Reaper - Television Tropes & Idioms

Meet Sam Oliver. He's a college drop-out working at the ~~Home Depot~~ Work Bench with his two best friends, Ben and Sock, and the woman who he's had a crush on since high school, Andi. Then he turns twenty-one and learns that his parents sold his soul to the Devil before he was born. Now he has to work for the Devil as a bounty hunter for escaped souls.

Noted for Ray Wise's sarcastic and sardonic portrayal of Satan. Practically everything he says is a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.

The show has now been renewed for a second season. Huzzah! ...But not for a third. Un-Huzzah...maybe.

This series provides examples of:

Acceptable Targets - There's a portal to Hell in the DMV. What do you mean that's not normal?
Action Survivor - Pretty much every mortal in the cast.
Affably Evil - The Devil seems to treat Sam like a son, giving him advice on dating, although he can be mean, too.
Bland Name Product - Work Bench, the Home Depot expy.
Brother Chuck - Sam's little brother, whatshisname. Seen in the first two episodes, never mentioned again. Thank God.
Brother Sister Incest - Sock and his stepsister.
Bury Your Gays - Steve
Cassandra Truth - Sprong. Though he deserves it.
Chekhovs Gun - the "Get Out of Hell Free" card used in "Greg, Schmeg" to null and void Greg's deal with the Devil.
The Chosen One - Sam is special even for a Reaper - Satan regularly talks to him. He might even be the Devil's son.
Clingy Mac Guffin - The vessels.
Comedic Sociopathy - Sock!
Crazy Awesome - Sock
Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming - "You make me want to be a better demon."
- "Heaven is better than Cancun."
Deadpan Snarker - sometimes Sock and Ben, always the Devil. Occasionally Gladys and Andi.
Depraved Bisexual - The Devil admits to "swinging both ways".
Devil In Plain Sight - The Devil, appropriately (or strangely) enough, who apparently sets off no alarm bells when he's interacting with humans other than Sam.
Discriminate And Switch
Doorstop Baby - sorta, a baby was left over after Sam reaped a soul. Baby Carriage also comes into play.
Downer Ending - The Devil owns Sam's soul, as well as Andi's.
- ...May be.
Establishing Shot - _epartment of Motor Vehicles
Evil Is Cool - Dude, Ray Wise as The Devil is the epitome of cool.
Evil Is Sexy - In the second season, Ben starts dating Nina, a demon. When she's in human form, you have this. When she's not, you have Fan Disservice.
- Ray Wise is very attractive.
Evil Mentor - The Devil wants to take Sam under his wing
Executive Meddling: The hyper-formulaic episodes that took up the first half of the first season were all mandated by higher ups, who were apparently worried that audiences wouldn't get the point.
Five Man Band - Sam and his friends almost fit into this:
The Hero (Sam)
The Lancer / The Big Guy (Sock)
The Smart Guy (Ben)
The Chick (Andi as of "Coming to Grips," since she learns Sam's secret.)
Flamboyant Gay - Steve, though not as bad as some.
Foreshadowing - the Devil's final scene in "My Brother's Reaper," delivered with all the grace, subtlety, and gentleness of a brick to the head.
- Or, since the show is canceled, not.
Freaky Is Cool - Sock tells Sam this about having Devil powers - Sam disagrees
Gainax Ending - Are Sam and Andi damned or not? Why on Earth would Steve breaking Sam's hand be for the best?
Gay Bar - Sam meets the Devil in one.
Getting Crap Past The Radar: Combined with an Incredibly Lame Pun: two of the escaped souls are bank robbers with meaningful names: Johnson and Wang.
- Lets not forget the soul who was running a sperm bank. His name? Jack. Sock also appears to be wearing a shirt that, if it weren't obscured by his over shirt, would read "Stop the bus and let my brother Jack off.".
Guilt Trip - Not so much an advertising thing here, but how the Devil keeps Sam at his job.
The Devil: You don't do your job, nice people die.
Hard Gay - Tony in his deamon form. Seriously, he is super badass.
Heroic Sacrifice - Andi in the finale. It doesn't go well.
Ho Yay - Pick any two guys. Sam and the Devil? Sam and Sock? Sock and Ben? I don't think this troper needs to say more.
- Sock/Morgan.
- Also Ben/Morgan. Ben actually makes reference to "his (Morgan's) glorious pecs and glistening abs."
Heterosexual Life Partners - Again, Sam/Sock/Ben anyone?
I Just Want To Be Normal - Sam
Kavorka Man - Sock verges on this from time to time.
Just Friends - Andi wants to remain just friends with Sam, even when he wants more until she decides to be his girlfriend.
Large Ham - Sock
