Reaper, Week 1
Sep. 26th, 2007 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteIt's "Kevin Smith's Brimstone"! And it's quite good.
Spoilers!! On his 21st birthday, slacker and college dropout Sam Oliver learns that his parents soul his soul to the Devil. Now the Devil is collecting, and rather than adding to his overcrowded population, he's putting Sam to work, rounding up escaped souls and sending them back to Hell. Which, as noted, was the plot of the very short-lived Fox series Brimstone.
But, as also noted, Kevin Smith is involved. He's not the creator, but he directed the pilot and is a producer. And this is very much a Smith kind of show. The main characters, Sam and his loud and enthusiastic buddy Sock, are kindred spirits to Dante and Randal, working in dead end jobs and trying to decipher the mysteries of women while using pop culture references at the right moments. But now their lives have gotten really weird, and Sam finds himself with a task that might be too big for him to handle. It's an interesting hybrid, and while there is the chance that these characters could get stale after a while, I like them immensely.
I also like the Devil, played by Ray Wise. He's clearly not a nice guy, who seems to enjoy pain and suffering. But it also seems he's not out to bring the world to darkness. Instead, he's the unsettling but smiling warden on the largest and worst jail there has ever been, and it seems to matter to him that the escapees don't do much more damage as demons. Are we going to see Smith the amateur theologian at play again? It seems possible.
There is a passing similarity to this week's other new Unlikely Hero show, Chuck. But that show feels far more implausible. I tend to prefer science fiction to fantasy, but when you do sci-fi, you need a firm base, and "man gets all of the government's dark secrets dumped in his mind by an e-mail" is not a firm base. While "Devil pwns you and gives you jobs" is nice and simple. There is a reason, I think, that there is so much more fantasy than sci-fi on TV. However, Sam and Sock are also more down to earth than Chuck and his buddy Morgan. Chuck seems to go out of its way to prove its hero is a nerd. Reaper establishes it with a bit more subtlety, allowing Sam and Sock to almost immediately spring to life as characters rather than ideas for characters.
Lastly, the most striking think about this show is that its premise is identical at this point to another CW show, Supernatural, only it's played for comedy. This one-two combination could be a bit much. There might not be enough of an audience out there to want both the straight and silly versions of "sending evil SOBs back to Hell". But it's interesting to see that the CW thinks there is. And that someone found a way to put a spin on the ideas we've seen in Kevin Smith's films, in Supernatural, and in Brimstone. It will be worth seeing what happens next.
Oh, and the potentail love interest? Laast season she was Candace on Heroes. So either we've seen the last of Candace, or (as some rumors wold have it) the part was recast.
Spoilers!! On his 21st birthday, slacker and college dropout Sam Oliver learns that his parents soul his soul to the Devil. Now the Devil is collecting, and rather than adding to his overcrowded population, he's putting Sam to work, rounding up escaped souls and sending them back to Hell. Which, as noted, was the plot of the very short-lived Fox series Brimstone.
But, as also noted, Kevin Smith is involved. He's not the creator, but he directed the pilot and is a producer. And this is very much a Smith kind of show. The main characters, Sam and his loud and enthusiastic buddy Sock, are kindred spirits to Dante and Randal, working in dead end jobs and trying to decipher the mysteries of women while using pop culture references at the right moments. But now their lives have gotten really weird, and Sam finds himself with a task that might be too big for him to handle. It's an interesting hybrid, and while there is the chance that these characters could get stale after a while, I like them immensely.
I also like the Devil, played by Ray Wise. He's clearly not a nice guy, who seems to enjoy pain and suffering. But it also seems he's not out to bring the world to darkness. Instead, he's the unsettling but smiling warden on the largest and worst jail there has ever been, and it seems to matter to him that the escapees don't do much more damage as demons. Are we going to see Smith the amateur theologian at play again? It seems possible.
There is a passing similarity to this week's other new Unlikely Hero show, Chuck. But that show feels far more implausible. I tend to prefer science fiction to fantasy, but when you do sci-fi, you need a firm base, and "man gets all of the government's dark secrets dumped in his mind by an e-mail" is not a firm base. While "Devil pwns you and gives you jobs" is nice and simple. There is a reason, I think, that there is so much more fantasy than sci-fi on TV. However, Sam and Sock are also more down to earth than Chuck and his buddy Morgan. Chuck seems to go out of its way to prove its hero is a nerd. Reaper establishes it with a bit more subtlety, allowing Sam and Sock to almost immediately spring to life as characters rather than ideas for characters.
Lastly, the most striking think about this show is that its premise is identical at this point to another CW show, Supernatural, only it's played for comedy. This one-two combination could be a bit much. There might not be enough of an audience out there to want both the straight and silly versions of "sending evil SOBs back to Hell". But it's interesting to see that the CW thinks there is. And that someone found a way to put a spin on the ideas we've seen in Kevin Smith's films, in Supernatural, and in Brimstone. It will be worth seeing what happens next.
Oh, and the potentail love interest? Laast season she was Candace on Heroes. So either we've seen the last of Candace, or (as some rumors wold have it) the part was recast.
(no subject)
Date: Sep. 26th, 2007 02:03 pm (UTC)I probably won't give it a go JUST yet, but I'll be interested to see if it's worth picking up, and will keep an eye on your reviews accordingly. Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: Sep. 27th, 2007 03:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Sep. 30th, 2007 01:46 am (UTC)*was gleeing*