End Of Season Review: Reaper

Best US Alternative Rock Album Produced Between 1990 And 1994. Prettiest Cast Member In Friday Night Lights. Most Powdery Wig In Britain 1752. These are hotly contested titles. Unlike the title of Best New US Show Of The Season 2007-8, which was more like the contest to win England Footballer Of The Year 2007 – all the potential contenders seemed to underperform deliberately, giving the impression it was an accolade no-one wanted to win.

Reaper takes it, although the victory owes more to what the show wasn’t than to what it was. It wasn’t high-gloss, soapy schlock about a bunch of hateful bastards; it wasn’t a rehash of tired sci-fi tropes aimed lazily at a supposedly easily-pleased audience; and it didn’t coast on a thin premise while besotted with its own insufferable quirkiness. It may not have been perfect, but Reaper remained reliably entertaining throughout its run, while demonstrating the importance of a solid concept and a strong cast.

One of the reasons I watched Reaper in the first place was its superficial similarity to one of the greatest TV shows of my lifetime, in which a seemingly ordinary young person reluctantly assumes responsibility for combating the threat of supernatural nasties. But Reaper is certainly not Buffy, and signalled this by having Kevin Smith direct its pilot. It’s as much about a bunch of guys hanging out talking shit as it is about evil hellspawn. Almost every episode sees Sam, Sock and Ben drinking pints at the bar, suggesting that for them beer is nearly as important as serving the Devil by trapping escaped souls and returning them to the underworld. And that is my kinda show.



This attitude underpins Reaper’s whole ethos. Sam may struggle with the burdens of his obligations to the Devil, but he still finds time to goof around at the Work Bench. Ben is thrust into life-endangering situations weekly, but he still loves to daydream about his perfect woman (who of course is independently wealthy, enjoys mixed martial arts and reads Sue Grafton novels). And Sock refuses to take anything seriously – work, the Devil, Sam’s romantic problems – unless it involves his mother. The show’s ambling, amiable spirit feeds into what Admiral Neck diagnosed back in November as Futurama Syndrome – the odd pacing that sees the main plot often wrapped up with ten or more minutes of episode still to unfold. While this was intially weird and unsettling, before long it came to feel familiar and natural, with the realisation that Sam’s adventures in recapturing souls aren’t what Reaper is about. Rather, it’s about Sam’s troubles in balancing his obligations, his responsibilities to friends, family, Andi and work – the problems we all go through when making the transition to adulthood. Their occasionally unearthly nature notwithstanding, Sam’s problems are instantly recognisable for all of us, as is the half-arsed way he goes about trying to solve them. Well, it’s about that and a bunch of guys hanging out talking shit.

Reaper’s main drawback was that for a long time it didn’t appear to be going anywhere: the guys just bumbled from week to week, being equally inept at bounty hunting, retail and affairs of the heart. This was an unusually long establishing period, and only when Sam stumbled (a) into another relationship that ignited Andi’s feelings for him and (b) on a demonkind plot against the Devil was any significant progress made. An ongoing problem – a surprising one, seeing as Reaper is one of the few shows on US TV created by women – is the female characters: Andi is little more than a vessel for Sam’s hopes and desires, only developing a personality in the final third of the season (and even then it’s mainly a ‘one of the guys’ personality); as for Josie, both her femaleness and her blackness feel tokenistic given that she appears only when soul-trapping brushes up against the law or when a Sock-related C-plot is needed; and when Ben finally gets to have a relationship it’s with the shrewish Sara, who manipulates him, steals all his money and leaves him in jail pining for the Grafton-reading fantasy girl Cassidy.

The way Sara was written wasn’t her only problem. I did a little cheer when I saw Lucy Davis’s name in the credits but sadly she was dreadful in the role, all eye-rolling and silly tics and incomprehensible muttering. For someone whose major career role has been on the radio, it’s astonishing how poor her diction is (see also Shaun Of The Dead, if for some reason you haven’t). Fortunately this was just about the only casting misstep Reaper made. The guest spots were a delight, from Melinda Clarke as the lonely mistress of the Devil to Jeff Kober as a hardworking neighbourhood demon, but the best was Ken Marino, essaying his usual easy charm as practical, sweet-natured ex-angel Tony.



But the near-perfect guest casting was no surprise considering the success of Reaper’s main cast. Rick Gonzalez might not be the finest actor on TV but his artless, affable presence is perfect for the sweet-natured Ben. Bret Harrison stands out from any number of blandly handsome puppyish actors not only for his physical comedy skillz – he can take a pummelling like a champ – but also for his hapless ability to inspire sympathy. But these two might have floundered without Tyler Labine, whose energy and gung-ho commitment give Reaper an anarchic edge. Despite his innate – and often hilarious – selfishness, it is Sock who usually provokes the team into action (Sam and Ben would surely remain hopelessly static without him), and Labine has the manic charisma to make this believable.

