“Reaper” is a supernatural action comedy created by Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters that premiered Sept. 25, 2007, on the CW and ended on May 26, 2009. The series lasted a total of two seasons and thirty-one episodes altogether.
The series follows Sam Oliver, a slacker who finds out on his twenty-first birthday that his parents sold his soul to the Devil. Instead of facing punishment for an eternity in hell, Sam is a Bounty hunter or a “Reaper,” as demons refer to him. Hunting demons isn’t easy, so Sam teams up with his two friends Ben and Sock to bring demon soul’s back to Hell through a portal in the DMV. Sock is all about having a good time and thinks Sam’s job is awesome despite the danger. Ben is the responsible one in the group who usually gets hurt on these missions. This trio always finds themselves in horrific yet hilarious situations to get their bounty.
What I enjoyed about the series is that it’s a great blend of horror and workplace comedy. “Reaper” feels like a great mix between a workplace comedy like “The Office” and the supernatural action of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Whether our heroes are eating beer-eal (Cereal and Beer) or fighting the soul of a cannibal, the show “Reaper” is just having so much fun with itself.
The cast of “Reaper” is nothing short of amazing. Bret Harrison who plays Sam has a strong likeability to his performance, you root for him to succeed and you want him to find a way out of his contract with The Devil. Harrison, Tyler Labine and Rick Gonzalez have such great on screen chemistry with Sam, it’s very believable that these three are friends.
The Stand Out without a doubt is Ray Wise as the Devil. Ray Wise has this suave to his performance, you believe him when he talks about evil with actions like pushing a cart into traffic and how he knows how the story will play out, I couldn’t see anyone else playing this role.
The only downside about the show is that it ends on a cliffhanger. “Reaper” was a casualty of the writer strike from 2007. Like many other projects at the time, this led to the CW canceling the series in 2009. Some ideas were thrown around like having other networks pick up the series and the SYFY channel almost saved the show but Bret Harrison (Sam) and Tyler Labine (Sock) were unavailable leading to a possible third season being scrapped.
Another idea was continuing “Reaper” as an animated series and the cast were open to it but no network was interested. A last attempt to bring back “Reaper” was continuing it as a comic book. Both Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have gone on to reveal their plans for the series if it had continued and I feel like it could’ve been amazing.
