Does anyone else find Reggie a bit annoying. . .?

If Joy and Reggie (and George) weren't annoying there wouldn't be a story to tell.

Joy - perhaps a bit warped by her own mother - seriously damaged young George and George decided - against the PTB, Fate, Death, etc - to intervene to help her sister avoid the same end. George's subtle touch with the drum set picture - Reggie gave it back to George (via the box at the toilet seat tree), but George wrote on it a little something and left it for Joy - helping the two overcome themselves to find some sort of common ground.

Reggie changes dramatically thru the two seasons shown in several ways.

In an early scene with a therapist Joy is asked to leave - Reggie is seen as the problem, but later with a second therapist Reggie has learned to cope and hide her thoughts about George and it's Reggie who leaves so Joy - the problem - can be fixed.

In an early scene we're shown Reggie getting absurd answers from an Ouija board. Later she asks questions of the board and there are none provided - her thinking is maturing and she's paying attention to evidence that's important.

The last episode tho the writers take time and care to show us just how much the dynamic between Joy and Reggie has shifted to Reggie's favor - a mark of George's successful intervention. When the oven catches fire it's Joy who loses control and Reggie who stays calm and puts the fire out. Then to drive the point home in the dialogue Reggie points out that Joy misses what's important. Notice that they do not go trick or treating and because Reggie wants to they both sleep out all night at George's gravestone - Reggie has come a long way.

The series got canceled before we saw Reggie's continued development. I suspect that she would have moved from mostly passively receiving George's interventions to actively pushing herself into George's world and that likely would have raised the tension levels considerably.

We would have likely learned what happened to Rube almost 80 years prior that made him turn his face on his family - he did what he was supposed to do as a good dutiful reaper. He made a choice and he had to (un)live with it for 80 years.

George made a different choice and decided to push herself into her family's lives.

Reggie doesn't know what she's doing and can't make a choice. She sees little tidbits of evidence and can't help but follow them into the very dark metaphorical forest and in that plot trajectory she's probably risking a postit and the attention of a graveling.

How the details would have played out would have been at least as enjoyable as the first two seasons, but I suspect at the end of it we still would be left wondering why the PTB sidelined the envelope and then returned it to Rube 78 years after his transgression and why they put George under his care next to her family - a combination that only could have triggered a breakdown in Rube's carefully constructed compartments containing his guilt for what he did or didn't do for his own family (unlike George who refused to be the dutiful reaper).

Reggie was beginning to evolve into one of the three main characters in the series (along with George and Rube). The Grandma was brought into a few episodes to help define Joy's relationship with Reggie.

Joy and Grandma are very different people and yet they both, when they learn of Reggie's belief that George is still around, think she needs to be fixed. There are numerous bits and pieces of evidence that are shown to Joy and Reggie that George is around (admittedly Reggie has gotten more), but it's Reggie who can see the evidence with an open mind while Joy cannot.

Their differing reactions are captured in the random phone calls George makes to her house in which she doesn't say anything - she just wants to hear their voices. Joy gets angry and says she wants to change the number, but Reggie says that then She won't be able to call anymore. Reggie knows it's George. Joy doesn't and sees this as further evidence Reggie needs help.

In ep 208 Escape Artist (the one George meets Trip) near the end George - a bit forlorn - is alone at the WH and takes the opportunity to call home again, and this time Grandma picks up, and George actually talks to her. The Grandma can sense something, but she can't get to Reggie's conscious awareness that it's George (again Reggie has had more evidence thrown her way).

In Ep 207 Rites of Passage in which Grandma makes her appearance the shiny surface theme is George's getting the celebrity reap, but the real main substance going on is the detailed treatment expanding on this common reaction of Grandma and Joy - they can't get to the possibility that George is around - obviously she's dead.

see comments on 207 in this thread in two parts:
http://www.deadlikememovie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57&p= 1546#p1546

So in this episode the writers give us two contrasting reactions the living have to actual knowledge of the undead world exiting unseen around them.

Rube made the case one on one talking to George in ep 107 Reaper Madness as to why the reapers must not allow the living to know about their existence, and here, probably a bit of preparation for us to understand / feel ahead of Reggie's coming revelations in S3 when she gets more concrete evidence of George and the reapers, we see how the Priest (vs Daisy) and the Bandar Girl (vs Mason) react.

Oddly, the Priest, who has become a drunken cynic about any after life at all is ecstatic when Daisy tells him the truth (just before he dies of course - Daisy always times things well). Mason was more sloppy but his audience especially the Bandar Girl pretends to believe - they're all into death and Goth - but when she gets very concrete evidence that Mason is exactly what he said - a grim reaper collecting souls - she runs in real terror (probably a nice loose end that would have gotten tied up by a positit and graveling in S3 as part of a demonstration that the PTB takes leaks seriously and deals with them with a finality).

This episode is pushing us towards Fuller's darker version of the DLM universe. In his episodes it's made clear that the free will of the reapers is very constrained and that if they are not cooperative they will just go away. After Fuller there was a move to lighten things up a bit - the idea that the reapers can take back a little of the life they lost is emphasized.

But by the time Rube gets that envelope we're heading back into darker territory IMO.

Something happened to Rube that turned him away from his family and given the dire straits they must have been in and that Rube seemed like a strong willed husband/father who would likely not be easily dissuaded it must have been big and dark to turn him aside. We don't know what happened, but he put all thoughts of family aside. He didn't know when his wife died or where she was buried, and didn't know where his daughter was. All was good for 80 some years.

Then George shows up and refuses to stay away from her family which really gets Rube angry (too angry IMO - why that angry? ) and then shortly thereafter Rube gets the envelope and between these two his 80 years of serene acceptance of his reaper code is out the window.

In S1 George helps her sister recover, but by S2 she's starting to let go (just when Rube is starting to go look for his own family again). Reggie in S2 (those phone calls, her math homework, missing clothes/TV, and then Charlie) begins to get some traction.

Rube near the last episode meets his daughter before her death and in the last episode tells George he won't stand in her way if she goes home (on Halloween looking as she did when alive) - George (and the PTB) has turned his long settled world upside down.

No where in S2 is it hinted why the PTB would initiate these dangerous collisions. After all they gave George to Rube and they sent him the envelope.

George visits her grave and finds Reggie and Joy, and could, given she looks as she did when alive, have stayed and talked to at least Reggie if not both, but she does not. She chooses to walk away - Rube had a huge influence on her.

In S3 we would likely have seen George stay away, but Reggie would likely have pursued George and found her.

To any temptation, as Reggie was closing in, for George to initiate contact we would likely have had Rube and other reapers explaining (in ep 208 Daisy warning George about Trip - she has everything to lose). I suspect that whatever happened to Rube with his family would have been revealed via flashbacks to make the audience aware of the stakes. George has a choice.

But for Reggie to know why she shouldn't find out about George is likely to invite termination from the PTB who probably have a high priority to keep the living from real knowledge of the reapers among them. We know from ep 207 that the living radically change behavior when they know.

Based on what we got in S1 & 2 the above is the story trajectory in broad sweep that seemed to be coming our way in S3 - no doubt lots of twists and details. The Movie seems to confirm that a meeting between the sisters would have occurred but the how it was done got mangled badly.

So as annoying as Reggie can be that character would likely have gotten a lot more important in S3.

Actually, I always related with George (her lack of interest in common things, and family relations) Watching this as an adult now I see many similarities with her family and my own. As I'm sure many do. I'm thankful each character was written with many faults, and vices.

In the last episode of season one Reggie put her arm around her mom in the cemetery, I thought that was a nice touch by the writer or director.