Season 1 ended last September as a more mature George made peace 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 production break on the show's 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 as well, 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 as well.
"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 sho.! They are just amazing, and work very well with the rest of us."
The new episodes this season also 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 who often set into motion the fatal last events in an impending tragedy.
"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 points out.
As for her fellow Reapers, look for the lovely Harris to have a dalliance with "Will & Grace" star Eric McCormack in a multi-episode arc. Viewers will be making other discoveries about Daisy, Muth reveals, many of which uncover an unexpected depth to this wistful beauty.
"Daisy comes across as very high-maintenance and hard to deal with and very confident, yet this year we discover a lot of insecurities she has," Muth says. "All that cockiness is actually a cover-up. She actually has a very dark side that starts to be revealed this season, and Mason, of all people, is the one to discover it. She's an extremely smart character, although she seems like the typical blond ditz at first, almost as if she is content to be treated as a trophy. But she's actually very shrewd about knowing what she wants and how to get it, no matter who she has to step on."
Muth, a dazzlingly self-assured actress at 23, is a good deal less ruthless when it comes to her own career. At the moment 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 of "Dead Like Me."
"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."
