Category: reaper season 2

In Reaper episode 2, Sam accepted his fate as the devil’s bounty hunter (then again, that’s what I thought in episode 1 as well), and as a reward, the Devil set it up so that he would be working with Andi in the garden center.

Sam’s day starts off with his toothbrush having a large bug on it. It doesn’t get any better from there, as any time he tries to put anything in his mouth, it’s covered in bugs. As Bert is feeding Sam his apple, which needless to say looks odd to those around them, Andi comes up and invites him to a lecture at her college and then out for coffee after. He rejects this because he’s stupid or something.

Ted offers Sam a promotion to assistant manager of the plumbing department, with a message that he’s going to spend the rest of his life working at The Work Bench. Sam tells the Devil he just wants something that doesn’t suck. The Devil tells him he’ll need to come up with a better plan than that, but in the meantime, he shows him some pictures of dead people, who all got killed by bugs. Sam and his sidekicks follow a van with a giant bug and think they’ve located the escaped soul, but a bunch of bugs fly in and kill him, so that lead’s out the window. It does, however, lead them to an apartment complex where the soul lives.

Andi met a guy at school who’s trying to convince her to quit her job and go to school full time. They’ll have to deal with that later, but for now they have to worry about the federal offense of stealing and opening other people’s mail, as Sock grabbed the mail from the apartment complex and is investigating it to see if there’s anything out of the ordinary.

Bert and Sam sneak into Josie’s office looking for Harold Bunsen, who was the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, then disappeared in 1972. This week’s vessel is a toaster. As usual, their first attempt at using it is a failure, and this time, in the process of escaping, they leave a clue behind telling Harold where they’ll be.

Ted calls Sam and Andi to his office. Sam rejects the job offer, so Ted gives it to Andi. She says no and blurts out her plans to quit. While they’re out celebrating, or pretending to celebrate, the Devil shows up and says Sam’s embarassing him because he’s not getting the soul or the girl.

Harold shows up at The Work Bench and blames Gloria, a jealous woman going after anyone she thinks is coming between them, for the murders. Armed with a fog machine, a toaster, and some long extension cords, they head back to Bunsen’s apartment. Gloria outsmarts them, and while Sam and Ben check the apartment, she corners Sock and convinces him to spill the beans about the plan, which is prety easy because it’s Sock. Ben and Sam come in to find Sock in trouble, but Harold walks in, so she lets him go. Harold tells her he never loved her and just stayed with her out of fear. The boys then realize the toaster is a bug zapper and was working in its original state, but they just didn’t realize it. After unfixing the toaster, they’re able to capture Gloria and zap her back to Hell.

As we can probably come to expect, there’s a hidden meaning in this. Because Harold didn’t say how he truly felt, a bunch of people died, and he lived a miserable life. Sam’s able to relate to this. He runs to Andi’s school to tell her he’s upset that she quit, but when he gets there, he finds out all the classes were cancelled because of a tip the school received about the building being filled with asbestos. Once again, the Devil comes through for Sam.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Reaper episode 4 Magic, which airs Tuesday at 9/8c on The CW.

In Reaper episode 1, Sam found out his parents had sold his soul to the devil. So basically just a normal 21st birthday. When all was said and done, though, he seemed happy to be on this new path where he had some direction and responsibility.

Until he had some time to sleep on it anyway, so now he’s back to avoiding the issue. The problem is the issue refuses to avoid him. The vessel the Devil gave him keeps following him around wherever he goes. For some reason, leaving the box in the woods and running away from it doesn’t trick it.

Andi and Sam end up on cart duty, which means wandering the neighborhood to find missing shopping carts. She sees this as an opportunity to goof off and invites him along for the ride. He’s happy about this, but the Devil shows up wanting him to open the vessel. This happens while Sam and Sock are stocking shelves, which in Bert’s mind includes throwing merchandise. Because he’s distracted, Sam misses, and it knocks out a customer. The boss informs them a bloodied customer is not a happy customer. As punishment, they’re put on the night shift until they inventory the whole store, which he suggests will take a year.

