Monday, March 02, 2009

Sepinwall on TV: 'Reaper' season two review

In today's column, I review season two of "Reaper," which begins tomorrow night:
Late in the second-season premiere of the CW's "Reaper," slacker Sam (Bret Harrison), still stuck working as a bounty hunter for the Devil (Ray Wise), asks his friends Sock (Tyler Labine) and Ben (Rick Gonzalez) to help him brainstorm how to simultaneously capture 40 souls escaped from hell. Sock declares they have to approach a problem this complicated like college students -- which means spending the night chugging beer until a brainstorm hits them. After several hours of increasing drunkenness (and, for Sock, nudity), they finally come up with the perfect plan: Just get the souls as drunk as the three of them are right now.

"Our all-nighter paid off!" Sock roars in triumph. "We are college men!"

Sock's scheme doesn't go off as planned, and the entire sequence sums up "Reaper" in a nutshell. It's a series with a lot of potential, but its creative team constantly struggles to live up to the ambitious job before them -- and their plans work only in fits and starts. It's fun, but not nearly as good as it could be.
To read the full thing, click here.

4 comments:

Toby O'B said...

"I have been soiling pure innocent maidens since the beginning of time," he explains. "I have sired many, many children on this Godforsaken planet -- hoping that each would finally be the one to bring about hell on Earth. But no, they turn out to be duds -- every single one of them."

I like the possibilities in that; something I can work with for Toobworld....!

Anonymous said...

Wait, what? I thought there was a lot of ambiguity there as to whether Sam was the devil's son or not. I had almost given up on the show but that question mark gave me faith that Fazekas and Butters had a different idea.

Alan Sepinwall said...

What was ambiguous at the end of last season is much less so now. Or so it seems.

Anonymous said...

I watched the first half of last season and it looks like I left right when things started getting better. Too bad they didn't rerun part of season one to get me back up to speed. As for season two, how much of the season did you see? I know you mentioned the third episode in your review. What does a station like the CW look for in ratings when a show goes up against something like American Idol?