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'Reaper,' a devil
of a smart new series

Critics and media buyers have little but praise

By Diego Vasquez
Sep 25, 2007

As the new season kicks off, Media Life takes a look at the buzz surrounding some of the first-year shows and how they’re expected to perform with previews and reviews.

This is the fourth in a series of fall TV previews.

 

Name of show  

“Reaper”

 

Timeslot 

CW, Tuesday 9 p.m.

 

Plot synopsis 

“Reaper” follows a young man named Sam, played by Bret Harrison, with the typical slacker traits: he skipped college, has a dead-end job at the local home improvement store, and he plays video games every chance he gets.

 

Sam’s parents (Allison Hossack and Andrew Airlie) have always let him ease through life, which he finds somewhat peculiar since they push his 15-year-old brother Kyle (Kyle Switzer) to get straight A's and join sports and clubs at school.

But when Sam turns 21, he realizes why he had it so easy. His parents sold his soul to the devil before he was even born, and now Satan himself (Ray Wise) wants payback.

 

Satan tells Sam he must work as his bounty hunter, using a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner to track down souls that have escaped and return them to hell. Sam’s friend Sock (Tyler Labine), the slacker of all slackers, is eager to help when he learns about the deal. Another friend, Ben (Rick Gonzalez), tries to help Sam get out of it.

 

Outlook 
It's looking tough.

The Tuesday 9 p.m. timeslot CW chose for “Reaper” is a loaded one. It will air head-to-head against one of TV’s top-rated dramas in Fox’s “House,” which averaged an 8.0 rating among viewers 18-49 last season, and one of fall’s top reality series in ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” results show, which posted a 4.9 season average among 18-49s last year.

 

It also faces “The Unit” on CBS and “The Biggest Loser” on NBC.

The hope here is that “Reaper’s” target audience is different enough from-- in other words, younger than-- those of the competing shows. Leading out of the modest hit “Beauty and the Geek” should help somewhat.

 

The Buzz

Though “Reaper” is airing in a tough timeslot, media people are upbeat on the quality of the show.

 

In its season preview, Rubin Postaer and Associates of Santa Monica, Calif., writes that its pilot was arguably one of the best of the season, and Carat calls it one of CW’s most promising new shows.

 

Says one researcher: “'Reaper' is among the shows that will get notices. I think CW should be coming into its own this season, and ratings should be up considering where it was this past season.”

 

What Critics Are Saying

“It’s not every day that the funniest new comedy of the fall season is an hour long and littered with thriller and paranormal elements instead of 22 mostly predictable minutes pounding to a laugh-track beat. Then again, it's not every day that the best new series of the fall is on the CW. That's not normal, para or otherwise.” – Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle

 

“Unlikely or not, ‘Reaper’ works on its own cleverly devilish level and proves one of the happier, snappier surprises of the season.” – Tom Shales, The Washington Post

 

“‘Reaper’ is a hybrid of the movie ‘Clerks’ and NBC’s hit series ‘Heroes,’ and, like ‘Chuck’ on NBC, it defies all the cautionary rules against crossbreeding. Comedy is hard to sustain in an hourlong episode, but ‘Reaper’ mixes supernatural derring-do with deadpan slacker humor.” – Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times

Diego Vasquez is a staff writer for Media Life	© 2008 Media Life Magazine

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