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Liz Feldman

Christina Applegate

Jen Harding

Linda Cardellini

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‘Dead to Me’ Review: Needless Thrills Kill This Bittersweet Comedy

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

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.

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

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 p remieres May 3rd on Netflix. I’ve seen all 10 episodes.

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Review: In ‘Dead to Me’ on Netflix, Widows Make the Best BFFs

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By Mike Hale

May 2, 2019

This week’s case study in the anxieties of contemporary television: “Dead to Me,” a new series on Netflix starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as widows who meet cute at a grief support group.

Liz Feldman, who created the show, has been writing and performing comedy for more than half of her 41 years, and she’s demonstrated some real flexibility. She was a writer for Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show and for “Blue Collar TV,” which starred red-state favorites like Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy. She wrote for conventional sitcoms like “2 Broke Girls” and “Hot in Cleveland” while hosting her own “gay-mazing” YouTube series, “This Just Out,” from her kitchen table.

Nothing she had done before, though, resembled the kind of up-to-the-minute streaming dramedy that “Dead to Me” wants to be. And while its 10 half-hour episodes have a lot of the requisite look and feel — the enervated, dolorous mood and rhythms; the mysteries within mysteries; the handsomely filmed Southern California locations — the show harks back to Feldman’s roots. At heart it’s a traditional odd-couple sitcom, albeit one that’s heavy on situation and light on comedy.

Applegate plays Jen, whose husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and Cardellini plays Judy, whose fiancé died of a heart attack. Jen’s angry and cynical and hard-edged, Judy’s rueful and apologetic and twee, and we know where that’s going. Jen will toughen up Judy and Judy will soften up Jen, an exchange of services made easier by the unlikely twist of Judy’s moving into Jen’s guesthouse.

Hundreds of episodes have been built around less. Short-season streaming shows don’t work that way, though, so Feldman counterpoints the comedy of female friendship with the tragedy of male condescension and predation, and sets it all within the framework of a murder mystery, or at least a manslaughter mystery.

As she makes the rounds of Orange County’s beach towns selling real estate, Jen searches for the car that mowed down her husband. Judy, meanwhile, has big secrets, which are doled out in flashbacks throughout the season. The revelations about her past are both mildly surprising and, in the way they stretch out the plot and inject conflict into her and Jen’s relationship, entirely predictable.

There’s some ingenuity in the ways Feldman works out the story’s complications. There’s craftsmanship in the details, like a running motif of Judy continually building up to confessions that turn out not to be the confession we’re anticipating. And there are moments when the comic situations click, mostly involving supporting characters like the earnest pastor and grief counselor played by Keong Sim or the casserole-bearing neighbor played by Suzy Nakamura.

But at the heart of the story, things don’t really add up or carry the emotional weight they should, because Judy and Jen are ideas more than characters — avatars of anger, grief and guilt. We’re told that their unexpected bond is based on giving each other the space to grieve in their own ways, but it often feels like they’re just indulging each other’s bad choices in ways that don’t make narrative sense.

Applegate, whose TV-comedy roots stretch back more than 30 years, most notably on “Married With Children,” gives a strained, uptight performance that superficially matches up with Jen’s personality but isn’t all that fun to watch. You don’t mind when she’s onscreen with Cardellini, though. Starring in a live-action comedy series for the first time since “Freaks and Geeks,” Cardellini gives Judy a vibrancy and a genuine peculiarity — she’s the show’s one consistent source of pleasure.

Otherwise the show always seems to be reaching for something — a complexity, an ambiguity — that it doesn’t support and doesn’t really need. It may be telling that one of the ways Jen and Judy bond is through a shared love of the 1980s chestnut “The Facts of Life.” If that’s Feldman’s way of signaling her own nostalgia for the moral certainties of an earlier sitcom era, it’s also an admission that there’s no going back.

Dead to Me Streaming Friday on Netflix

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Friendship And Grief Drive The Strong And Surprising 'Dead To Me'

Linda Holmes

Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate star as fast friends in Netflix's new comedy-drama Dead to Me . Saeed Adyani/Netflix hide caption

Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate star as fast friends in Netflix's new comedy-drama Dead to Me .

The new Netflix show Dead To Me is very good. Beyond that, it's a hard show to review. It's hard to even discuss what kind of show it is without spoiling things that you should get to discover for yourself. But let's try, because it's an enormously interesting and rewarding watch.

Christina Applegate plays Jen, a mother of two whose husband has recently died in a hit and run. Jen is awash in grief and anger — the first time we see her, she's accepting a casserole from a sympathetic neighbor while brutally volleying back the woman's clumsy attempt at kind words. She tries out a support group for the bereaved, but when she gets there, she's instantly uncomfortable until, as you always hope will happen in these situations, she meets one person she can talk to. Judy (Linda Cardellini) manages to crack a little joke, and recognizes Jen from Jen's real estate advertising.

Judy is entirely too eager and earnest for Jen's darker and more reserved tastes in people — she wants to hug Jen almost upon meeting, which Jen rebuffs. But it turns out that Judy's story is similar to Jen's: her fiance died two months ago, and she doesn't know what to do with herself. And before Jen knows it, Judy is growing on her. Their friendship grows out of the fact that they both can't sleep, can't talk about anything else, can't get past the things that haunt them. Jen even confides in Judy about her freelance investigation of her husband's death, which involves writing down the license numbers of cars with dents in their front ends. (Judy, like any good friend watching someone tilt at a windmill: "Okaaaaay.")

Is this going to be a galpal bonding show, like Grace & Frankie ? Will they fall in love? Will Jen enlist Judy to help her solve the mystery? How, exactly, does James Marsten, playing a hilariously obnoxious and arrogant weasel, fit into this story? Let's not answer too many of these questions.

Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini are both actresses who are never unwelcome, in any project, at any time. They both enliven practically everything they appear in, and this is my favorite thing I've ever seen from both of them. Applegate is so, so good here as Jen: angry and vulnerable and intelligent, clever and sometimes foolish. Cardellini's Judy is initially more of a mystery, and it spoils very little to say that by the end of the first episode, Jen has learned some things about Judy that she didn't know. But that is only the beginning of the complicating and re-complicating of the story.

Dead to Me is often very, very funny — but it's also rooted in profound emotion that makes everything matter. It invests in the friendship between Jen and Judy at the same time it makes that friendship feel loaded and unpredictable. The pacing is very good, doling out plot developments at the right speed.

There are times when the most helpful, accurate, non-spoiler review is something along these lines, and so I leave you with it: I binged this sucker almost as soon as the screeners came in, and I didn't do much else until I finished all ten episodes. It's a good one.

clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

‘Dead to Me’ enters its bittersweet last stage of grief

When “ Dead to Me ” premiered in the spring of 2019, it set viewers up for one shocking reveal after another. The Netflix dark comedy wasn’t exactly honest with us when it introduced Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) as two grieving women who form an unlikely bond after meeting at a bereavement support group.

Jen, cynical and jaded, is reeling from the sudden death of her husband, Ted, in a hit-and-run accident. Judy, bubbly and free-spirited, is grieving several painful losses herself, but the story she shares — about her fiance, Steve, dying of a heart attack — is a doozy of a lie. Jen and Judy connect over “Facts of Life” reruns, Entenmann’s cookies and TV’s go-to wellness treatment for White women over 40: jumbo glasses of wine and the nostalgic, legalized contraband of their youth. (“It’s legal, relax,” Judy tells Jen while sparking a joint on the beach.)

