Dead On Arrival

Here’s a fun little Halloween game; y’all can play in the comment thread or on Twitter as you prefer.  How many TV shows can you think of in which one of the main characters is already dead by the end of the first episode?  Characters who appear only occasionally don’t count; it has to be regular screen appearances.  Obviously, shows which have vampire characters such as Dark Shadows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and The Munsters are included, as are ghost characters like Merlyn Temple in American Gothic, Captain Daniel Gregg in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and “Slimer” in the cartoon series The Real Ghostbusters (and since we’re allowing cartoons, half the cast of The Groovie Goolies qualifies).  But there are also science-fiction versions of undead, such as Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf or Alex Murphy in Robocop, and wholly-mortal characters whose deaths set events in motion and thereafter regularly appear in flashbacks, such as Master Po in Kung Fu and Laura Palmer (mostly in photos) in Twin Peaks.  I asked Grace to play yesterday and she came up with Georgia Lass and her fellow Grim Reapers in Dead Like Me; several characters in Glitch, Resurrection and The Returned; Ezekiel Stone in Brimstone; Olivia Moore of iZombie; Sheila Hammond of Santa Clarita Diet; and Kieren Walker of In the Flesh.  I’ll bet there are plenty of others, though; how many can you name?