Labine may prove to be the breakout star of the show, but its ace in the hole is without question Ray Wise. My co-bloggers have already eulogised about his magnificent grin, but the key to the role is Wise’s astonishing ability to switch between avuncular and sinister in a microsecond. He also brings a subtle poignancy at times, inviting you to feel sympathy for the Devil’s inability to enjoy food or his isolation, before doing something gleefully horrible to remind you – hey! He’s the frickin’ Devil! Evidently Anthony Head auditioned for the part, but although he has a certain roguishness, I doubt even Giles could have managed Wise’s devastating combination of authority, playfulness and outright malice. Ah, fuck it – let’s face it, Head couldn’t have emulated this.



Like Friday Night Lights, Reaper has benefited from the lack of new dramas in season 2008-9 and been recommissioned (for 13 episodes at least), despite its mediocre ratings. Although it’s been enjoyable until now, it’ll be fascinating to see where it goes from here. Because while it’s a good show, I’m not convinced it can ever be great. Whether deliberately or not, it has virtually no emotional impact, and no evident ambition to make any; even the apparent death of Sam’s dad in the season finale didn’t quite disrupt the good-humoured atmosphere. I’m sure it can go on being an engaging, lovable show with charm to spare, which is far more than many manage. But if that’s the limit of its aspirations, that’s a shame – and it may not be enough to keep Reaper alive.

Things That Have Occurred To Us While Watching Season Five of 24 (5-7)

We've finished the season (a bit of a drop in tension by the end, but it was still a terrific run), and there are many more things that caught my attention in the middle of all the craziness.

5. A lot of the tension created on this show is awfully mechanical.

I know, this is hardly news. There are lots of examples of it, but the most common one is the satellite retasking conversation that keeps happening. Pretty much every episode, Jack loses whichever lower-level terroristic person he has been chasing (usually someone he found out about at the end of the previous hour), and after leaping into whichever Hummer he has at his disposal, will phone Chloe and bellow at her for a while. As Canyon pointed out midway through the season, the format for these conversations is always the same.

Jack: [out of breath even though he is driving and not running] Chloe! ::pant:: I lost DuPrez! ::pant:: He got into a car and headed south on I95. ::pant:: I need you to task a satellite to track him and download it to my PDA/supercomputer! ::pant::

Chloe: [rolls eyes] I can't do that, Jack. Miles Papazian is sitting opposite me, watching my every move. And Karen Hayes has got a spybot installed on my hard drive and if I do anything that she hasn't authorised my computer will shut down automatically. And Bill and Audrey have been locked in barrels and rolled out of the building. And an armoured robotic sentinel is guarding the server room. And I'm chained to my chair and can't move. And my arms have been amputated. And there are mines embedded in the floor around my chair. And I'm in a glass case. [pouts]

Jack: Dammit Chloe! ::pant:: If I don't find DuPrez in the next twenty minutes he'll rendezvous with Farquharson and my cover will be blown! ::pant:: And if that happens I'll never find the disc with the locations of the fifty nuclear bombs hidden in each of our United States! ::pants again::

Chloe: [rolls eyes] Okay fine, Jack, you don't need to shout. [begins sewing arms back on using teeth]

Ten minutes later, the satellite is retasked and Jack gets to stare at his PDA while driving, and doesn't even veer out of his lane once. Of course, this reliance on false conflict is the worst kind of lazy McKee-esque contrivance, but in season five it was a lot more entertaining than usual. In previous seasons there have been dreadful sub-plots used to keep characters occupied. I'm thinking of the famous cougar in season two and the baby-minding in season three (which was far worse and infinitely stupider). Season five had no boring plot threads (even the dead ends like actually-not-evil Vice President Hal Gardner were fun), and if that meant Chloe spent the entire season evading her bosses and retasking satellites (at least fifteen episodes featured her doing that impossible thing) instead of looking after a baby, then that's fine by me.

Oh, and what happens with DuPrez? Jack catches him, tortures him using an ironing board, a bottle of Diet Coke, and a roll of wallpaper, and in agony and terror the weaselly DuPrez gives up his contact, Dash MacKenzie, the aerospace engineer who mysteriously spent four years living in Chechnya. Upon finding him, Jack is frustrated in his efforts when he is arrested by over-zealous police officers sent to his location by whichever short-sighted neckless pencil pushing loser is in charge of CTU at that time.


Dash speeds away as the clock ticks down, forcing Jack to make his angry face. Next episode, Jack is released without charge, and he calls Chloe about tasking a satellite to chase Dash. Jack Bauer, breathless Sisyphus for the 21st Century!

