Season one of Dead to Me begins with Jen Harding, a widow grieving the death of her husband,
Ted, who was killed in an unsolved hit and run. While attending a grief support group,
Jen meets and befriends Judy, a woman grieving the death of her fiance, Steve. Jen invites Judy
to move into her guest house and discovers that Judy was lying about Steve’s death. While Judy
then tells Jen she was attending the support group because of multiple miscarriages that fractured
her relationship with Steve, it’s revealed that Judy and Steve were secretly the ones responsible
for Ted’s death. Steve is trying to cover up their crime by plotting to destroy their 1966
Mustang used in the hit and run, while Judy is wracked with guilt and trying to find a way to
make amends. Despite her desire to confess to her crime, Steve forces her to remain silent.
Jen discovers that Ted had been cheating on her before his death, and Judy comforts her while she
confronts Ted’s mistress. Judy then gets pulled into Jen’s mission to solve the hit and run case,
all the while nervous that her involvement will be exposed and she will further hurt her new friend.
While on a grief retreat in Palm Springs, Judy meets a police detective named Nick who agrees
to help Jen solve the case. Nick teams up with local detective Ana Perez to solve Ted’s death,
and they discover that the car responsible was a 1966 Mustang. After further investigation,
Nick realizes that Judy and Steve owned the vehicle. As the investigation closes in on
Judy and her guilt continues to grow, Judy takes matters into her own hands.
She turns Steve into the police for using their art gallery for money laundering,
drains their entire joint bank account to give money to the financially struggling Jen, and
finally confesses her crimes to her best friend. Jen is obviously devastated by this revelation
and kicks Judy out of her house and attempts to have her arrested. At her lowest point,
Judy tries to kill herself by walking into traffic in the same spot where she struck and
killed Ted. When a furious Steve arrives at Jen’s house to confront Judy, Jen instead confronts
him over Ted’s death. Jen then kills Steve, and reluctantly calls her only friend Judy for help.
In season two of Dead to Me, Jen and Judy reconcile,
although Jen lies to Judy about killing Steve in self defense, and not the truth that she
murdered him in a fit of rage. Judy then helps Jen bury Steve’s body in the forest.
But burying the body is not the end to Jen and Judy’s worries. Jen’s teenage son
Charlie finds Steve’s car and assumes it’s a surprise gift from his mother,
then takes the car out for a joyride with his girlfriend, Parker. When Jen finds out,
she takes the car from Charlie and burns it, hoping to dispose of the evidence,
but unfortunately Parker posted about the joyride on social media,
meaning the police knew that Jen’s son had driven the car after Steve’s disappearance.
Judy begins dating a woman named Michelle, only to discover that Michelle’s ex-girlfriend and
current roommate was none other than Detective Perez. And to make matters even more complicated,
Steve’s identical twin brother, Ben, comes to town to search for his missing brother
and develops a romance with Jen. Jen and Judy realize their new relationships were
too dangerous due to the Steve investigation and decide to break up with Ben and Michelle.
Charlie then discovers belongings from Steve’s car that connects him to the Greek Mafia and
a corrupt police chief named Hastings. Judy turns this evidence over to Nick.
Meanwhile, Jen has become wracked with guilt over her crimes and resolves to make things right. She
confesses to Judy that Steve’s death wasn’t an accident, and then asks her to look after her
sons. Jen then leaves behind goodbye letters to her family as she visits Detetive Perez to
confess to Steve’s murder. While taking Perez to the location of Steve’s body, the Detective
and Jen bond over their similar grief of losing their mother. When Nick calls Perez to inform
her that they had arrested Hastings for his involvement with Steve and the Greek Mafia,
Perez decides to let Jen go. Although this seemed to put an end to the investigation into
Steve’s death, when Charlie reads the letter Jen wrote to Judy, he discovers that his mother was
a killer. And with the investigation into Steve’s money laundering over,
Judy is finally able to access the secret stash of dirty money she had accumulated with her ex.
As the season comes to a close, Jen returns to the grief support group
to grieve her mother’s death. After fully reconciling with Judy, the two women buy a
car for Charlie. While driving home, they are accidentally struck by a drunken Ben,
who had relapsed from his sobriety after learning that Steve’s body had
been discovered. As Ben flees the scene, Jen and Judy wake up from the crash, injured but alive.