Me." You might want to watch the first episode before reading further. Forget avoiding spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame" or "Game of Thrones." The pop-culture property most likely to be ruined by errant plot details is Netflix's new half-hour series "Dead to Me" (now streaming, ★★★★ out of four), a tragicomedy about two women (Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini) who meet in a grief support group. Sure, it's not the stuff of frozen zombies or universe-killing aliens, but the dark comedy's devastating twist nonetheless makes it a beautiful and harrowing experience, as does the rest of the impeccably acted and written series. In order to discuss "Dead" in detail, it's necessary to explain the first-episode twist that sets up its uniquely disturbing and engrossing story, so be warned before you continue. The series, created by Liz Feldman ("2 Broke Girls"), begins as Jen (Applegate), a Type-A California mother of two with deep anger issues, is reeling from the recent hit-and-run death of her husband, Ted. At a grief support group, she meets Judy (Cardellini), a free-spirit, bohemian type who says her fiancé, Steve (James Marsden) just died. The two women bond during long phone calls over insomniac nights, and quickly develop a deep friendship that is called into question when Jen finds out that Steve is alive and well. Judy's explanation for her lie is that Steve dumped her after she had five miscarriages, so she needed the grief counseling to mourn her unborn children and her relationship. Jen eventually forgives her friend and even lets Judy move into her guest house. At this point, viewers might be lulled into believing that Judy's facade was the big twist they'd been waiting for, but "Dead" goes one step further – in the last moments of the premiere we learn that Judy is the woman who drove the car that killed Jen's husband. For the majority of its 10-episode season, Jen lives with her husband's killer, as she desperately searches for any clue to solve the mystery of his death. Meanwhile, she and Judy become closer and more co-dependent with each episode as Judy tries to make amends by supporting Jen emotionally and helping out at home. Steve, a rich and narcissistic jerk who was in the car when Judy hit Ted, tries to prevent his ex-fiance from spilling their secret, throwing money around to help Jen's real-estate business and seducing Judy to keep her quiet. "Dead" is a rare Netflix series that's well-paced for a binge-watch. It unfolds slowly but assuredly; Jen doesn't learn her new bestie's big secret until the absolute right moment. The excruciating tension of the lie hangs over Judy's head and is in direct conflict with the chill, SoCal vibe, in which the two friends go on a grief retreat, try to date and deal with the misadventures of Jen's sons. These conflicting tones could have made the series confusing, but instead, they meld together beautifully. Every small development in the investigation of Ted's death is fraught with meaning, as is everything Jen learns about Judy's life. The highlights are the performances by Cardellini and, especially, Applegate. The actress, who got her start as the wayward daughter on Fox's crude sitcom "Married...with Children," offers a career-best performance as Jen, in an interpretation of grief that feels utterly singular. Jen deals with her pain angrily and intensely, often lashing out at friends, family and clients when she can't contain her emotions. The more she learns about her late husband's secret life, the more unhinged she becomes, setting up an explosive climax after all the truth comes out. More:Coming to Netflix in May 2019: Amy Poehler comedy, Spike Lee film, Renee Zellweger series Cardellini (of "Freaks and Geeks," who can also be seen very briefly in "Endgame"), meanwhile, manages to make a killer sympathetic. Judy's motivations for essentially stalking Jen are surprisingly easy to understand, and the chemistry between the two leads is strong. Marsden sheds his good-guy typecasting and relishes every pretentious line. With so many TV series around, one such as "Dead" could slide under the radar. But one of the true joys of a world with so much television is that a series as bizarre and beautiful as "Dead" gets made at all. "Dead" might be right there in the title, but the series feels more alive than almost anything else on the air right now.