Their friendship endures following the series’ first big reveal — that Steve (James Marsden) is very much alive — and deepens in the episodes leading up to Judy’s confession that she was driving the 1966 Mustang that killed Ted. “Dead to Me” required viewers to suspend disbelief enough to buy that a woman would continue to be friends with someone she knows played a part in killing her husband, but even in those early episodes, it was clear that Jen and Judy were meant to be in each other’s orbit. Their entangled lives became the show’s inexorable truth as the fallout from the fatal hit-and-run grew more complicated and Season 1 ended with Steve’s bloody body in a pool. Season 2 upped the drama ante, introducing Steve’s “semi-identical” twin Ben (played to goofball heights by Marsden) as a love interest for Jen.

Grief remains an achingly central theme as “Dead to Me” returns Thursday for its third and final season, which picks up just moments after Season 2’s cliffhanger ending: the scary car accident Jen and Judy get into after Ben, off the wagon after years of sobriety, swerves into Jen’s car at a dangerous intersection. As with previous seasons, it’s hard to describe much (or any) of the plot without giving away the twists, but the dramedy’s final 10 episodes find Jen and Judy juggling life — messy and confounding as ever — while trying to conceal their roles in the active murder investigation still surrounding Steve’s death.

‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ spends too much time with the wrong people

“Dead to Me” has never been a perfect show, and the final outing is particularly uneven when it comes to the criminally minded storylines. One could quibble over the superficial way the series incorporates characters of color — particularly police detectives Ana Perez (Diana Maria Riva) and Nick Prager (Brandon Scott), who both feel an outsize duty to protect Jen and Judy in various ways — and certain plot points wrap up with the shoddiest metaphorical caution tape.

It might not matter to viewers, though.

The series, from creator Liz Feldman, excels in its depiction of two dynamic women who become each other’s chosen family. Their complex and intense relationship has always been the best part of “Dead to Me,” anchored by Emmy-nominated performances from Applegate and Cardellini. In between Jen and Judy’s uniquely foul-mouthed banter and their murderous schemes, the show has explored more true-to-life issues such as the emotional abuse that Judy comes to term with following Steve’s death and Jen’s pain surrounding intimacy issues she and Ted had following her preventive double mastectomy. Applegate, a breast cancer survivor who underwent the surgery in 2008, urged Feldman to incorporate her personal experience. “[The surgery] is an incredibly painful thing to go through. It’s an amputation of a part of you,” Applegate told the Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “It’s part of being a woman, and I wanted to be honest. So I brought it to Liz and she was like, “OK, let me see how we can weave this in.” I think she did it beautifully.”

Other sobering storylines have revolved around Judy’s struggle with infertility and Jen’s insecurities around motherhood. Though both have confessed unspeakable misdeeds to one another, the series spends a little more time this season grappling with what they owe to the other people in their lives: namely Ben, and Jen’s teenage son Charlie (Sam McCarthy). Whether it’s an adequate amount of time is up for debate; there is a certain audacity in continuing to lie to the people you love.

Despite its many twists and narrative falsehoods, “Dead to Me” was always authentically about something bigger: the shared grief that brought Jen and Judy together. This season yet again brings us back to the bereavement support group where the duo met. There, the same earnest pastor that introduced them explains that the group is referred to as a “circle” not just because of the way the seats are arranged, but because “grief is a continuum, it goes on and on and on and …”

The show knows when to close the loop on its unwieldy narrative; the murder mysteries become secondary as the show focuses more on the core friendship at its center. “Dead to Me” returns, as always, to grief, but it’s the cathartic and beautiful kind — the kind that stays with you, reminding you of what you lost and what it meant to your life.

Dead to Me (10 episodes) returns Thursday on Netflix.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, netflix's dead to me goes out on its own terms in season three.

For the first two seasons of creator Liz Feldman’s droll, incisive series “Dead to Me,” Laguna Beach besties Jen ( Christina Applegate ) and Judy ( Linda Cardellini ) have been surrounded by death and lies. In fact, their tight-knit friendship is forged by them: each of them is either directly or indirectly responsible for the death of their loved one—Jen’s husband in Season One, Judy’s fiancee Steve ( James Marsden ) in Season Two—and the pair have grown closer with every new layer of deception and self-delusion they’ve built. It’s not exactly a healthy friendship, but one that brings them joy and meaning nonetheless. (Even if a good portion of it is motivated by the overriding need to keep each other’s secrets.)

When the show focuses on this sense of entropy, the inevitable feeling that everything we’ve seen up to this point is about to finally blow up in their face, “Dead to Me” recaptures some of the magic it had in its strong first season. But in its desire to wrap up all of its loose ends along the way, Feldman and the writers stuff too many ideas into the mix, almost as if speedrunning a three-season arc into the one final turn at bat that Netflix would actually shell out for.

Season Three cuts in almost immediately after Season Two’s finale, which ended with Steve’s twin brother Ben (also Marsden) relapsing and getting into a hit-and-run with Jen and Judy after learning the cops have found his twin brother’s body. The two emerge relatively unscathed, but a chance miscommunication at the hospital gives Jen yet another secret she can’t bring herself to tell Judy. Suddenly, all the death they’ve been evading over the course of their friendship is finally knocking on their door.

It’s a solid angle for the series to go in its final act, especially as these new sets of secrets and lies compound on the ones they’ve already accumulated. But the sheer weight of all those deceptions, whether towards themselves or others, tends to bog down the season throughout its five-hour runtime. There’s an endless parade of circular secrets and vestigial character beats that seem included out of apparent obligation. Judy’s ex, Michelle ( Natalie Morales ), drops in with little to do; Jen’s kids, Charlie ( Sam McCarthy ) and Henry ( Luke Roessler ), mostly hang around to respectively challenge and encourage the strange family unit Jen and Judy have built for themselves. And don’t forget those subplots about stolen paintings and the Greek mafia!

And then there’s Ben, who elevates himself to third-lead status this season. Ever the charmer, Marsden sometimes steals scenes right out from under Applegate and Cardellini by sheer dopey gumption. His journey, at least for most of the season, is interesting, his transgressions throwing him into the same cycle of guilt Jen and Judy started with. And it’s great to see such an unassuming, sweet guy succumb much more readily to these demons than our stalwart wine-mom BFFs—a testament less to Ben’s weakness than the idea that Jen and Judy have a particular gift for self-delusion that informs their particular neuroses.

Still, the show's core remains Applegate and Cardellini, who are innately watchable even when the story starts doing somersaults around itself. Throw the two of them in a car, a hospital room, or Jen’s pristinely-furnished kitchen (she is a realtor, after all), give them some wine or—particularly fun this season—magic mushrooms, and they bounce off each other like the most expertly deadpan double act.

(Sidenote: Applegate’s tremendous performance here is even more remarkable considering her behind-the-scenes struggles with MS , with which she was diagnosed while filming the season. Even when conscious of the unspoken limitations she had to work under—e.g. mobility issues that required more scenes seated or standing with assistance—she puts forth commendable work.)

It’s almost a shame that “Dead to Me” occasionally remembers it has a plot to power through; the endless swirl of discovery surrounding them is arguably the show’s weakest link. The show dedicates copious screentime to folks like, say, Perez’s dogged partner Nick ( Brandon Scott ), who wants to continue the investigation into Steve’s death, or an incisive FBI agent ( Garret Dillahunt , hiding wily suspicion behind a Midwestern-nice facade) hot on their trail. But given that Jen and Judy have gotten away with it up to now, it’s hard to buy that the fates just won’t keep swinging in their direction.

But “Dead to Me” ends about as well as it could—not necessarily with the promise of another shoe falling, but of the most bittersweet of goodbyes for its endearing main characters. They’ve spent three seasons cheating death together, and the show (like their friendship) chooses to end on its own messed-up terms. Season Three takes an exceedingly shaky road to get to its tearjerking finale, one that feels like a natural endpoint for these characters’ innately morbid codependency.

All of season three screened for review . "Dead to Me: Season Three" premieres on Netflix on November 18th.