NB: The use of the words "Tasking" and "Retasking" drives Shades of Caruso into incandescent rage, just so you know. My repeated use of those words do not qualify as endorsement. We're not crazy.

6. Why is no one weeping for Carl Mossman?

The body count in 24 is incredibly high for a TV show, but then our hero Jack is perfectly willing to kill and maim and torture any number of people in order to save, "hundreds! ::pant:: Of thousands! ::pant:: Of lives!". This list of dead characters is filled with names I don't recall, though I think they're padding the list out a bit. Some of the names are from the 24: Declassified series of novels, but even taking that into account, there are a lot of redshirts and Terrorist Lackey #4's in that list. I didn't really care when they died, and I don't care now. However, I do care about poor, noble Carl Mossman, the bank manager kidnapped by Jack and Wayne Palmer at gun point, dragged to his workplace to open a vault, and then killed by Christopher Henderson's men during their escape.


During that time he put up with a bunch of shit, watched as his wife was pushed around by Jack, dragged across town in the middle of the night, bonded with Wayne Palmer, found out President Logan arranged to have David Palmer whacked, announced he was all Team Bauer and stuff, gained their trust, and then got killed with bullets until dead. Time elapsed between being kidnapped from his wife's side to being iced: 40 minutes.


Normally the gratuitous death of a minor character wouldn't bother me at all, but this time the guy was at home, probably watching Letterman, chillaxing after another day having to deal with grumpy Californians bitching about yet more armageddon being visited upon them, and then all of a sudden some out-of-breath dude storms in with the former President's brother in tow, and even before Letterman got around to doing that night's silly stunt (playing baseball with Johnny Damon), he's been shot by goons who manage to completely miss the two large guys standing on either side of him. That's some crappy luck.


For the first time ever, the death of a minor character really pissed me off. Oh sure, I was furious when Tony "died", and hated to see George Mason go out (even though he was both heroic and radioactive), but usually the chumps who get momentarily involved in Jack's life die and I don't care. This time, I got actively upset. In the next episode Wayne tells Jack of Carl's death, which, if I recall correctly, isn't even greeted with a "Dammit", let alone a "Son-of-a-bitch". They carry on driving, with a corpse in the back seat not caring about the increasingly ripe smell. By the end of the episode they have ditched the car and are running around trying to capture evil Christopher Henderson, and after that Wayne disappears into the night, not to be heard of again (at least until he improbably becomes President in season six). Meanwhile, Jack is too busy getting his on-off girlfriend almost killed and sneaking onto planes to care about anything as trivial as a dead guy. I hope that while that was happening Wayne at least made his way back to Carl's house to hand the corpse over to his wife, because otherwise there's just some dead guy stuck in a car on some industrial wasteland in LA. Man, this show can be cold sometimes.



7. Someone working in 24's casting department is a big fan of Robocop.

And so they should be, as that is a wonderfully sweet film, delightfully ribald, romantic, reminiscent of the classic MGM musicals of the early 50s with its innocent charm and endearing sentimentality. The casting for this season featured some surprises for fans of Paul Verhoeven's satirical classic, including Peter Weller, Ray Wise, and Paul McCrane.


Weller played one of this season's many bad guys, the monotone and eternally duplicitous Christopher Henderson (which is a disappointingly mundane moniker in the same vein as former antagonists Peter Kingsley and Stephen Saunders), and Ray Wise and his barely present grin played the red herring is-he-good-or-bad Vice President Hal Gardner (a name that makes me suspect there are also some Green Lantern fans working on the show). McCrane barely ever gets to play good guys, and here continues this trend by playing the vile and oddly spelled Graem Bauer (yes, I read a spoiler).


At the end of the season Henderson gets blasted to death by the righteous weaponry and rage of Jack Bauer, who has spent most of the day killing everyone responsible for the deaths of David Palmer, Michelle Dessler, and lovely Tony. Fair enough, but it amused me that every time he shoots one of the big bads he acts like they were the only ones involved, which I thought meant he would just keep on killing people with even a tangential involvement in the plan, all the time glowering at them and ominously reciting the list of friends he has lost, until he's the only person left on the planet, at which point he will realise that actually he is a shit magnet who gets everyone who knows him into terrible trouble, at which point he would shoot himself with enormous solemnity and humourless vengeance. Because that is the way of The Bauer (a Bauer being the Western equivalent of a Samurai, obviously).

As for Gardner and Graem, they live to fight another day, which is interestingly the opposite of Robocop, where Weller, as Robocop, lives on, Leon (Wise) gets blown to smithereens by Nancy Allen, and Emil (McCrane) gets melted by toxic waste and run over, in a scene which no one who has seen it will ever forget.


The only thing that could improve 24 (other than a musical episode) is to get Verhoeven on as a guest director. Imagine the carnage! Time to start a new futile internet campaign, methinks.