Not Afraid to Deliver the Needed Ending
In this brief six episode story a young woman, extroverted, outgoing, and with an impish love of pranks develops an odd relationship with the new nerdish guy in her homeroom by cajoling him into exchanging names with her as part of a school April Fool’s Day prank. This name change becomes a running connection in their ever closer friendship. They have feelings for each other but for fear of rejection can’t get the couple connection going.
He dies and she is devastated realizing that he was the love of her life. She loses the will to live. Then one day four years later her dead love-of-her life appears in front of her. He’s now a grim reaper and he tells her she dies in one week and he plans to spend that week with her.
The six episodes focus on that week with frequent flashbacks filling in their lives’ details. As far as the why and how of grim reapers there’s not much in the way of exposition. The little we do see is an obvious foreshadowing of a key plot twist like a pilot warning passengers to buckle up because of looming turbulence.
Beautiful stories that grab you emotionally don’t always have happy endings. He’s dead and a grim reaper and she’s alive so the prospects for a happy ending aren’t all that rosy.
Despite the grim reaper supernatural element the story doesn’t try to scare nor does it have a focus on the supernatural, but instead plays it straight setting up situations and letting characters and viewers deal with emotional impact.
Can a grim reaper somehow prevent a scheduled death from occurring? What are the repercussions? Grim reaper stories are often about life and not death, about the living struggling with regrets and loss. And sometimes they’re about the dead being given a voice in the story to confront losses they regret from when alive. If you could come back from death to help someone you deeply love, how much would you be willing to sacrifice?
A more timid screenwriter would feel compelled to deliver a pat happy ending. They might warn of horrible outcomes but then by some unlikely twist deliver what most people want and not what the story demands. WBL doesn’t shy away from the needed ending.
*******************************************************
Way Back Love’s emotional touchstones reminded me of another story also centered around using grim reapers to talk about life, a dark comedy called Dead Like Me (2003-2004) 29 episodes over two seasons. The main character is a 18 year old college dropout, Georgia aka George, who dies and is drafted into a local team of grim reapers. George has a hard time adjusting to the daily bloody violent deaths and she rebels. Complicating her transition to an afterlife career as a reaper is that she reaps within walking distance from her still living and grieving family. Her death hits her family hard causing the parents to divorce and her younger 11 year old sister, Reggie, to act out. George rebels against the reaper system dictating non interference with the living by surreptitiously helping Reggie who realizes that as impossible as it might seem her dead older sister is still around.
On the surface DLM is a comedy but there are some deeper emotions and issues running throughout. But the same question so important in WBL confronts the undead DLM reapers (not only George but her boss, Rube, too) as to how far can a reaper push against the rules and their unseen power, Death, that dictates their reaps.
In early episodes Rube is loudly and aggressively demanding that George follow the rules and stay away from her family. But George hides her meddling with the living. And sometimes she openly rebels. There’s a touching early few scenes in which George in defiance against the big boss, Death, and her reaper boss Rube goes to her family’s front door (not on Halloween) and is confronted by her mother who of course can’t recognize her. To prove her identity George attempts to convey a cherished memory that only the two of them share, but her words come out garbled and her mother chases her away. Later sitting with Rube in a diner she sheepishly confesses her breaking the rules and he uncharacteristically tenderly asks if she can remember that cherished memory. She can’t. And Rube explains that whenever a reaper attempts to use a shared memory to talk to someone they knew when alive, that memory is lost forever. The more the undead try to connect with the living from their former life, the more of that life they lose. Rube says to her that all reapers get to keep from their lives is their memories.
In WBL limited by six episodes the story focuses tightly on the relationship between the two main characters in a romantic dynamic. In DLM with 29 episodes there’s more branching out and while the focus is on George and her family, there a parallel story line that follows Rube and what happened to him and his family some eighty years prior.
