Laura Harris, Cynthia Stevenson, Christine Willes

That scene in the therapist's office is what I had in mind. I also wondered whether she remembered him from George's funeral reception in her home when he was escorting George's newly dead soul around.

If you've been reading around then you've already seen a lot of spoilers,.....

This show has some currents running quietly below the surface. Rube in that therapist's office told Joy about the African tribe. He often brings up obscure customs and religious practices drawn from equally obscure tribes and peoples, but when he is confronted with his own religious background - he seems Jewish but anything Christian too - he gets upset if not outright angry.

When George gets upset he often falls back on telling her about something only found in a dusty tome somewhere, which she usually rejects - in the S202 she called his talk 'b*llsh*t'. And to bring this odd behavior to our attention notice how Rube reacts badly whenever Daisy brings up her Catholic religious pursuit (the necklace with the cross). And notice how after she abandons her cross and her religion fad he warms up to her, and they go on a reap together to a school. And they're so buddy buddy that they pretend to be father and daughter no less!!!!

As his backstory was revealed in later seasons we likely would have found out what happened to him that brought about that odd behavior.

It's likely that if things had continued into a S3/4/5 the writers would not have passed up the opportunity to have Rube and Joy cross paths again.

PTB refers to the Powers That Be and was coined by someone a long time ago in now dead and deleted forums in which numerous fans gathered to discuss the show. Notice that it's never mentioned in the show and in fact it stands out and is really curious that the reapers never mention by any name the power(s) that are directing them day to day to do specific reaps. A lot of ambiguity. The upper management reference was in the pilot and that's about it.

Despite this the PTB become very prominent as an entity pulling strings unseen and unreferenced to make things happen. The living have free will and oddly so do the reapers. They are physically constrained - e.g. they can't travel and there are ambiguous rules governing interaction with the living, but they can make choices.

One of the most frequent occurrences is each reap which we are told repeatedly Rube does not choose who gets what. Deciding which reaper gets which reap is done by a power above himself and cannot be changed. That implies that higher power has reasons for its decisions.

If the PTB decide which reaper goes with a particular reap - no exceptions - then it's no great leap to see that deciding where each reaper is placed is done for their own reasons for their own goals.

Now, this aspect doesn't really grab our attention until Rube gets that envelope filled with cash in S2. He is very upset that he got it back but remarkably incurious as to why he got it back. This show was engaging enough before the envelope, but that envelope and why he got it back takes the show to a higher level and changes everything we thought was clear way back to S1 the pilot and forces reconsideration of all the plot pathways.

Rube did not know that the envelope had been diverted. The PTB must have known what he was doing, diverted it - for 80 years no less, but took no action against his transgressions (now that's patience!).

Then they give it back to him, which upsets him and sets him predictably on a new course of action, which will likely bring about more transgressions against rules constraining reapers i.e. contacting living family members.

The envelope also forces us to consider again, if we hadn't been thinking along these lines already, why was George placed so near her own family (why not in London? or NY?) under the supervision of a reaper who himself had earlier problems fighting rules against interacting with living family?

By the end of S2 we get a partial answer to the above questions, but there is plenty of evidence and hints scattered thru-out that the writers were prepared to take the tension level up a few notches as Reggie, George, and Rube got intertwined before we got to the meeting between George and Reggie.

That's the value of the Movie. As flawed as it was in execution it was written by the two primary writers post Fuller who altho they did not have control probably tried to put in that final meeting between the sisters that should have been achieved over at least one if not more seasons of TV.

I recommend you approach the Movie with lowered expectations looking for the good points and ignoring the flaws.

No one from the executives to the writers and people doing make up want to make a bad product. It's just hard to get everything to come together successfully, which is why people who can more often than not tend to attract considerable compensation.

Anyway in the whole Fuller getting strong armed out episode there's plenty of blame to go around. On the part of MGM execs responsible for green lighting Fuller's DLM pilot as a series, they should never have allowed him to go solo given he had zero experience managing an operation of several ten's of millions of dollars in budget before. His obvious creative genius was not the issue. He didn't have the skillset and experience to move his ideas from his brain to the screen efficiently i.e. low cost. He may now, but he didn't then, and that lesson was an expensive one for everyone including fans who would have liked to see where he would have taken the Dead Like Me series.

Fuller also seems to have thought the money was limitless and didn't listen when ample warning was sent his way. The MGM guys at that time were under intense pressure to cut costs and they were soon taken over by outside management, and they simply didn't have the room to allow a creative genius to burn thru budget money they didn't have.

So, Fuller lost his job, and many of them lost theirs.

As far as the Movie 'further' tarnishing his creation, keep in mind he left at episode four. Five was a transition to get Betty out with a sendoff as they retooled. Godchaux (Masius) took over creative oversight, and IMO didn't tarnish the creation. We simply don't know what Fuller would have done. We can see what they did and it was pretty good.

The Movie remember altho they wrote it they did not have creative control. By the time the Movie was thought of in 2005/6 MGM was heading towards another bankruptcy (notice a pattern?) and this was not a Firefly/Serenity/Joss Whedon situation with centralized control and continuity. The director as far as I can tell had no more than a superficial appreciation - not much better than those plot summaries on the DVD covers - of the series and it shows.

I find it really hard to believe that Godchaux/Masius did not and why they did not could not communicate more to the director is one of those unanswered mysteries.

Certainly the mishandling of the recasting of that central character is up front and obvious. But it goes deeper. Even if they found another slender blond with acting talent (no shortage of those in S CA) who could replicate believably the original Daisy the lines/plotting/scenes didn't work.

And then this Movie Daisy it turns out can't handle acting on stage and says she's never done it, but in Ep 206 'In Escrow' Daisy and George had a relaxed conversation at home in which we learn that Daisy has extensive experience doing Shakespeare on stage. If in getting ready for the Movie the writers and director just rewatched the series once how could they move forward with a key plot twist that had Daisy unable to perform basic lines of Shakespeare on stage? Anyway, think positive, think positive......