Teen’s afterlife not as grave in second season

George Lass (Ellen Muth) steps more confidently into the first day of the rest of her death as “Dead Like Me” begins its second season Sunday on Showtime.

Fans of the dark comedy will remember that George (short for Georgia) spent much of season one in a vile mood, and understandably so. After all, the bright but aimless teenager had been fatally creamed by a toilet seat from the plummeting Skylab space station. George’s messy demise threw her into the arms of her new mentor, Rube (Mandy Patinkin), a crusty pragmatist who quickly recruited her for his team of Grim Reapers, the beings assigned to remove the souls of the living and point them toward their designated afterlife.

Nonplused at discovering that her afterlife required her to work at a temp agency called Happy Time to make ends meet, George also spent many non-reaping hours at an eatery called Der Waffle Haus with Rube and the rest of his team: cranky meter maid Roxy (Jasmine Guy); Daisy (Laura Harris), a dazzlingly self-absorbed former actress; and Mason (Callum Blue), a Brit slacker who has carried his penchant for substance abuse beyond the grave.

The first season ended as a more mature George grew comfortable with her new role in the cosmos, even as she sadly watched the marriage of her parents (Cynthia Stevenson, Greg Kean) come unglued under the stress of her death.

“I’m playing George quite a bit differently this season, and I’m glad you picked up on the fact that she kind of made peace with her situation at the end of last season,” Muth says during a break on the Vancouver set. “This season is a lot funnier, not as dark, mainly because, well, she has accepted the fact that she is dead. She knows she cannot go back to where she was when she was alive. But she’s also a lot more confident now in who she is and what her job is, and she is becoming more of a woman and more sure of her sexuality. As far as the reaping of souls, she now views her job the way the other Reapers do: It’s a job, you do it and it’s done, so there you go.”

George’s newfound confidence spills into her goofy office routine at Happy Time, where new friends begin to gravitate toward the once-lonely teenager.

“Early in last season, George was very worried about other people’s emotions, especially how they saw her, and felt she was outside looking in,” Muth explains. “This year, she still hopes people will accept her for who she is, but if they don’t, she’s OK with that. Oddly, because she has that confidence, the people around her like her more. She becomes more a part of the Reaper family, and she also is able to get along with people more outside of their circle.

“Things that go on at Happy Times are very funny this year, and if you were watching last year, some of the people you saw then as basically extras emerge as real characters in their own right this season, at least to some degree. And they also manage to cast the best guest stars on this show.”

The new episodes contain hints that George’s destiny as a Reaper may have been preordained on some level. Certainly she is suspiciously good at this bizarre job and, Muth notes, she is the only character able to see the Gravelings, mischief-making gremlins.

“The fact that she’s the only one of the team who can actually see the Gravelings means that she gets a kind of head’s up as far as which person around her is about to die,” Muth says.

Muth, 23, says she hasn’t even read any scripts for a future project -- “It’s just too distracting while I am focusing on George,” she explains -- and she has nothing lined up after she wraps season two.

“I never wanted to play in a teeny-bopper movie,” she says candidly. “I never wanted to play -- and don’t think I would be cast as -- the pretty girl who got to wear all the name-brand designer costumes. From the beginning, I always was drawn to the deep roles, the ones that had a lot of different things to explore. I never really cared about the paycheck. It was all about the craft, really. I never got into this for the money.”

John Crook writes for Tribune Media Services.

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‘Dead Like Me’

Where: Showtime

When: 10 to 11 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children

under 14)