Rube died during the Great Depression when to help his wife and daughter (about five years old at the time) he robs a bank and ends up dead, and then is drafted to become a grim reaper. He, like George, breaks the rules and tries to help his family sending an anonymous letter with cash to them. Eighty years later in present day he gets a notice from the US Post Office there’s a letter for him, it’s the letter he had sent and forgotten so long ago. Death that operates on a time scale and with goals beyond human comprehension sidelined that letter and delivered it back to him in the present (to a different return address no less). That his attempt to help his family failed triggers something in good soldier Rube and he rebels himself and covertly finds his now aged daughter. When he arrives at his daughter’s nursing home just before she dies we learn she’s been waiting for and recognizes him (which means she interacted with him after he died and before he sent the letter).
DLM has 29 episodes to work with. There’s an interesting character that we know about only by its manipulations, Death. Rube some eighty years prior was placed near his family and something happened back then that made him into an obedient reaper staying away from his family. Normally reapers are only placed far away from where they lived. One woman on the team died in the state of Georgia, another man in the UK. Then out of blue young George is placed with Rube’s team near her living family. Death returning the letter to Rube triggers a radical change that leads him to a final reconciliation with his now elderly daughter at her death. Why might have been explained in a third season.
By the end of the second season George has become a good soldier, a capable reaper who no longer feels compelled to contact her family and Rube has finally found some peace of mind after having carried personal regrets and perhaps a bitter grudge against God those eighty years. We aren’t allowed to listen in as to what he said to his daughter before she died and after when she passed into the hereafter, but it had a profound impact on Rube.
In DLM reapers look as they did when alive to each other and to ghosts, but to the living they look totally different except on one day and night of each year, Halloween. At that time only people who knew them when alive can see them again in their living appearance. George often visits her own grave and in a key final scene of the second season Reggie on Halloween night sleeps on George’s grave and in the morning dawn light wakes to see her older dead sister standing near her confirming the impossible that her sister is around in a very physical way. When George and Reggie see each other, George turns and walks away*.
Both DLM and WBL are stories in which the dead and the living can interact and deal with those regrets left unspoken. If you liked WBL you’ll probably appreciate DLM.
* PS I liked the two seasons of DLM so much I wrote two novels - season 3 and season 4. If you watch the TV show you might find the novels worth checking out. These are posted at a website called archiveofourown dot org. The first is titled Dead Like Me 2013 and the sequel Dead Like Me 2014.
He dies and she is devastated realizing that he was the love of her life. She loses the will to live. Then one day four years later her dead love-of-her life appears in front of her. He’s now a grim reaper and he tells her she dies in one week and he plans to spend that week with her.
The six episodes focus on that week with frequent flashbacks filling in their lives’ details. As far as the why and how of grim reapers there’s not much in the way of exposition. The little we do see is an obvious foreshadowing of a key plot twist like a pilot warning passengers to buckle up because of looming turbulence.
Beautiful stories that grab you emotionally don’t always have happy endings. He’s dead and a grim reaper and she’s alive so the prospects for a happy ending aren’t all that rosy.
Despite the grim reaper supernatural element the story doesn’t try to scare nor does it have a focus on the supernatural, but instead plays it straight setting up situations and letting characters and viewers deal with emotional impact.
Can a grim reaper somehow prevent a scheduled death from occurring? What are the repercussions? Grim reaper stories are often about life and not death, about the living struggling with regrets and loss. And sometimes they’re about the dead being given a voice in the story to confront losses they regret from when alive. If you could come back from death to help someone you deeply love, how much would you be willing to sacrifice?
A more timid screenwriter would feel compelled to deliver a pat happy ending. They might warn of horrible outcomes but then by some unlikely twist deliver what most people want and not what the story demands. WBL doesn’t shy away from the needed ending.
*******************************************************
Way Back Love’s emotional touchstones reminded me of another story also centered around using grim reapers to talk about life, a dark comedy called Dead Like Me (2003-2004) 29 episodes over two seasons. The main character is a 18 year old college dropout, Georgia aka George, who dies and is drafted into a local team of grim reapers. George has a hard time adjusting to the daily bloody violent deaths and she rebels. Complicating her transition to an afterlife career as a reaper is that she reaps within walking distance from her still living and grieving family. Her death hits her family hard causing the parents to divorce and her younger 11 year old sister, Reggie, to act out. George rebels against the reaper system dictating non interference with the living by surreptitiously helping Reggie who realizes that as impossible as it might seem her dead older sister is still around.
