I've grown to the point that I pretty much hate television. Maybe it's a “familiarity breeds contempt” rut that I've dug for myself, but the little magic box just doesn't have the pull on me that it used to. Maybe it was easier to find interest in programs when I was 9 and my parents only had six channels to choose from. Maybe having two-thousand channels of nothing is
too much variety. Maybe so-called “reality programming” has fucked everything up by forcing me to look at and listen to the kind of vapid, dip-shit humanity that I originally used TV to escape from in the first place. Whatever the case, I just don't get excited about television anymore. I do, however, find myself stimulated by the concept of a new Kevin Smith project because, as a comic geek and pop culture waste-of-space, I somehow find great entertainment in watching people bullshit about these topics with equal parts wit and potty mouth. For me, it's like someone threw George Carlin and Stan Lee into a giant blender and poured the contents into a mold shaped like a fat guy from New Jersey... who's not an extra from “
The Sopranos”.
Anyway, the point is that I have no faith in TV anymore, but when you bring Kevin Smith along to direct your new show's pilot, chances are I'll put on my eager beaver incisors and take a bite. Such is the case with “Reaper”. Though Smith's strongest suit has always been writing and he's never really been known as a very “energetic” director, far be it for me to let that stop me from burning an hour or so of my life watching this as opposed to something starring Robert Z'Dar or directed by any asshole with the last name “Polonia”.
Sam Oliver is your standard slacker type hero. He lives with his parents, he works at a “made for TV sitcom” version of Home Depot (“The Work Bench”), he's got the hots for a girl he works with (and her Hillary Swank horse teeth) but not the resolve needed to actually ask her out, he dropped out of college because it “made him sleepy”, and his goals in life are kinda non-existent. Every straight man needs a wacky sidekick and Sam's is his longtime buddy/co-worker/poor man's Jack Black, Bert Wysocki, whom everybody calls “Sock” for reasons that should be obvious, unless you've never been friends with somebody with a wacky last name. The not-normal part of Sam's life though is that his parents pawned off his soul to Satan (the literal one, not the foreign policy one), to be claimed on Sammy's 21st birthday. I wanted to make a joke about how he's finally legally able to buy booze and do something really obscure and humorous, but sadly my web search-fu is limited and I couldn't come up with anything. Blah. As I was saying, Sam's dad was really sick long ago and far away, so when Satan came knocking on his door with a miracle cure, he and his wife agreed to give their new Beelzebuddy theoir first born's soul when he hit drinking age. . They tried to avoid it by just not having a kid, but thanks to Ol' Scratch and that manipulation he's so well known for, the two had Sam. FF>> two decades and three-hundred and sixty-five/six days later and here we are.
As far as what selling their son's soul means, it seems that Hell is overcrowded like the US prison system and there are certain demonic entities that have managed to slip through the cracks and come back to Earth to, pardon the obvious pun, “raise Hell”. As such, Sam gets new fangled telekinetic powers and is charged with being Lucifer's bounty hunter, going out in each episode to hunt down a new supernatural bad guy, wrap his ass up, and drop 'em off Speedy Delivery style at the nearest Hell deposit box (the DMV, natch). If Sam refuses? Well, charming and dapper master of the torments of Purgatory he may be, Satan says that if Sam doesn't take on this internship of the damned, that's when Mommy's soul gets the one way ticket to a lovely little resort on the banks of the Lake of Fire, where she'll drink milkshakes made of piss and hot coals while being fisted by humanoid goat monsters wearing Rollerball gloves. Lame.
Sam's target for the pilot if a pyromaniac moonlighting as a firefighter. Responsible for a rash of fatal arsons in the area, it's up to our hero to douse the hothead and send him back to his eternal damnation c.o.d.... which has always been my favorite anagram, because it conjures up images of a cyborg fish ala R.O.T.O.R. meets Splash... unless everybody else was too good to eat paint chips as a kid... To help him snatch the firebug, Lucy gives Sam an enchanted mini-vac (it's a Dirt Devil™, get it?!) that sucks shit into it like a jet engine. When Sam, Sock, and their pal Ben confront the Inhuman Torch, Ben winds up a forehead stunt double for Freddy Krueger. This brings on the mandatory, “it's time to man up and take responsibility for myself” character turn for Sam, while Sock is more concerned with buying a Sharpie so they can draw Ben some new eyebrows... cuz that's what Ben would want.
Is Sam's newfound resolve and acceptance of his adulthood going to be enough to stop Torchy before he slaps his destructive jollies on a local elementary school? I can't say for certain, but somehow I doubt Kevin Smith's going to agree to direct and executive produce a show whose first episode involves the wholesale immolation of a few hundred kids...
For a pilot episode, I thought “Reaper” did okay. The dialog was pretty snappy and fit well enough into a project with Kevin Smith's name attached to it. I read in an interview that, as the director, he also popped a few opinions on how to tweak the script to make it sound more natural and flowing. I’m not sure how much of it was Smith’s doing (the comic book references like the one that opens this review definitely come under suspicion…) and how much the show’s regular writers can take credit for, but either way we’ll have to see when I check out the regular season of the show. I’ve heard the dip in quality is noticeable, but it varies from “slight” to “tragic” depending on who I’m asking.
Moral of the Story: Ham is always sweeter when it's victory ham... and glazed.
