Reaper: The Sweet Science

Monster of the week is something that is really hard to pull off and when done truly well isn’t really that. Buffy is the prime example of monster of the week, but from the very beginning there was more than that. They always had overarching plots and the monsters from week to week were simply to keep the story exciting.
On the other hand the first season of Smallville did a much worse job of this. Each week Clark would fight a monster that had nothing to do with the overall story and he never really learned anything from them, they didn’t even really seem to have a point beyond being an idea that interested the writers.
Reaper seems to be halfway in between those in the first season and in this season the monster of the week part of the story has taken the back seat but this week it stepped forward and became a bigger part of the episode and reminded my why the villain of the week can work as an excellent device.
This week the character in question was a boxer from the 1950s who had escaped from hell and wanted to win the boxing title because throwing a match had been the worst thing he ever did.
This character was interesting and the dilemmas that he put Sam into worked for me making this a good episode. I hope that they can keep putting out episodes at this level.