Clint Worthington

Clint Worthington is a Chicago-based film/TV critic and podcaster. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Spool , as well as a Senior Staff Writer for Consequence . He is also a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and Critics Choice Association. You can also find his byline at RogerEbert.com, Vulture, The Companion, FOX Digital, and elsewhere.

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Review: Netflix's tragicomedy 'Dead to Me' is the best binge watch of 2019

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.

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‘dead to me’: tv review.

Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini are a perfect match in 'Dead to Me,' a Netflix mystery-melodramedy that's more coy about its twists and turns than it should be.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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In less genre-cluttered times, it was virtually impossible to “spoil” the plot of a TV comedy. It wasn’t like the twist of Parks & Recreation was that they also had jurisdiction over Pawnee’s power and water, or the main character in Veep was struggling with her job because she was actually a Russian sleeper agent, or the secret of Veronica’s Closet was that she was hiding a body in there. The basis of a situation comedy was that the situation could be explained in a brief sentence and weekly hijinks flowed from that.

Today, with the triumphant return of half-hour dramas and the demands of binge-viewing encouraging shows to be more serialized, even comedies harbor secrets.

Air date: May 03, 2019

I’m not going to spoil Netflix ‘s new comedy-mystery-melodrama Dead to Me for you, though it’s going to take a fair amount of evasion. Probably simply knowing that Dead to Me is spoilable will be enough to allow you to guess at least one major twist within five minutes of the start of the pilot. Whether or not that bothers you is one of the big issues driving the show. It’s a complicated and occasionally fascinating depiction of female friendship boasting a pair of fantastic performances from Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini . It’s a decent and sometimes perceptive examination of grief. And it’s a very thin and rushed murder mystery that isn’t exactly perfectly suited to 10 half-hour episodes. And yet the clockwork cliffhangers will probably propel audience interest more consistently than the things the show is far better at.

Created by Liz Feldman, Dead to Me begins as the story of Jen (Applegate), a high-strung Orange County real estate agent mourning the death of her husband. Even before her life got tragic, Jen had anger issues, and an inability to find closure on the unsolved hit-and-run death is only making her worse. Attending a lovely seaside grief counseling group, Jen meets Judy (Cardellini), a more flighty free spirit struggling with the loss of her fiancé. In very little time, Jen and Judy have bonded, each woman offering something that the other lacks. Even if Jen and Judy make a swift journey into co-dependence, it feels like a therapeutic relationship. Oh, and James Marsden is on the show, too, though I can’t go into detail there.

'After Life': TV Review

Dead to Me uses Keong Sim as amusing omnipresent grief counselor Pastor Wayne to convey helpful words of wisdom and occasional platitudes — Max Jenkins’ Christopher contributes the Christian perspective, with the series clearly thinking itself edgy for crafting a character who’s gay and ultrareligious — but its most accessible and thoughtful coping mechanisms are revealed when Jen and Judy converse, usually over wine. Oh, and if it seems like every show about grief these days features a grief retreat in Palm Springs … apparently that’s a thing?

Probably I’ve already said too much. Merely knowing that Palm Springs exists in the world of Dead to Me may be a bigger spoiler than Netflix wants getting out. Check out the show for Cardellini and Applegate. They’re worth it. As for the rest? Well, it depends on how much you enjoy gravy on your ice cream sundae.

Cast: Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini, James Marsden, Max Jenkins, Luke Roessler, Sam McCarthy, Ed Asner Creator: Liz Feldman Premieres: Friday (Netflix)

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Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate.

Dead to Me review – come back Desperate Housewives, all is forgiven!

Netflix’s deathly dull dark comedy will make you pine for the soapy, snarky thrills of Wisteria Lane

N etflix’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.

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.

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‘Can We Do It One More Time?’

Dead to me showrunner liz feldman on saying good-bye with an ellipsis ….

The third season of Dead to Me finally reveals whether Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) has to face consequences for the accidental murder of Steve Wood (James Marsden). But that’s not really the point of the final ten episodes of this off-kilter Netflix dramedy, created by Liz Feldman, who also wrote and directed its finale.

“At the end of the day, this isn’t really, in its heart of hearts, a show about crime and punishment,” Feldman says. “It is really a show about grief and friendship.” That’s apparent in nearly every scene of the last season, which zeroes in even more closely on the unlikely friendship between Applegate’s Jen and Linda Cardellini’s Judy Hale , who initially connect in season one through grief therapy. As Feldman describes it, there were layers of emotion involved in saying good-bye to this show, for her and the writing staff, which includes some of Feldman’s dearest friends, and for Cardellini and Applegate. Though it’s Judy who deals with illness during the course of the season — she’s diagnosed with stage-four cervical cancer — Applegate was the one actually grappling with a multiple-sclerosis diagnosis that came halfway through production of the season.

Dead to Me has always been about how life — and just generally crazy shit — happens while you’re making other plans, and the making of the show has followed a similar trajectory. Happily for everyone, Feldman and crew were still able to make the ending they wanted, even if it didn’t always go exactly according to the original plan.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It is also rife with spoilers.

You and I talked at the end of season two , which was 500 years ago. Approximately, yeah.

I want to read something that you said to me then and ask you to expand on it now. You said, “I had a version of an end for season three that I’m rethinking actually, because I think it’s important to pay attention to where we are collectively as a human race and to be sensitive to the fact that our audience is living through this incredibly difficult moment in history.” This was referring, obviously, to the pandemic. Now that I’ve seen season three, I’m wondering what the original idea was and how it changed? I would say the seed of the idea is what you saw. I just ended up telling it in a different way. It came to me in the middle of shooting season two that Jen and Judy needed to have some sort of closure that healed both of their deepest wounds. So I knew that, and I felt like, Okay, I’ve been telling this story for two seasons at that point of grief and loss and forgiveness and friendship, and I don’t want to forget that is the heart and the soul and the DNA of the show . I’m like, how do you bring closure to a show about female friendship as it pertains to going through grief and loss?

The truth is that Judy was inspired by a dear friend of mine who we lost at 38. She had a pain in her body that she wasn’t paying attention to, or that maybe she was paying attention to but not necessarily following through about. She was this ethereal, beautiful, magnanimous, angelic person who was literally the kind of person that would stop and help an old lady across the street, almost against the old lady’s will. She was just one of those people who, though she was not here for nearly long enough, just left this indelible mark. It was almost subliminal in my work of writing the show that I carried her with me. And then when I thought about how to really properly end it, she came up for me.

It was really about wanting to bring closure and healing to these two characters, Jen and Judy. By bringing them closure, hopefully I can bring the audience closure with the show because I know our incredible, devoted audience really loves these two characters as much as I do. And as difficult as it was to bring them on this journey and to tell this story, it is at the crux of why I wanted to do this show in the first place: to deal with my own grief and help people deal with theirs, and to help people come to a form of acceptance that grief is just a thing we’re all going to live through. If you live long enough to love someone enough, you will experience grief. And to maybe start looking at grief as a painful, yes, but hopefully almost beautiful reminder of the fact that you got to love someone that much.

Given that Judy was somewhat inspired by your friend, was it always in the back of your mind that she would deal with an illness and eventually die? Not at all. I would be lying if I said I knew how I wanted the show to end when I pitched it originally to Netflix. I didn’t. I knew that I had to hire a wonderful group of writers who were more talented and had better ideas than I did, and that they would help me figure out how to get there. Because the truth is season one didn’t even end the way that I originally intended it to. One of my brilliant writers came up with the idea that Jen should kill Steve, and then that would be the ultimate Strangers on a Train kind of cosmic balance of comeuppance. He was right, and I’m so glad we did that. Because we did that, it changed everything I thought season two was going to be. And then we ended season two the way we did, and we were sort of hurtling toward that ending.

During production, I realized, oh, coming off of this massive accident that they’ve gotten into yet again, with this hit-and-run, that could be an interesting way to bring about the fact that it’s sometimes what you least expect that gets you in the end.

