“Reaper” — All Mine
Why can’t I just let loose a little?
The most telling moment in Tuesday’s episode of Reaper came at the end when Sam was having a heart to heart with Andy and she said, “Right now, I just really need my life to stay the same.” And so goes a potential nail in the coffin for this series of once high potential. In the battle of the big-box employees with superpowers, Reaper is rapidly losing ground to NBC’s Chuck. The series’ problem is the same as Andy’s: it refuses to change. More after the jump…
What initially struck me as comforting in last week’s episode has now turned into frustration. The Reaper weekly narrative arc is more rigid than a Dogma 95 film. Sam acts mopey, encounters something strange in his life, gets a visit from the devil, gets a vessel to capture the soul, sneaks into their lawyer-friends office to do research, attempts to get the baddie, fails, regroups, learns a thing or two, and saves the day. I can’t say this will happen every episode, but so far it has.
Now, there’s a way to make this format work, and it has to do with characterization. If the characters are fun to be around it doesn’t matter so much that they’re going through the same motions week in and week out. Amazingly, Reaper has failed to capture this, despite the level of talent on the screen. Sam is the biggest problem (which is a shame since Bret Harrison oozed charm on The Loop), as the kid couldn’t be more of a whiner and wet blanket. This is amped up a notch since the girl he likes is kind of meh and doesn’t seem to have much of a personality. The series biggest assets, Sock and the devil, haven’t been able to pick up the slack as Sock is rarely as funny as he should be and the devil just plain isn’t in the series enough.
For a show about a kid working for the devil as a bounty-hunter and with a group of friends who never once doubted this revelation as being anything but true, Reaper is lacking in fun. Really, that’s what separates this show from the increasingly better Chuck. Chuck seems to know how to have a good time, Reaper feels like the staff is annoyed that it had to make more than one episode of the series. I’m curious if Kevin Smith’s impact on the pilot was more than I might have originally suspected.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
The repetition of the plots so far places ‘Reaper’ second to ‘Chuck’ in my book, but I do like both shows.
I’m wondering if all the focus on the death of Andi’s Dad means that eventually Sam may have to send his escaped soul back to Hell.
(I’m sure he may have been a great father, but he still could have done something very very bad…..)
October 10th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
How is a Dogme 95 film’s narrative arc rigid?
October 11th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Ah… I see that reads far different than it did in my mind. I was just speaking of the rigidity, not so much the narrative. Perhaps that sentence should be reworked… it won’t be… but perhaps it should.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:03 am
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