On the surface DLM is a comedy but there are some deeper emotions and issues running throughout. But the same question so important in WBL confronts the undead DLM reapers (not only George but her boss, Rube, too) as to how far can a reaper push against the rules and their unseen power, Death, that dictates their reaps.
In early episodes Rube is loudly and aggressively demanding that George follow the rules and stay away from her family. But George hides her meddling with the living. And sometimes she openly rebels. There’s a touching early few scenes in which George in defiance against the big boss, Death, and her reaper boss Rube goes to her family’s front door (not on Halloween) and is confronted by her mother who of course can’t recognize her. To prove her identity George attempts to convey a cherished memory that only the two of them share, but her words come out garbled and her mother chases her away. Later sitting with Rube in a diner she sheepishly confesses her breaking the rules and he uncharacteristically tenderly asks if she can remember that cherished memory. She can’t. And Rube explains that whenever a reaper attempts to use a shared memory to talk to someone they knew when alive, that memory is lost forever. The more the undead try to connect with the living from their former life, the more of that life they lose. Rube says to her that all reapers get to keep from their lives is their memories.
In WBL limited by six episodes the story focuses tightly on the relationship between the two main characters in a romantic dynamic. In DLM with 29 episodes there’s more branching out and while the focus is on George and her family, there a parallel story line that follows Rube and what happened to him and his family some eighty years prior.
Rube died during the Great Depression when to help his wife and daughter (about five years old at the time) he robs a bank and ends up dead, and then is drafted to become a grim reaper. He, like George, breaks the rules and tries to help his family sending an anonymous letter with cash to them. Eighty years later in present day he gets a notice from the US Post Office there’s a letter for him, it’s the letter he had sent and forgotten so long ago. Death that operates on a time scale and with goals beyond human comprehension sidelined that letter and delivered it back to him in the present (to a different return address no less). That his attempt to help his family failed triggers something in good soldier Rube and he rebels himself and covertly finds his now aged daughter. When he arrives at his daughter’s nursing home just before she dies we learn she’s been waiting for and recognizes him (which means she interacted with him after he died and before he sent the letter).
DLM has 29 episodes to work with. There’s an interesting character that we know about only by its manipulations, Death. Rube some eighty years prior was placed near his family and something happened back then that made him into an obedient reaper staying away from his family. Normally reapers are only placed far away from where they lived. One woman on the team died in the state of Georgia, another man in the UK. Then out of blue young George is placed with Rube’s team near her living family. Death returning the letter to Rube triggers a radical change that leads him to a final reconciliation with his now elderly daughter at her death. Why might have been explained in a third season.
By the end of the second season George has become a good soldier, a capable reaper who no longer feels compelled to contact her family and Rube has finally found some peace of mind after having carried personal regrets and perhaps a bitter grudge against God those eighty years. We aren’t allowed to listen in as to what he said to his daughter before she died and after when she passed into the hereafter, but it had a profound impact on Rube.
In DLM reapers look as they did when alive to each other and to ghosts, but to the living they look totally different except on one day and night of each year, Halloween. At that time only people who knew them when alive can see them again in their living appearance. George often visits her own grave and in a key final scene of the second season Reggie on Halloween night sleeps on George’s grave and in the morning dawn light wakes to see her older dead sister standing near her confirming the impossible that her sister is around in a very physical way. When George and Reggie see each other, George turns and walks away*.
Both DLM and WBL are stories in which the dead and the living can interact and deal with those regrets left unspoken. If you liked WBL you’ll probably appreciate DLM.
* PS I liked the two seasons of DLM so much I wrote two novels - season 3 and season 4. If you watch the TV show you might find the novels worth checking out. These are posted at a website called archiveofourown dot org. The first is titled Dead Like Me 2013 and the sequel Dead Like Me 2014.
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