In terms of what ultimately ends up happening to Judy, did you and the writers try on different scenarios where maybe she gets cancer but then survives? Or once you decided to revisit the grief issues, would it not have made sense if she didn’t die? I will say I knew that Jen and Judy would not be in the last scene together. I knew that from the very beginning. I did at some point decide that I wanted it to be — I wouldn’t use the word ambiguous, but I would say I wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide on some level what happened, because you don’t really ever see what happened. That is all very deliberate.

I knew that I didn’t want to go full Beaches . A show I loved that I think dealt with this subject matter really well, called The Big C — that show was run and created by my dear friend Darlene Hunt, and she really leaned into the death part of that story. I wanted to give you a reflection of what it feels like to go through the loss of someone, where it feels like they just took off. You’ve just been hanging out with them and they got in their car and they left, or they walked into the other room, or perhaps they jumped on a boat and floated away. For so many people that is really what it feels like because you’re not really there with the person when they go. So that’s what I was going for, but also, this is Dead to Me . So did she die?

Well, I was going to ask you that. Well, what’s funny is I’d rather you tell me the answer.

Jen seems to feel certain that she did die. She doesn’t seem to have any doubt about it. Obviously, Judy sailing off on the boat echoes what she says happened to her “uncle or possible father.” It almost feels to me like she’s giving Jen the gift of she’s gone, but maybe she’s not. And that will allow Jen to feel Judy’s presence. This is exactly what I want. I want people to choose their own ending in a way, because yes, this is the show about grief and loss, so regardless of what happened, Jen no longer has Judy in her life. She’s obviously not present. I’ll just say that I very specifically never said that Judy passed. Nobody talks about her death. You don’t see a funeral.

To answer your very first question, which is did I change what I was going to do because of what we all went through? Because of what we all went through, I didn’t need it to be stark. I didn’t think we needed this black-and-white, hit-you-over-the-head ending that brought you in a very confrontational way to your relationship with death. I really wanted it to be a softer landing. I think it’s actually, hopefully, a more effective way for you to come to terms with your own feelings of grief, rather than being heavy-handed about it. I wanted it to be more of an ellipsis rather than a period.

Can you walk me through how Christina’s diagnosis affected what you were planning to do, and what kind of adjustments you had to make this season? We had already shot 50 percent of the season when she got her diagnosis. So the season was completely written, and it wasn’t really possible to rewrite at that point because we shot it entirely out of order. When I say entirely out of order, I mean our production started with all of James Marsden’s scenes. Because of all the delays from the pandemic, we were really under the gun in terms of schedules. And James, the lovely sweetheart and incredibly busy actor that he is, was like, “Here’s what I can give you and let’s try to get it all done.” So we did. He’s in eight of ten episodes, and we got all his stuff done in the first month or so of production, then we started filming the rest of the show. We had shot all ten episodes, but only pieces of it by the time Christina received her diagnosis. So we were a bit locked into that story, and also that is the story that Christina wanted to tell as much as I did. I don’t think we changed anything. It remained exactly intact to the original intention. The only thing that may have evolved was different blocking and just anything that we could do to help accommodate her.

So Jen getting pregnant was always in the story? Yeah.

Tell me why you wanted to do that. Again, going back to this room full of talented writers whom I trust and depend on, it wasn’t my idea. It was one of my brilliant writers, Jessi Klein, I believe, who suggested that she get pregnant because we were talking about this idea of full-circle closure. How do we bring both of these two women through all of their trauma to get to a place of healing? We had already come up with Judy’s story line in terms of her dealing with illness. And we were thinking, Okay, well, then what is the cosmic balance there? What is the yin to that yang? How do we help Judy come to a place of acceptance for this dream that she will never see realized? That’s when the idea popped up that Jen should get pregnant. At first, like many of the more out-there ideas that have been pitched on the show, I’m like, That’s crazy. We can’t do that . Then I think about it for a little bit, and then I can’t stop thinking about it.

So much of Judy’s fertility struggle comes from my own life. I had to come to a place of acceptance when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to bear a child. When you come to a place of acceptance, that doesn’t mean you’re cool with it and you’re like, glad. It just means I’ve been confronted with this truth and I can either live in resentment or I can live in acceptance. We wanted Judy to have to live in acceptance with it, and we felt the best way to do that was for Jen to get pregnant and for her to have to just accept that some people have that luck and that blessing and some people don’t. The scene where Jen tells Judy that she’s pregnant, which was obviously a very difficult conversation for that character to have with her best friend who can’t have a kid, was very much ripped from my life because my best friend got pregnant at a time when I was trying to conceive for, I don’t know, the fourth or fifth year.

It was actually the day after my 40th birthday, my cousin had passed away on my birthday. The day after, my best friend was like, I’m pregnant . And I was like, That’s amazing . Linda did it incredibly well, and I’m sure more textured and interesting than I actually did it in real life. But I truly did that. I put on this happy façade of That’s amazing , because I really was happy for her. I wasn’t lying. I maybe waited for five minutes and then I excused myself to the bathroom, and I just bawled in the bathroom. I was really happy for her and I love that child with my whole being. But I was really sad for myself, and in some ways it just helped me confront it and deal with the fact that this thing ain’t happening in the way that I wanted it to. Obviously that was many years ago, and a lot can happen in five years. And in fact, I now have a 1-month-old.

Oh, congratulations! Thank you. So closure can come in many forms.

When Jen first finds out she’s pregnant and then she tells Judy, I was thinking that it’s going to be extra-painful for Judy to watch Jen raise this child with this guy who looks exactly like Judy’s ex. But she is spared that, which, you don’t want to call that a blessing, but in that sense, at least, it kind of is. Was that in your head when you were writing this? I think we were definitely swirling around all of the insane complications that this would bring into both of their lives. From the moment Ben and Jen become a romantic partnership, that is weird for Judy too. Just the fact that she’s looking at the same face but that person is now with her best friend. These are the things that are really fun to write. In some ways, it’s heightened. Maybe there are more layers of dramatic irony than life sometimes has, but not always. Sometimes life is so crazy and weird shit happens that you’re like, If I wrote this nobody would believe me .

To go back to how you made adjustments this season, a recent New York Times piece suggested that one option was to just scrap the third season entirely. Was that a real possibility at any point? I think it was a real possibility to walk away from it. It was more than a real possibility. I and our partners at the studio and at Netflix were willing to do anything that would help Christina, that would take the pressure off of her, anything that she needed in terms of support. Christina and I are very close and we are a real creative partnership. I was like, You don’t need to do this for me. It’s okay. We have two beautiful seasons of television I’m really proud of and if that’s it, wonderful.

I just cared about her first and foremost as a human being. Let’s not think about this as work. Who cares? It’s a TV show. This is your life . Christina really wanted to finish — she wanted to give the audience closure and to tell this story as we wanted it to be told. It was all Christina, and I’m very grateful.

The scenes where Judy’s going through chemotherapy felt like they were written by people who either had gone through it or know people who did. That’s one of the things about that illness is that everybody knows somebody who has gone through it, for better or worse. I have several writers who lived through it very recently and personally, so it was really important to us to get it right. It’s sort of the same thing as I was saying with, if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve loved someone who’s passed away. If you’ve lived long enough, you know somebody who had cancer. Cancer hit really close to home for a lot of different people on the show. My own mother was diagnosed with cancer during the production of season three.

I’m sorry. It feels like when something difficult is happening to you, there are ten difficult things happening simultaneously. You have no idea. Okay, I’m going to just describe one week to you. In this one week, starting on a Monday, my best friend’s house burned down three days after she bought it.

Oh my God. Literally she got the keys on a Friday, her house burned down on Monday. Two hours later, I found out my wife was pregnant. Two days later, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. That’s just a week in the life of a Dead to Me writer, what can I tell you?

