Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/ABC
In ABC’s new comedy Not Dead Yet, Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez returns in another high-concept role. This time around, she plays a writer nearing her forties whose boyfriend dumped her after she left the country for him. Now she’s back working the only job left at her old company: obituary writer. Oh, and she sees dead people.
Rodriguez and Jane the Virgin pulled off a miracle when the CW comedy debuted in 2014. The telenovela adaptation, in which a young woman becomes pregnant after a mix-up at her OBGYN’s office, could easily have come off silly or hollow. Thankfully, Rodriguez is a wellspring of charisma who, under the right circumstances, can exhibit a kind of humanity that seems to reach out from the screen from her eyes. So, why is Not Dead Yet—another high-concept comedy starring Rodriguez as a depressed obituary writer who starts seeing dead people—so damn lifeless?
Not Yet Dead does have a heartbeat, but for the first few episodes it’s nearly impossible to find. The proceedings, based on Alexandra Potter’s Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up, feel tonally confused at best and ridiculous at worst. As the existentially troubled Nell Stevens, Rodriguez—an emotional powerhouse of a performer—is reduced to gags like yelling at ghosts no one else can see at her desk and unsubtly putting her foot in her mouth at every opportunity.