Lock And Load Montage: Starting with the first episode when Sam and Sock suit up to face off against Schmecker, and to varying degrees afterward...always using stuff that happens to be on sale in their place of work.
Magical Queer - Tony and Steve. Sam and his friends often goes to them for help, and sometimes Tony and Steve just help them because they feel like it.
Magnificent Bastard - The Devil, of course, often mingling with Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Consider, for instance, The Cop: he teleports Sam into a high-class restaurant and presents him with an expensive watch and a dinner of fresh lobster, supposedly as a reward for a job well done. Then vanishes a split-second before the check arrives, leaving Sam to pay for both meals. Oh, and the watch was taken from the corpse of a recent murder victim, which makes Sam the top suspect as soon as a cop notices it.
Monster Of The Week - practically all the escaped souls Sam catches are these.
Moral Event Horizon - Steve. Overlaps with What the hell God?
Mushroom Samba - Sock gets one in the final. On accident.
Oh Crap - A Particularly well done moment when The Devil confronts Gladys the DMV Demon about allowing souls to escape from hell, her face says it all.
- Another one was done by Alan, when he realizes that, the plane he's in is landing in Las Vegas instead of the Vatican, and he's been given $100 in poker chips. And the Devil is right behind him.
Our Zombies Are Different.
Plucky Comic Relief - Ben and Sock are often relegated to this role
Pointy Haired Boss - Ted
Put On A Bus - Sam's Dad. Overlaps (maybe) with Heroic Sacrifice.
Refusal Of The Call - Sam, in the second episode, tries to leave the vessel behind. It follows him
Relationship Upgrade - Sam and Andi and Sock and Josie in the episode "Rebellion."
Satan - self explanatory
Scream Discretion Shot - Subverted. The shot pulls back and you hear a scream, but the person doing the screaming is extremely happy.
Shirtless Scene - several. The most gratuitous was Ben in the second-to-last episode. Absolutely necessary for the plot.
Shout Out - The premise owes more than a bit to Ghost Rider, but there's a lot of smaller nods as well, most blatantly to Ghostbusters in the first and third episodes.
- The Year Without A Santa Claus
  Sock: Eat it, Heat miser!
Stealth Pun - Episode 4: The Monster Of The Work is a woman scorned, and controls a swarm of bees.
Straight Gay - Tony, sort of. He acts straight most of the time anyway.
Ted Baxter - Funnily enough, Ted, the former manager of the Work Bench.
Too Dumb To Live - Especially in the early episodes, Sam frequently decides it's a good idea to tell the Prince of Darkness off to his face. Then again, if you could do this and get away with it (as Sam obviously can), wouldn't you?
- He is also frequently shocked and offended that Satan, known as the Father of Lies, would lie to him.
- Not to mention how frequently Sam trusts Sock, of all people, with aspects of his job.
Tropaholics Anonymous: the Devil runs an AA meeting to promote relapse.
Weapons That Suck: the demonic Dirt Devil.
What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway - sometimes with a new escaped soul, the Devil gives Sam a power. Sometimes these powers are really, really lame, like to be magnetic or really slippery.
- Seems to have been forgotten in later episodes.
  - They've mentioned it a few times since then, and the telekinesis pops up here and there, so it's more like it's been phased out than forgotten.
Will They Or Wont They - Sam and Andi until "Coming to Grips"
Xanatos Gambit - The Devil, in "Rebellion," is revealed to have set Sam, Sock, and Ben in their new apartment next door to two demons who happen to be members of a demonic underground dedicated to fighting the Devil with goodness. Because of Sam's special relationship with the Devil, the demons devise a plan to trap the Devil and kill him - which is just what the Devil wants. He kills all the demons in the rebellion (except for one), because the goodness plan would have eventually worked in about 400 years.
- What's more - The Devil left a series of clues that he easily could have avoided. Giving them gifts meant for the escaped soul that Sam is chasing, and putting his own name on the lease are the big ones. This allows Ben to figure out what's going on exactly one moment too late to stop it.
Viewer Stock Phrases: If you watch Reaper, you might've said some of the following things once or twice....
- "Damn it, Sock!"
- "Yep, they're gonna die."
- "Why do they keep falling for that trick?"

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