But yeah, cancer hit really close to home for a lot of people who were really closely associated with the show. I reached out to a personal friend who had just gone through chemo, and I made sure that we got every detail right. I asked her, “What do you wish people knew about?” And she told me about the cold cap. Shout out to Jessica St. Clair for helping me write that in an authentic way, and helping Kelly Hutchinson and Jessi Klein, who co-wrote that episode. She was an adviser to me about just how to approach the subject. I had never heard of a cold cap. I didn’t even know it existed. She’s like, “Please talk about that so that people know that it’s out there and that it’s an option.”

We had multiple oncologists, we had a chemo technician on set, just really making sure that everything was accurate. Even though this is a show where a lot of things can be heightened, anything that is human and interpersonal, I always want it to be real.

I have a few questions about the ending of the show. We learn that Jen gets off the hook for killing Steve because Agent Moranis gets killed and the cops seem to think the Greek mafia was responsible for both murders. Did you and the writers think about multiple scenarios for how Jen might avoid prosecution? Not to just be annoying and not answer your question, but truly I felt that I led with the best version of what we came up with. But of course we discussed, well, what if Jen does have to pay the price? What if she is implicated? What if she does strike a plea? We went down every single possible road. But at the end of the day, this isn’t really, in its heart of hearts, a show about crime and punishment. It is really a show about grief and friendship, so that always informs the storytelling.

To that point, there’s a really beautiful scene where Jen and Judy say good-bye to each other. It made me cry. I’m wondering how it was for you to write it and then how it was for Linda and Christina to perform. I’ve got to assume that there were layers of real emotion mixed with the performance for both of them. Oh my gosh, yes. The writing process is very collaborative on a TV show. My name is on the episode, but I had a lot of help in writing it, and specifically that scene because we really wanted to get it right. We wanted it to have that impact and for it to say a lot without saying a lot. I got a lot of help from Kelly Hutchinson, who’s one of my best friends in real life, and from Cara DiPaolo, who’s a writer on season two and season three. When we were shooting that scene — first of all, when we table-read the scene perhaps six months earlier, nobody could even get through it. Even on a Zoom table read of 50 people, just tears in every little box, including my little box. We knew that was going to be an incredibly difficult scene for the ladies to get through and for us to get through, so that is the very last scene that we shot.

I have this very visceral memory of standing there with Kelly, who’s been around all three seasons, was my roommate in college, and one of my best friends since I’m 18 years old. So much of Jen and Judy is really inspired by our friendship. We were just standing there at the monitor, arm and arm. It felt like there was sort of a scene happening on top of a scene. It was really those ladies saying good-bye, but it was the characters also, because Christina and Jen are so close at this point, and Linda and Judy are so close at this point, I really don’t know where the person begins and the character ends. They are just so in the bones of their characters. There wasn’t one bad take of it.

It was so cathartic, but so emotional every time they went through it that I actually was like, Look, we have it in the can. We’ve got it . And they looked at each other and they looked back at me and they were like, Can we do it one more time ? They just didn’t want to say good-bye. So the very last time they did it, I’m standing there arm in arm with Kelly, and they’re crying and we’re crying. I turn around and every single person on the crew is crying. Every single person. It was just beautiful and sad. It was this incredible culmination of love. Hopefully that’s what you’re feeling when you’re watching it.

You definitely feel that watching it. I thought it was significant that Judy leaves Jen her bracelet. She’s worn that throughout most of the show, and there’s a bird on it. Why did you feel like that was an important thing for her to leave for Jen? At the beginning of season two in episode one, Judy left her bracelet at Jen’s house. They were in a falling-out moment at the time because of the tiny detail that Jen had killed Steve — that old thing when your best friend kills your ex-boyfriend. In that episode, Jen says, “You left your bracelet here. Unless it was just an excuse for you to see me again.” And Judy says, “Did it work?” I thought about that as we were bringing the show to a close. It is this thing that feels so connected to Judy, this very iconic bracelet that she’d been wearing for three seasons. It’s our way of saying, Judy’s not here anymore but she left this symbol and this sort of talisman. It’s a way for Jen to keep Judy close.

Jen gets kind of a happy ending, all things considered. Then at the end of the episode, you do another cliffhanger! I guess it’s not technically a cliffhanger, but Jen’s about to confess to Ben about killing Steve, then the episode ends before we see that confession. Tell me about the decision to end it that way. I knew that I wanted the show to always feel like Dead to Me . It is a specific tone and we do like to pull the rug out a lot. For me, I didn’t need there to be a happy ending. As a writer, one of the joys of working on this show is that thing where I’m leading you down one set of feelings, and hopefully lulling you into a sense of, Oh, everything kind of worked out . Is this a happy ending? This seems like a happy ending . And I thought, Well, if I really want it to feel like an episode of Dead to Me, it has to end on a cliffhanger. It has to end in an incomplete way that keeps the audience writing the ending for themselves. I really wanted to give the audience this lasting feeling that you’re left with when you lose a friend or a loved one, this feeling that they’re kind of always with you and you carry them with you. So I thought, Okay, well, here’s a good way to really drive that home.

I hate to ask this, but I kind of have to ask this: Have you thought at all about revisiting these characters again since shows never seem to end anymore, they just eventually come back? Or is it too soon to even think about that? Certainly I would be lying to say that I’ve never thought about it, but I really wanted to deliver a satisfying end to the show and I wanted it to be an end. I really, truly wanted to give the audience closure as much as you can get. So it’s not something I’m planning on, but I’ll just leave that as an ellipsis as well.

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‘Dead to Me’ Final Season Descends Into a Fitting Spiral of Chaos

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A few episodes into the third and final season of “ Dead to Me ” on Netflix , Jen (Christina Applegate) quickly catches up Judy (Linda Cardellini) on the latest chaos unfolding in their entangled lives.

“That’s a lot!,” says Judy.

“Yeah, it’s way too fuckin’ much!,” Jen replies.

That exchange is “Dead to Me” in a nutshell, Liz Feldman’s dark comedy that premiered in 2019 and wraps up with a third and final season nearly three years after it last aired. Judy met Jen at a grief support group after driving the car that killed her husband, and a few months later the two of them were in cahoots concealing Jen’s accidental murder of Judy’s ex Steve (James Marsden). The rest is soapy twists and turns and secret twins and lots of expletives — as only “Dead to Me” delivers.

Season 3 follows suit and pulls out all the chaotic stops, piling up one complication after another as Jen and Judy try to maintain their innocence and stay out of trouble. But trouble is everywhere in their improbably insular social web; Judy is still involved with Michelle (Natalie Morales), who used to date the detective covering up Steve’s murder (Diana Maria Riva), who works with Judy’s grief camp fling Nick (Brandon Scott), who’s investigating the hit-and-run involving Jen, Judy, and (unbeknownst to anyone else) Steve’s twin brother Ben (Marsden), who has developed feelings for Jen.

And that’s just Episode 1.

A man with disheveled brown hair sitting at a bar, wearing a leather jacket, and looking wistfully at a broken wooden bird; still from

Tempting as it is to binge “Dead to Me,” there’s just too much misunderstanding, coincidence, gaslighting, and skullduggery to digest Season 3 in one go. The twists are still gasp-worthy, if wildly improbable, until they start retconning events of Seasons 1 and 2 and feel distinctly more hollow. The show works best when Jen and Judy are allies, but they spend most of the season keeping each other deliberately in the dark, to the detriment of the story. In the past, they kept secrets to protect themselves, but now they’re doing it to protect each other, and the I-love-you-too-much-to-tell-you-the-truth angle wears thin after a few episodes, despite the strength of their bond. The pacing is almost as preposterous as the plot points; a year has allegedly passed since Season 1, but at some point in the season months have elapsed with no clear indication.

