Are you looking for a funny show about a fairly dark subject? Boy do I have good news for you. “Reaper” is about a young man who turns 21 and finds out that his parents sold his soul to the devil. This is after a life that he’s basically given up on by working at “The Work Bench” for minimum wage and quitting college because it made him sleepy. His jerk little brother made fun of him for it, but I guess the devil killed him because he is gone after two episodes. His parents are very sorry for doing this, and his mother offers herself to the devil in his place, but Sam decides to damn his soul. All he has to do is hunt down escape souls from hell and take them to the DMV. Sounds easy right?
I mention Brett Harrison in my title because he seems cursed like his character Sam. He’s a decent looking sitcom actor who tends to get prominent to leading roles. This sounds great, and he really shouldn’t be sympathized for, but he can’t seem to catch on with anything. None of his shows last a really long time. I’m still holding out hope.
Sadly for “Reaper”, it was on the CW. This means that we had to have a little angst up in this show. “Supernatural” was on the same network and they had the angst ridden demon hunter thing down already, so “Reaper” was kind of on the hot seat from the jump. “Supernatural” also had hotter dudes playing the leads so the teen girls watching CW had run out of batteries by the time this came on. “Reaper” had a good enough looking lead, but his two best pals were not great looking and his love interest has a stronger chin than Jay Leno.
She's attractive sure, but she has to hold the thing up
From all reports CW hated this show; so it makes sense that I liked it. The jokes were at times very crude for network television and might have made the idiots making “2 Broke Girls” blush. The characters that make the biggest splash are of course the two male best friends. They are in the best place to be funny: they don’t have to be dramatic and in the love stories and they are the comedy relief in the scary monster scenes. Sock is the “Seth” of the team. If you think of this as “Superbad” it’s easy. Sock is the loud obnoxious moron that is fiercely loyal to his jellyfish spine pal. While being such good friends, the slacker fat guy is likely dragging him down, but it’s cool because they’re killing demons and screwing around at work.
Here is the gang not going to get beer, but looking very attractive while trapping demons
This analogy ends quickly though because the third pal Ben is no McLovin. He’s injury prone and soft sure, but he’s got more fight than that hamburger-name-having dork. He looks super fly and for some reason stays at this crap job with these two guys. He eventually even moves in with them and plays Wii all night. They also pal around with their new gay demon neighbors. Don’t question that. It’s all a crazy ploy by the Devil. He’s all powerful you know. Doesn’t it really make sense for demons to be gay though?
Gay or not, you can't let your horns get too out of control.
The two homosexual hell spawns are named Steve and Tony. Above is Steve. They seem harmless enough until they lead Sam into a rebellion against Satan and get a bunch of people killed. Steve then goes to Heaven for trying to do good and Tony lives and adopts an escaped demon baby. I know it’s weird. Their roles are not so important, though they do help the boys out on occasion. Sadly old Angel Steve eventually ruins this show.
Sam Oliver is a loser, but gets hot chicks. Sadly he was dating a girl that was probably the Devil’s daughter, but she moves and we never hear from her again. It’s one of many loose ends that this show leaves. He ends up Andy, then doesn’t, then they do. It’s really annoying. Sock and Ben have much better relationships in season two.
Though Sam and Satan seem to be getting along too
So maybe they weren’t. Sock was part of possibly the creepiest love story I’ve ever seen. The back story is his Mom ran off and married an Asian man then kicked Sock out of their house. He then visits the house months later to find an attractive girl staying there. It turns out that’s his new step-sister. Then the boys start living there too for no explained reason. Sock spends the whole time lusting after her, and then away on a trip he berates her into sleeping with him. She is ashamed and sad, but he breaks her down and they are about to do it when the parents return home. Sock goes fishing with dad and tells him he nailed his daughter. Things get bad, girl moves away. Sock then continues to be a pig.
You’d think he’d learn after his old girlfriend, who he got back with then was dumped by again out of nowhere, disappeared. Josie even disappears after this and stops hanging out with her best friend Andy. This was also never explained. I change my mind. I’m glad this is gone. They freakin’ don’t resolve half of the story arcs. She’s the girl in the top picture by the way. Here’s Sock’s sister to keep you perverts interested.
Ben is of course the happiest because he meets a pretty girl named Nina. This is of course after he goes to jail for one week after committing immigration fraud with a British girl. He ended up losing some money too. Anyway, Nina is great. The problem is she met Ben when she kidnapped him after she tried to kill Sam. Did I not mention that she’s a demon? She disguises herself as a hot blonde, but her demon form is gross. She even ends up killing Sam’s half-brother.
More pretty girls! It's Nina. Demons are better looking than you thought huh?
What brother is that? HIS NAME IS MORGAN AND HE AND SAM ARE THE DEVIL’S CHILDREN! SPOILER ALERT PEOPLE! SAM IS THE DEVIL’S KID. And guess what? They never really explain why or how this happened. Apparently the story his earth parents told are lies, but it’s never explained. I HATE THIS! The show ends with Sam trying to best the devil in a contest Charlie Daniels’ style. He challenged the devil to a game of quarters and is on the verge of winning when Steve the angel breaks his freaking hand and damns everyone to an eternity in hell. Want to know how the show ends? Steve explains that he was doing god’s work, gets pelted with rocks, and then bursts in to a bunch of stars. WHAT!?!? What the hell is that? I know they didn’t mean to get cancelled but come ON!
I need one of these about now
I’m still mad, but the creators of the show did write out how they intended on ending the show and put it online. It makes me feel a little better; but the fury I felt when I got to the end of this show on Netflix was immense. These creators at least helped me a little. Most shows just die and leave us hanging. Props to “Reaper” because if you had ended the show with Michael Ian Black exploding and not explained it, I would have burned down something out of hate.
Well David, I'm sad to say you didn't even mention Gladys, or me, or Sam's parents really that much. I'm not happy with this, and you will have to stock the dog food now.