Reaper: The Devil and Sam Oliver

Reaper has been a fun show from the beginning, but this season it has been considerably better than last. This is beacuse the job of catching souls has become a smaller part of the show and the characters have become a bigger part.

Which leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Reaper. It’s not a big deal, but with all of his attempts to get away from the devil Sam has never tried to deal with the other side, yet it’s clear that everyone knows that he exists.

I certainly understand that having God solve the problems of the main character isn’t interesting, but having them involved is a good idea, and that appears to be one of the things that happened this episode, though not exactly how you might expect.

The other part I expected more. They have been setting up for a while that the only way to get the devil to play against Sam so he could win back his soul was to put up another soul for the bet. Andi is the one that puts up her soul convinced that Sam can win.

As the name of the show is Reaper I think it is safe to assume everyone knows he doesn’t win. This means that Andi has now lost her soul to the devil. I don’t know exactly how they are going to use this next season but I hope that it will give her a little more to do on the show. Most of this season she has felt like she didn’t need to be there.

Reaper is still primarily just a fun show. There isn’t a huge amount of depth, but for what it is meant to be it does a good job and it seems like it is going to continue to get better.

Reaper: Underbelly Review

I’m starting to get tried of Andi. Every other character on Reaper brings something to the show. They have personalities that are interesting but her only job on the show seems to be to get upset with Sam because he’s supposedly evil though so far she hasn’t seen him do anything evil. 

In this episode Andi goes with Sam on a road trip to a small town where rather than helping him with the escaped soul that is killing people she complains about him being the son of the devil and leaves.

Then at the end of the episode she once again approaches him to break up with him again, and he’s upset about it again, and my guess is that within a week or two they’ll be back together again and I still won’t care.

I’m just glad that she’s a small part of the show and hope that perhaps the writers will decide what they want to do with her soon because if they don’t they’re going to lose me.

Reaper: I want my Baby Back: Review

So many shows are afraid of change it is nice to watch a show that is willing and able to move the show truly forward and Reaper seems willing and able to keep the show changing.

This week the change was that they finally allowed Andi in on the final piece of Sam’s secret. She now knows that he is the son of the devil, but that isn’t the only change this episode. This episode we also saw Sam’s relationship with his Zombie father move forward and Andi begin to grow more accustom to being in charge.

This willingness to move forward shouldn’t be a suprise and on a less episodic show it wouldn’t be, but this show could easily fall back on its naturally episodic nature, but instead it adds in new characters, changes old characters, gives babies to demons and I suspect at some point someone will figure out that since they regularly spend time with the devil and demons there are probably angels and God and that will be a huge change to the show.

Reaper: The Favorite review

One of the most interesting aspects of Reaper is the built in discussion of right and wrong in the show. the examination of why people are good and bad may or may not have been planned but it seems clear now that the writers understand this part of the show.

The devil is of course the most blatant example of this examination. Sometimes it is in his attempt to explain his importance and other times in his humorous attempts, often successful to lead people a astray.

One of my favorite examples of this was in a recent episode where he was leading an alcoholics anonymous meeting, though many of them are far more grey than that. Is the torturing of condemned souls evil or an important job, what about temptation. Is this something that is necessary for free will to exist.

Another example of this are the condemned souls. Each week the show has someone who has in some way failed the test of character in their life. In the first season these were usually quite black and white with murderers being those that Sam hunted, but in this season they have had escaped souls who are more interesting, as well as demons who aren’t as evil as you might suspect.

Then of course there is Sam, who’s goodness has generally been assumed in the show. Most of what he does, while inept, is selfless. His life would be far easier if he stopped caring if people were killed be the escaped souls, and this week they added another example of this examination of good and evil, another child of the devil, and technically Sam’s half brother.

This is someone who is everything that the devil wants Sam to be, he is ruthless, amoral and wants to rule hell with the devil, the problem is that he isn’t effective and so the devil sends him to Sam to be trained as a reeper but more important is the question of what makes Sam, who is smaller, weaker and probably not as bright. The devil seems to assume it is because he actually cares for people, and at the very least it is the reason that he has friends who are willing to help him.

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.

Reaper: Episode IV A New Hope

I am done with off again on again relationships on TV. I know they happen in real life too, but they have just become far to cliche and I don’t care anymore. That was one of the major reasons that I couldn’t bring myself to care a lot about Reaper in its season 2 premier.
Having went on a 4 week road trip the guys return to find themselves without jobs, homeless and Andy very mad at Sam.
All of this could work except by the end of the episode the only one of those things that is still true is Andy being mad at Sam.
Not only that but they seem to me to be backtracking from the end of last season. Sam is still the son of the devil but they aren’t going to allow that to change anything. He’s still going to hunt down a soul, or 40, every week, the only difference seems to be that the devil is now testing, or perhaps training him to become something more. If they follow that idea I could be interested but the truth is that the soul a week part of the show has grown old for me.
Ultimately, I fear the problem with this show is one I am seeing constantly now that I am looking for it and this is a lack of confidence in writers. I don’t know if this lack of confidence is from the networks/studios or the writers themselves.
It manifests itself in numerous ways, the most common being an unwillingness to change shows, IE. keeping relationships the same way long after they should have changed, an unwillingness to kill characters or change their personalities, and a desire to repeat any success which manifests itself in every remake, sequel and prequel on the market.
I understand that success isn’t always easy to achieve and once you find something which works there is a strong desire to not upset the apple cart, but those who are willing to change things(Joss Whedon, J. J. Abrams, Ron Moore, and J. Michael Straczynski) produce shows which I believe are of far higher quality than those who want to replicate the success of their premiere, or worse simply copy the success of other shows.