Applegate and Cardellini slip comfortably into their old rhythm (a brief shroom trip in one episode wastes their chemistry and timing, but still radiates tipsy warmth), fueled by their real-life friendship and two seasons of living in this dynamic. New episodes do their best to utilize the not-so-secret weapon of Marsden, adding hallucinations and flashbacks as Ben processes his brother’s death. Marsden has played inner turmoil, puppy-dog brightness, and a slick, oily jerk on this show, but never all at the same time or across from himself in a scene — compelling in theory, but ultimately disserviced by predictable dialogue and hokey direction.

The stakes might be high for Jen and Judy, but they’re low, bordering on nonexistent, for “Dead to Me,” whose writers at least seem to enjoy a final shot at testing these characters and their audience’s stress limits. Why shouldn’t a show known for twists evolve into its most serpentine self for one last hurrah? New conflicts, characters, and solutions are more convoluted than ever — but if you’ve made it this far you not only expect, but relish that, though the payoff might fall short. It’s hard to say much without knocking over a domino lineup of spoilers, but “Dead to Me” ends largely as it started: Mired in shock, love, and loss, but insisting that all those unlikely and harrowing developments might just work out in the end.

“Dead to Me” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.

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‘Stolen’ Review – Pretty Netflix Film Puts Its Message Ahead Of Its Drama

'Stolen' (2024) Review - Very Educational, But Otherwise Dull

Stolen (2024) is ostensibly a drama, but it plays out more like a docu-drama about reindeer than anything else. I couldn’t recommend it as a work of fiction, since it ends up pretty dull, but it does provide an illuminating glimpse into a very esoteric subject if you’re into that kind of thing.

The Netflix drama (original title: Stöld ) marks Swedish filmmaker Elle Márjá Eira’s directorial debut. Based on the novel of the same name by Ann-Helén Laestadius, the film follows a young Sámi woman as she’s trying to stop the constant attacks on her family’s reindeer by residents of the nearby village. But it clearly exists to espouse a message rather than tell a story.

When she was only nine years old, Elsa (Elin Kristina Oskal) witnessed her neighbor Robert Isaksson (Martin Wallström) kill her favorite reindeer. Terrified, she stayed quiet about the culprit when her father took her to give a police statement. A decade later, Elsa is herding reindeer alongside her dad and brother, Mattias.

Following in her father’s footsteps is something Elsa wanted to do since she was little. But the family is now questioning whether to continue living in the area and herd reindeer given the increase in hostility against the Sámi and the opening of a new mine that threatens their livelihood. For the villagers, the mine means more jobs and economic prosperity. The Sámi, however, are worried it will have devastating effects on their animal’s welfare.

Stolen (2024) | Image via Netflix

Police rarely investigate the reindeer slayings and simply report the animals as “stolen.” The local community is accusing the Sámi people of killing their reindeer to claim compensation from the local government. Amid the increased friction, Elsa regrets not reporting Robert to the police all those years ago and blames herself for the continued attacks on her people’s reindeer. On the other hand, Elsa’s insistence on becoming more vocal against how the Sámi are treated in the region risks making things worse for the community.

Stolen is a well-presented drama set among the beautiful scenery of Sweden’s most northern region. The film has plenty of shots of the snow-covered mountainous areas and the northern lights. It also presents the scenes of reindeer herding with the explanatory detail you’d expect from a documentary.

Further adding to the film’s educational intention are scenes where characters casually discuss details about the hierarchies present in the Sámi communities , their history, and their present struggles. While I did find it fascinating, it all feels too much like schooling without enough story to get the viewer invested in the on-screen drama.

As characters, Elsa and Mattias only exist to voice the concerns of their people and have little in the way of personal motives or goals. Even when they argue with each other or those around them, the dialogue mostly focuses on the broader political issues of reindeer herding. Several points are repeated incessantly throughout the script.

Robert is supposed to be the villain but all he does is constantly spew the villager’s general gripe with the Sámi. There are only so many times I can listen to the same character complaining about ice fishing and the snowmobile ban before I stop paying attention. It all makes for rather dull storytelling and comes across as preachy.

I can’t recommend watching this as a work of fictional drama. However, if you want to be educated on reindeer herding and the struggles the Sámi face, you will gain a lot of knowledge from watching Stolen .

I also broke down the ending of Stolen (2024) in-depth if you’re interested in how the conflict between Elsa and Robert is resolved.

Article by Lori Meek

Lori Meek has been a Ready Steady Cut contributing writer since September 2022 and has had over 400 published articles since. She studied Film and Television at Southampton Solent University, where she gained most of her knowledge and passion for the entertainment industry. Lori’s work is also featured on platforms such as TBreak Media and ShowFaves.

‘What Jennifer Did’ Exposes the Dark Reality Behind Jennifer Pan’s Failed Family Plot

Heirs to the Land Season 1 review - compelling but overcrowded period drama

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Screen Rant

Civil war ending explained.

Alex Garland's latest, Civil War, has an explosive ending that leads to multiple deaths. We break down the film ending's biggest moments and more.

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Civil War

At the end of Civil War, Lee sacrifices herself to save the new war photographer, Jessie.
There US' future is uncertain after the President's death.
The film highlights the importance of photojournalism in documenting war.

Alex Garland’s latest film, Civil War , ends with multiple deaths. The film, set in the future of the US, where a civil war has broken out and the states have been split into various factions, including the Western Forces, which are fighting against the Loyalist States with plans to kill the president. Starring Kirsten Dunst as Lee , Civil War finds the war photographer and what’s left of her team after Sammy’s death — Joel and newbie photojournalist Jessie — heading to the heart of Washington, DC alongside the Western Forces, who have seized the White House with the president inside .

With all the shooting and hiding for safety, Lee’s walls begin collapsing, as the weight of Sammy’s death and all that she’s seen threatens to pull her under . Once the Western Forces breach the White House, Lee, Joel and Jessie follow along. The Secret Service and the Western Forces exchange gunfire, and Jessie rolls into the hallway to get a good shot. Lee jumps in front of her to save her from the bullets. Shortly after, the president is captured, and Joel asks him for his final words before he’s killed, with Jessie taking a photo of his final moments.

Civil War Review: Kirsten Dunst Shines In Alex Garland's Powerful, Ambiguous War Epic

Lee & the us president die at the end of civil war, lee sacrifices herself to save jessie.

While Lee is adamant about protecting Jessie from the horrors she’s been so jaded by for the entirety of Civil War , the film culminates with Lee sacrificing herself to save Jessie from being shot by the Secret Service. Jessie photographs Lee’s death, suggesting her apparent disconnect between a war photographer and her subject. This is Jessie at the start of her photography career, whereas Lee deletes the photo of Sammy’s dead body from her camera at the end of hers.

Lee losing her mentor changed her, and the war zone near the White House put everything into focus. Lee stepped in to save Jessie because she was all out of steam; she had given her all for years and losing Sammy was witnessing the true consequences of the job. Lee jumped in front of Jessie to ensure the new war photographer would live on to witness the Western Forces taking down the President. Lee was still jaded, but she recognized the importance of the work. She also didn't want to witness Jessie's death when she was still so young.

Nick Offerman’s US President, meanwhile, is killed by a few soldiers serving the Western Forces. His final words are along the lines of “ Don’t kill me, please ,” which Joel confirms is good enough for an exclusive before he’s shot, ending his three-term presidency, though it’s unclear if the president’s death also means the end of the civil war. Though Lee didn’t live to see the president fall, she’d at least accomplished her goal of getting to Washington, DC, and being the first team to get a quote from the president.

What’s Next For The US After The Western Forces’ Successful Operation

With the president dead, the us’ future is in question.