Sam brings Bert home for dinner and tells him not to blow his secret because Sam already told his mom that the thing with the Devil was done. He says no problem and the secret’s safe with him, so obviously it takes all of two seconds for him to blow it.

The Devil transports Sam to the top of the building, where Sam again tries to back out of the deal. Yeah, that’ll go over well. There are no threats this time, however. Instead, just a guilt trip about innocents dying.

The next morning, Sam finally breaks down and opens the vessel. It’s an RC car. Of course, he’s not provided with any instructions as to how to actually use it. After that, his father gives him a brand new car in an effort to buy him off, so he doesn’t tell his mom that he’s working for the Devil.

The demon they’re after is using lightning strikes to cause blackouts. One blackout is at a hospital, and they just so happen to order generators from Sam’s store, so he volunteers to take them down there. They find out that the hospital used to be the medical wing for a guy who got arrested. On his way back to the store, Sam checks out a guy whose car got struck by lightning, and while there, he sees the soul he’s chasing.

Back at home, the Devil shows up and asks Sam if he’s having problems at home. Sam says he’s the problem, but the Devil responds that Sam’s the problem because he lied to his mother. He advises him that lying never solves anything. Shouldn’t the Devil encourage lying?

Sam asks Josie what she knows about Arthur Ferry, and she tells him about how he stole energy and sold it to other states, causing rolling blackouts and people to die. The news is on the radio, and they hear a report about problems at the dam, so they drive up there to find out what’s going on. They find Arthur and try to send the RC car after him, but the minor glitch in the plan is that it gets run over by a truck. Even without the vessel, Sam’s not intimidated by the soul and stands up to him. He escapes, but at least Sam and his friends aren’t dead.

They take the RC car back to work, where they “repair” it with duct tape, unsure whether or not it will actually work, but then again, they still don’t even know how it works to begin with. The really bad news is they work at a store with a lot of power tools, all of which can be easily turned against them in a scenario such as this. The vessel then falls apart, but Sam’s not concerned because he has other plans.

He goes into the parking lot and yells for Arthur, who’s upset because they took away his name on the building, which is hiding the good he did. Sam figures out that the car was just for show and that it was the controller that was actually the vessel. It turns into a lightning rod, which allows him to capture Arthur. When they bring the vessel to Gladys at the DMV, she’s pleasant as always, telling them the fact that they haven’t been killed yet astonishes her.

Sam goes home and tells his mother the truth. She’s okay with it and says no more secrets… except they’re not going to tell Sam’s brother. Then at work, he’s pulled off the midnight shift and put on garbage duty, since the store looks like a bomb went off and all, but the Devil pulls some strings and gets him into the garden center, where he can now shovel manure instead. But the Devil’s not so bad after all, as Andi’s also working in the garden center.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Reaper episode 3 All Mine, which airs Tuesday at 9/8c on The CW.

Reaper seems to have won over critics already, so that combined with the hope that we may finally be returning to the funny/supernatural roots that made The WB worth watching had me interested in watching the premiere.

Sam Oliver (Bret Harrison, Grounded For Life/Brad O’Keefe) wakes up on the morning of his 21st birthday, and his parents seem overly anxious about the day. His mom tells him she wants him to have a great day, no matter what happens. His friend Bert Wysocki (Tyler Labine) says they should get in a car, get some smack, and kill a hooker in Vegas to celebrate his birthday, to which his mother responds by leaving the room crying.

He gets grief from his brother Kyle for not completing college and for still working at a place where he has to wear an apron, which gets him to thinking he is getting tired of this place. Bert tells him he does want to keep working there because he’s going to make it a topless store eventually. He then tells him he should go after Andi (Missy Peregrym, Heroes/Candice Wilmer), but Sam says they’re just friends. While in the car, a dog starts barking and jumping at the car. Then on his way into work, Sam sees a shopping cart going through the parking lot. As he attempts to grab it, it runs away from him. Odd but seemingly nothing he considers out of the ordinary, yet anyway.

