Premiere Week 2007: Reaper
Slack Sam discovers that, in order to heal his father of an incurable illness, his parents sold the soul of their firstborn child to the devil before he was born. They were tricked into conceiving after the devil blackmailed a doctor into telling them they were infertile. Sam wakes up on his 21st birthday to discover he is now a bounty hunter for Satan. He must return fugitive souls to hell.
Pros
- The writing involved making you root for a guy working for the devil is intricate. Take a guy who’s a slacker and a failure and give him a purpose. He’s working for a bad guy, but he’s not a bad guy. It’s fresh. And not fresh like “Yo, that was fresh” but fresh as in “not stale.”
- I can’t pick a character that I don’t like on the show. Ray Wise plays Satan in the Al Pacino Devil’s Advocate kind of way. He tempts, but doesn’t force. He’s suave… dapper… and the kind of guy you’d sell your soul to. He’s perfect. Sock comes across as the perfect comic relief and is a Kevin Smith character through and through. I like that type of character.
- The pilot didn’t stall. It communicated everything I needed to know without taking too much time off for Sam to whine about his situation. He works for the devil. There’s no crying while working for the Devil.
Cons
- Missy Peregrym’s teeth are almost disturbingly white. When she’s in a scene I can’t look away. I think I missed the part of life when teeth that look like dentures became attractive.
- It’s a CW show, which means I feel a little ghey watching it.
- Sam’s mother. I hope she doesn’t appear and whine and bring the mood down too often.
Final thought: Love it. Can’t wait for next week. It’s shaping up to be a good season for Sci-Fi. I can’t wait to check out Bogus Angel tomorrow.
You don’t hate “Josie”? Really? I mean, even if you like her, would the show be hurt without her?
Aaron
28 Sep 07 at 1:01 am
I was so pissed I missed the pilot. For two weeks I’ve been seeing “coming soon! Check listings!” promos for it. But even while watching other shows ON THAT NETWORK. Does the network not know when it’s shows are going to be on? So I slapped a ‘tape this’ on next week’s (as I did with J’man).
But I’ve caught every episode of Top Model and Beauty and the Geek so far, yessir indeedy.
The Big Show
28 Sep 07 at 10:12 am
Cam: C’mon, every show that deals with private investigators needs either an uber-hacker or a friend in the DA’s office.
Tom
28 Sep 07 at 10:10 pm
[...] into a show that has dandelion-fueled cars, so grain of salt. I have this same ongoing problem with Reaper. Can someone address why all these souls are going to this one town where there’s obviously [...]
TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise » Blog Archive » Premiere Week 2007: Pushing Daisies
1 Nov 07 at 11:24 am