With the president fallen, the Western Forces’ goal has been accomplished. That leaves their future unknown by the end of Alex Garland’s film . The Western Forces, led by the seceded states of California and Texas, have historically been on different sides of the political spectrum. They had a shared goal during Civil War : Eradicate the fascist president. Now that their plans have come to fruition, the future of the US is up in the air. It’s possible the Western Forces will rejoin the greater US and reunite the country.

It could also be that California and Texas will go back to being on different sides politically, though that may take much longer considering the way the country has been divided in the civil war. What’s more, with the president’s death the US’ future is called into question. It’s likely that a leader with the Western Forces will emerge , and that could create an entirely new conflict. Regardless of how things shake out, the outcome of the Western Forces’ operation positions them as a powerful party, one that could shape the rest of the factions and the US’ future.

Civil War’s Ending Is Just As Ambiguous As Its Politics

Alex garland wanted to keep it that way.

Civil War ends with the US President’s death at the hands of the Western Forces. What it doesn’t reveal, however, is how the country will move forward in the aftermath . The film itself throws viewers into the midst of an ongoing conflict without revealing when or even what caused the movie’s civil war , though there are allusions to the president throwing out the Constitution. But the ending is ambiguous, since there’s no confirmation regarding what will happen next. Garland likely wanted to keep it that way, considering Civil War’s politics are equally undefined.

It’s muddled in a way that gives enough to understand what’s going on but not enough to make a statement either way. Civil War has the kind of ending that leaves audiences with more questions than answers. The Western Forces hated the president and wanted to do away with him because he was a fascist, but the film didn’t reveal what their plans would be in the aftermath of his demise. What the US will look like in the years to come is unclear, and Garland leaves it up to viewers to decide what may or may not happen next .

Where The Florida Alliance & The Loyalist States Are In Civil War’s Ending

Civil war’s primary focus is on the western forces.

Given their vendetta against the president, Civil War’s Western Forces take up the majority of the film’s focus. The Florida Alliance is briefly mentioned near the start of the film, but the alliance’s perspectives and allegiances regarding the war are vague, though it seems like they’re allies with the Western Forces. However, Civil War’s ending doesn’t reveal much of anything about where the Florida Alliance and the Loyalist States’ forces are. Considering the Western Forces approach into Washington, DC, it’s revealed the Loyalists surrendered, leaving the president undefended . They likely retreated from the capital, no longer in the fight.

During a news segment at the start of Civil War , a journalist confirms The Florida Alliance was busy stopping the Carolinas from an insurrection . Additionally, there is, according to Civil War’s movie map of alliances , the New People’s Army, which is made up of northwestern states like Oregon. That part of the country is not really highlighted in Civil War , so there’s no telling what they’re really up to. The Western Forces are so central to the narrative because of their power and influence, so much so that the remaining factions fall to the wayside.

Greenland, though not a part of the United States, is also neutral, like Alaska. Greenland and Alaska are where the president would have gone to negotiate his surrender had he not been killed by the Western Forces.

The Real Meaning Of Civil War’s Ending

The film’s finale brings meaning to photojournalism.

Civil War’s ending centers on the importance of photojournalism in the midst of wars and horrific human actions . Near the start of the film, Lee says that surviving a war zone made her believe she was sending a warning home, but then nothing much changed. And yet, the film’s finale showcases how crucial the documentation of events is — no matter how awful they are. Lee’s career as a war photographer may not have ended any wars, but witnessing them through her lens serves as a reminder of the history and events that took place.

What’s more, Civil War’s ending asks the audience to make up their own minds about the war, through the perspective of Lee and her team’s photographic documentation and experiences . It brings meaning and weight to war photography as a pivotal element of journalism, especially as Lee wants to do her job with the least amount of bias. The deaths of Sammy and Lee at the end of Civil War suggests they didn’t die for nothing, that their work, which will continue on through Joel and Jessie, was critical.

Civil War is a 2024 action thriller from writer and director Alex Garland. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, Civil War takes place in the near future and shows the United States entering a new Civil War after California and Texas attempt to separate from the country.

Cast & crew
User reviews

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

Tanya finds her summer plans canceled when her mom jets off for a last-minute retreat and the elderly babysitter who arrives at her door unexpectedly passes away. Tanya finds her summer plans canceled when her mom jets off for a last-minute retreat and the elderly babysitter who arrives at her door unexpectedly passes away. Tanya finds her summer plans canceled when her mom jets off for a last-minute retreat and the elderly babysitter who arrives at her door unexpectedly passes away.

Wade Allain-Marcus
Chuck Hayward
Neil Landau
Jermaine Fowler
June Squibb
Nicole Richie
4 User reviews
11 Critic reviews
61 Metascore

Tanya Crandell

Party Guest

Zack Crandell

Melissa Crandell

Rose's assistant designer

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia Joanna Cassidy : As the fashion executive who meets Nicole Richie 's character Rose at the end of the fashion show. Cassidy played the role of Rose in the original Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) .
Connections Features Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

User reviews 4

sirgarrykay
Apr 15, 2024
How long is Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead? Powered by Alexa
April 12, 2024 (United States)
United States
Santa Clarita, California, USA
SMiZE Productions
Treehouse Pictures
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Runtime 1 hour 39 minutes

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Alex Edelman: Just For Us’ On Max, Have You Heard The One About The Jewish Comedian Who Walked Into A White Supremacist Meeting?

Where to stream:.

Alex Edelman: Just For Us
Stand-Up Comedy

Neal Brennan Thinks We’ve Failed By Turning ‘Crazy Good’ Comedians Like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan Into Moral Authorities

Stream it or skip it: ‘neal brennan: crazy good’ on netflix, making the case for talented people to be a bit twisted, stream it or skip it: ‘demetri martin: demetri deconstructed’ on netflix, dreaming up and overthinking the ideal comedy special, stream it or skip it: ‘tig notaro: hello again’ on prime video, a mother “or whatever” in tune with her feelings and her audience.

Alex Edelman debuted this special as a stage show in 2018, which just to give you a sense of six years worth of time, is not just pre-pandemic, but also in a time when America was shocked by an antisemitic white supremacist march in Charlottesville and the then-president’s reaction to it. In 2024, when Edelman’s show finally debuts on HBO, we’re all in a much different frame of mind when thinking about Jewishness. Of course, that might just make his story even more important to tell now.

ALEX EDELMAN: JUST FOR US : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Edelman, a millennial born and raised in and around Boston, took Just For Us to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018, where he received a nomination for best show (Rose Matafeo’s Horndog won that year). Following that run, he enjoyed an Off-Broadway run in 2021 that made the leap to Broadway in 2023, where it was filmed in August for HBO.

Directed for the stage by the late Adam Brace, and subsequently directed here by Alex Timbers (who previously worked with John Mulaney on Oh, Hello! , Kid Gorgeous , and Baby J ), with Mike Birbiglia on board also as an executive producer, Edelman’s special focuses on how he decided to respond to antisemitic threats on social media not just through online means, but more significantly by responding to an open invite to a meeting of white nationalists in Queens.

“Nothing says white privilege more than a Jew walking into a meeting of racists, and thinking, this will probably be fine.” Of course, he can joke about it now. Spoiler alert?

Memorable Jokes: It’s not all about Edelman’s fateful decision to infiltrate a meeting of white supremacists.

He warms us up with a bittersweet observation about how Koko the gorilla, who had learned sign language and met Robin Williams, reacted upon learning Williams had died in 2014. Edelman also fills us in on his own Jewish upbringing, including the one time his parents inadvertently let them celebrate Christmas and the very different career path his younger brother has followed.

But the bulk of the show revolves around how Edelman found himself answering a call for people questioning their whiteness to convene in an apartment in Queens, with the comedian jokingly recalling the various people he met there, the small talk they made, the outside hobbies they had, and even the woman he found himself crushing on at the meeting.

