Christina Applegate & Linda Cardellini Are Unexpected Besties In 'Dead To Me'

Dead to Me stars Christina Applegate as Jen, a woman who was recently widowed and is still reeling from the loss of her husband. She goes to a support group, which is where she meets Linda Cardellini's Judy — an overly friendly woman with issues of her own to work through. They bond quickly, but the Dead to Me trailer soon reveals that there's a lot more to Judy than Jen initially thought.

The series has been described by Deadline as a dark comedy; though the premise is grounded in grief, there's still a lot of humor to be found in the story. The trailer makes that clear from the jump, when Jen answers the door to find a neighbor bearing casseroles and platitudes. "Jeff and I can't imagine what you're going through," the neighbor offers, to which Jen replies, rife with sarcasm, "Well, it's like if Jeff got hit by a car and died, suddenly and violently. Like that." Then she closes the door in the woman's face.

Jen decides to attend a support group, where she meets the super-friendly, super-sunny Judy at the refreshments table. Judy immediately asks her for a hug, which Jen declines (hugging strangers? Major no thanks) with obvious distaste. But then Judy starts to intrigue her.

During the group session, Judy shares that she lost her fiancé suddenly just two months ago. Both she and Jen have been dealing with insomnia as a result of their respective losses, so Judy hands over her phone number. "I'm up all night," she says. "Feel free to call me. We can not sleep together."

Presumably later that night, once midnight has rolled around and Jen is still sleepless, she decides to give Judy a call. This is where their friendship starts to spark: they make jokes, they tease each other, and their connection blossoms. Soon enough they're going out to bars together, smoking on the beach, and sharing secrets. Things are going so well that Jen asks Judy to move into her guesthouse, despite the fact that Jen's son thinks Judy is totally suspect.

And Judy is almost definitely hiding something. The cops show up at Jen's door quickly enough, and later on James Marsden (!) announces that chaos seems to follow Judy wherever she goes. A flurry of scenes enforce the idea that something is going on with Judy: she slaps herself in the face in front of the mirror before smiling fixedly; she tells Jen there's a lot that she doesn't know; someone even flat-out calls Judy a criminal.

But she's a lot more than that to Jen, who feels like Judy is the only person who has been there for her and hasn't made her feel like she's a big failure. Their friendship has been important to Jen in her grief, even though Judy seems like a loose canon who might prove to be more trouble than anyone bargained for. When Dead to Me premieres on Netflix on May 3, viewers can find out exactly what Judy is hiding — and why Jen is willing to put up with it for the sake of Judy's friendship.