One morning at Der Waffle Haus, George gets a V.I.P.R., a Very Important Person Reap. Kyle Lowerdeck, the top rock star in the land, is giving a live concert on TV this evening. And his number is up, and George has been chosen by the unseen Powers That Be to collect his soul. The other reapers--namely Mason, Daisy and Roxy--are all a little jealous of George getting a prestigious assignment, especially since she hasn't been a reaper for very long. Yet it still won't be very easy. George will have to try and infiltrate the exclusive concert, which is sold out. And once she's inside, the hard part's still not over, for George will then have to try and get past Kyle's bodyguards, handlers, and his super-possessive girlfriend, all in order to get close enough just to take his soul before he dies. It's an assignment almost worthy of the Mission Impossible gang.

While George is preparing for her biggest reap yet, her mother Joy is bracing herself for an unexpected visit by her mother, Phyl. It appears that the roof of the house is in dire need of repair, and Joy had asked her mom for the money to fix it. But rather than simply send the money, Phyl brings over her own roofing contractor to inspect the roof--and then she promptly winds up staying for a few days. With the uptight Joy dealing with her bohemian mother, it's sort of like a bad Odd Couple revival with poor Reggie stuck in the middle. Meanwhile, once at the concert (where he has another reap to do, or "sloppy seconds," as Roxy calls it) Mason encounters a group of fanatic Goth worshippers who are obsessed with death. And Daisy, who has been flirting with joining Catholicism for the past few weeks, has a moment of reckoning when she has to reap a priest.

Rites Of Passage is very funny--Callum Blue is hysterical as the overly jealous Mason; while Cynthia Stevenson is equally funny as Joy, who is driven to distraction by her dotty, yet lovable, mother. But aside from the humor, Rites Of Passage also serves as a wry commentary on fame and the worship of celebrities, as well as the shattered expectations of religion, and coming to grips with the loss of a loved one. This episode is a fine example of why Dead Like Me works so well. While many shows have episodes with multiple stories that never intertwine, DLM manages to tie all the separate story threads within an episode into a fitting, and poignant, conclusion.