It was only after the fact that a woman Edelman did date pointed out to him his own white privilege by having the chutzpah to attend the meeting in the first place.

And then he reckoned with why he went at all, knowing that everyone there would hate him for even existing. So why do it? “I wanted them to like me,” he confesses.

Our Take: So what’s with that story about Robin Williams and Koko, anyhow?

It’s all meant at once to put Edelman in context with Williams. “My comedy barely works if you’re not from the Upper West Side,” Edelman cracks. “Robin Williams crossed the species barrier.” He also says the story shows us his love for dumb jokes and the lengths he’ll go to, taking sign language classes over Zoom, just to get the bit right.

He meant to write a show full of dumb, silly jokes just like this.

But the harsh reality of life for Jews today, whether in America or anywhere else, has become fraught with danger as antisemitism continues to rise in his lifetime. And as much as he’d like to think of himself as a basic white guy (even with the baggage that comes with that), society won’t look at him that way. What’s a Jewish American to do? For Edelman, he could only fall back on his sense of humor and wish that might be enough to reach out and connect with the other side in real life. If a comedian could make a gorilla love and weep over him, why can’t humans of different political and religious philosophies do the same?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Ultimately, the show wants us to be as hopeful as Edelman, while also reminding us that sometimes we need safe spaces to simply exist. And we sure need a lot of hope right now.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First .

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IMAGES

Dead to Me (2019)
Dead To Me dark comedy Dead To Me
Dead to Me
"Dead to Me" (2019) movie poster
Dead To Me dark comedy Dead To Me
Review: Dead to Me Is a Quietly Radical Depiction of Grief’s Emotional

COMMENTS

Dead to Me
Upcoming Movies and TV shows; ... 88% 118 Reviews Avg. Tomatometer 84% 1,000+ Ratings Avg. Audience Score Jen's husband recently died in a hit-and-run, and the sardonic widow is determined to ...
'Dead to Me' Review: Needless Thrills Kill This Bittersweet Comedy
Netflix series 'Dead to Me' starts as a buddy comedy but turns into a thriller with diminishing returns. Read Alan Sepinwall's review.
Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini are the Life of Netflix's Dark
Created by Liz Feldman ("2 Broke Girls"), "Dead To Me" is a dark, dark comedy about Jen (Christina Applegate in career-best performance), a woman processing her loss one extremely grim punchline at a time. Her rapidly evaporating well of patience and mercurial temper don't help her much in her job as a real estate agent, and they certainly don't make her a perfect fit for ...
Dead to Me (TV Series 2019-2022)
Dead to Me: Created by Liz Feldman. With Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini, Sam McCarthy, Luke Roessler. A series about a powerful friendship that blossoms between a tightly wound widow and a free spirit with a shocking secret.
Review: In 'Dead to Me' on Netflix, Widows Make the Best BFFs
Dead to Me Streaming Friday on Netflix A version of this article appears in print on , Section C , Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Jen and Judy Bond, Darkly .
Review: 'Dead to Me' Gives Christina Applegate Her Best Role
The new Netflix show Dead To Me is very good. Beyond that, it's a hard show to review. It's hard to even discuss what kind of show it is without spoiling things that you should get to discover for ...
Review
Review by Bethonie Butler. November 17, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST. Christina Applegate, left, as Jen Harding, and Linda Cardellini as Judy Hale in the final season of "Dead to Me." (Saeed Adyani ...
Netflix's Dead to Me Goes Out On Its Own Terms In Season Three
Clint Worthington November 17, 2022. Tweet. For the first two seasons of creator Liz Feldman's droll, incisive series "Dead to Me," Laguna Beach besties Jen ( Christina Applegate) and Judy ( Linda Cardellini) have been surrounded by death and lies. In fact, their tight-knit friendship is forged by them: each of them is either directly or ...
Dead to Me (TV Series 2019-2022)
Dead To Me follows two women who tragically lose someone in their lives. This Netflix Original Series is very mysterious and the comedy is dark as the night. The first episode sets up the vibe for the rest of the show and it only pulls you in more and more, up to the point of no return. The two leads - Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini ...
'Dead to Me' review: Netflix tragicomedy is the best binge of 2019
Netflix's bizarre but beautiful tragicomedy "Dead to Me" is the best new series of the year and a showcase for Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini and James Marsden. Just don't spoil its big twist.
'Dead to Me' Review
Dead to Me is a mediocre mystery (really more of a thriller, I guess) that wants you to give it extra credit because it's giving you surprises as almost a bonus gift. It's gravy. But it's ...
Dead to Me on Netflix Review
The new thriller/comedy series goes down easy, and has fantastic performances from Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini, and James Marsden, but the first season as a whole feels weirdly underbaked.
Dead to Me
Dead to Me. Season 1 Premiere: May 3, 2019. Metascore Generally Favorable Based on 38 Critic Reviews. 68. User Score Generally Favorable Based on 149 User Ratings. 7.7. My Score. Hover and click to give a rating. Add My Review.
'Dead To Me' Netflix Review: Stream It or Skip It?
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Dead to Me review
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.
Netflix's 'Dead to Me' is an addictive, easy binge: Review
At just 30 minutes a pop, each episode of Dead to Me Season 1 is packed with more twists and turns than a daytime soap. Lies are told. Trust is shattered. James Marsden shows up looking like a ...
Netflix's Dead To Me Review
Netflix is no stranger to half-hour comedies that work despite the inherent darkness of their conceit, and the streaming giant's newest series, Dead To Me, offers up yet another example of how well that particular formula seems to work.Though not as exuberantly weird as the recently canceled Santa Clarita Diet, this new series, from creator Liz Feldman (2 Broke Girls, The Great Indoors ...
Dead to Me (TV series)
Dead to Me is an American black comedy-drama television series that stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as two grieving women who bond during therapy. It was created by Liz Feldman and executive produced by Feldman, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Jessica Elbaum.The series premiered on May 3, 2019, on Netflix and received positive reviews. In June 2019, Netflix renewed the series for ...
The Dead to Me Finale, Explained by Creator Liz Feldman
Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman discusses the ending of the Netflix series starring Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini and James Marsden, and how Judy's cancer, Jen's pregnancy, and their ...
Dead to Me Ending Explained: What Happened to Judy
Showrunner Liz Feldman and actor James Marsden explain Dead to Me's ambiguous ending.
'Dead to Me' Season 3 Review: Show Limps To Finish Line
November 17, 2022 9:00 am. "Dead to Me". Saeed Adyani/Netflix. A few episodes into the third and final season of " Dead to Me " on Netflix, Jen (Christina Applegate) quickly catches up Judy ...
'Stolen' (2024) Review
Stolen is a well-presented drama set among the beautiful scenery of Sweden's most northern region. The film has plenty of shots of the snow-covered mountainous areas and the northern lights. It also presents the scenes of reindeer herding with the explanatory detail you'd expect from a documentary. Further adding to the film's educational ...
Civil War Ending Explained
Civil War is a 2024 action thriller from writer and director Alex Garland. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, Civil War takes place in the near future and shows the United States entering a new Civil War after California and Texas attempt to separate from the country. Director.
Baghead Movie Review: Cribbing from Recent Horror Hits
Starring: Freya Allan, Anne Müller, Peter Mullan, Jeremy Irvine, Ruby Barker. Release Date: April 5, 2024 (Shudder) Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and ...
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (2024)
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead: Directed by Wade Allain-Marcus. With Jermaine Fowler, June Squibb, Iantha Richardson, Nicole Richie. Tanya finds her summer plans canceled when her mom jets off for a last-minute retreat and the elderly babysitter who arrives at her door unexpectedly passes away.
'Alex Edelman: Just For Us' HBO Max Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
The Gist: Edelman, a millennial born and raised in and around Boston, took Just For Us to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018, where he received a nomination for best show (Rose Matafeo's Horndog won ...

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