It’s a bad sign when you sit and stare at your computer, unsure of what to write. I’ve started this review, and then I’ve found myself erasing the sentence, and been doing that on repeat. You see, I wanted to love Not Dead Yet. I wanted to find so much in it that I could laugh and cry and feel like I could relate.
But what I found myself wondering was, what the hell am I watching? Why is there so much going on in 23 minutes of television? Why are we not diving in a little slower? Is this whole thing going to feel like it’s in overdrive? Are we in high school?
And then I was also like stop being judgemental. First episodes aren’t always great.
The series will center around Rodriguez’s character, Nell, who restarts a career that she left over a decade prior. She gave up her career as a journalist 10 years prior in order to help her man get his restaurant off the ground. We wanna cry for her, because she should never have put her life on hold for anyone.
She ends up living with a stranger after the breakup. She is broke, newly single, and a self proclaimed disaster. The job she lands is writing obituaries and ends up getting help from an unlikely source.
Those unlikely sources? The ghosts of the dead people she’s supposed to be writing about.
So long and short of it, she’s returned to the paper that she left to follow a man to London. She’d been a promising journalist, and she seemed to think that she was just going to be going back to the position she had before. Anyone else see that not being the way that things work out right from the get go?
She’s moved in with someone that she doesn’t know, who is very stringent. He likes routine and it drives her insane. Everything is impeccable and she’s right now in a stage of chaos.
She’s returned with her tail between her legs, but not really liking the fact that her “office” is a closet and she’s being put on the dead beat – obituaries.
Nell’s been gone for quite some time, but she’s not ready for all of the changes that have happened since she’s been gone. She’s expected her friends to stay the same – for the people that they love and the people that they hate to not have changed. She seems to not have realized that she’s moved on and changed and so have they.
Her work wife, Sam, now likes the girl that they once disliked, Lexi. she’s the head of the newspaper, and well, Nell isn’t nice to her. But the thing is – Sam and Lexi have grown to be close. They even quarantined together.
It feels a little like high school, because Nell and Lexi seem to be battling for Sam’s favor. They don’t like each other and seem to want to be as passive aggressive as possible to each other. It’s kinda cringy to watch.
The highlight of this show is the dead people that Nell sees. She sees the man who she has to write the obituary for and naturally she freaks out a bit. I would have checked myself into a hospital, cause I definitely would have thought I had gone insane. But Nell takes it all in stride, after she tries to dust buster him.
I think the point of the show is that everyone has a story to tell and that we can learn from everyone. Change is going to happen, but it’s also going to be something we can make through. We just have to be open to change and learning from it.
While I understand that this is the first episode and we’re setting up the world, I am just like well… I am not sure about the show. But at the same point, I feel like it can and will something that I watch. It will be a show that continues to grow, because each episode will feature someone that we can learn from.
But also, as much as it’s cringy to watch the high school type issues, when you think about it – that’s life. We’re always facing the change and the drama in life. It just seems different as we grow up, because we grow up. But the reality is that it is still the same. We’re just better at throwing the shade.
And if anything, I will watch for the read of the obituary that Nell writes, cause that s*** made me cry.
OTHER THINGS MY MIND THINKS
- Nell’s roommate, I wanted to judge, but the show quickly showed me that we can’t judge characters, we need to be kind and understanding of them. We don’t know them and there are things we don’t understand
- I need to clean my fridge.
- Gina Rodriguez is a gem and I love her. Even though not sure about the show, I think that we have to give it some credit, cause she wouldn’t do a bad show. That’s part of the reason not willing to give up on it.
- Love Sam. Hannah Simone is great.
- Feel bad, cause I was like come on, lets do something with Dennis that makes him more memorable.
- I will not eat my roommates chocolate.
- Never move somewhere where you have to walk your roommates dog for them all the time.
Not Dead Yet airs Wednesday nights on ABC.