He does make something of an attempt to run with Bert’s idea of getting together with Andi when discussing that they both have the same day off, but when he asks her what her plans are for her day off, she lets him know she’s going to be writing a psych paper in the library.

As he’s working (watching TV with baby chicks and thinking it’s actually flames), he notices that something’s about to fall on Andi’s head, and he jumps to prevent it. He knocks the box out of the way, but after doing that, he says he didn’t even touch it because it was too far away. Bert throws a bottle at his head to prove he can’t move it with his mind. He again tries to bring up the subject of going out with Andi, but this time he’s interrupted by a bunch of dogs, standing in the aisle and angry.

Once that ordeal’s done with, he says he’s not feeling well and heads home. He’s okay until a man appears in his backseat… a man who introduces himself as the Devil. He gets into a car wreck, and when he gets out to check, there is no man in his backseat.

His father’s waiting up for him when he gets home, expecting he might have had a bad day. Sam says he thinks he might be going insane. He tells his dad about his day, when his dad tells him he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a cure for an illness he had before Sam was born.

Strangely enough, Sam doesn’t have much trouble believing this. He goes and tells Bert. “How drunk are you?” “Totally sober.” “How drunk am I?” Sock’s mostly upset nothing cool like that ever happens to him, but he buys it as well.

When he gets home, the Devil’s there waiting for him (I wonder if this Devil guy has another name so I don’t have to keep calling him “the Devil”). He tells Sam he’s going to be working for him on Earth, bringing escaped souls back to Hell like a bounty hunter. “All you have to do is track down fugitives and haul their asses over to a portal to Hell. Easy.” Any place that seems like Hell on Earth is Hell on Earth, like the DMV on Union St.

His first fugitive is a firefighter who escaped from Hell and also happens to weigh twice as much as Sam. He’s the one responsible for setting fires in town. The Devil gives Sam a vessel to trap him in. Sam tries to refuse to help, but he must, or the Devil gets his mother’s soul. When he opens the box, he finds a Dirt Devil inside, one that causes a truck to move. Shouldn’t he have to do this somewhat in secret instead of just telling all his friends/coworkers?

The Devil seems to have forgotten one minor detail. The fugitve can turn into flames and shoot them as well. Sam wants to catch him but can’t get the dustbuster to work. In the process, Ben, their friend from work, gets burned. Sam blames himself. He goes after the firefighter alone but just shows up to a burned down house.

When he gets home, his mom tells him she wants to go instead and to tell them to come for her. He pretends everything’s back to normal. Then, he heads to his room, which has been converted into a hockey rink. Sam gets frustrated and tries to give up, but the Devil tells him to investigate and figure out why the fireman does what he does. After killing the Zamboni driver, he advises him he doesn’t accept failure.

Sam goes to get Sock and figures out that the fireman is burning down the same places he was 50 years ago, so he wants to find out who he was when he was alive. They go to dig up legal records from Josie, Bert’s ex-girlfriend, who works in a courthouse. She finds out all the arson attempts Ned (excellent name for a scary killer) did when he was alive were unsuccessful, until he died in a fire he set at his parents’ house, which has not yet been burned down again but has been rebuilt as an elementary school.

After figuring out that the Dirt Devil wasn’t working before because it needed to be recharged, the boys head down to the elementary school to confront Ned. Sam figures out how to harness his powers to redirect the flames toward Ned. He then vacuums him up and takes him to the DMV.

Sam then realizes he must do this for the rest of his life, but he doesn’t mind it. He feels good about helping people and being responsible.

This is one of the better premieres I’ve seen in a while. Definitely a return to the old days of Buffy/Angel/Charmed. Good premise and well written, and the Bert character is hilarious.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Reaper episode 2, which airs Tuesday at 9/8c on The CW.