Underappreciated ‘Reaper’ the clever dark horse of fun

You'd think being Satan's right-hand man would come with a few perks. Untold riches. Supermodels underfoot. Maybe a job in the Yankees' front office so he'd feel at home.

Instead, Sam Oliver (Bret Harrison) has been evicted, he has girlfriend trouble and his boss is a tool. (Although that last one's oddly appropriate, since he works in a hardware store.)

But that's nothing compared to the way his show, "Reaper" (8 p.m. Tuesday, KVCW-TV, Channel 33), has been treated.

The series tells the story of a perennial underachiever who learns on his 21st birthday that his parents were tricked into selling his soul to the Devil -- gleefully played by Ray Wise as part car salesman, part '50s TV dad full of "sports" and "kiddos" and hair mussings -- and that he was now bound to spend the rest of his life tracking down those who've escaped from Hell. It was one of the few bright spots in the fall of 2007.

The scripts were clever. Kevin Smith, the patron saint of underachievers, directed the pilot and served as a consultant. The whole thing felt blessed. Or whatever the dark equivalent of blessed is.

Then the episodes devolved into a monster-of-the-week showcase even though it was clear all along that "Reaper," like pretty much every good sci-fi or supernatural series, was crying out for some mythology, that underlying story arc that ties episodes together and gives them a greater meaning.

Now that even sitcoms have mythology -- think "How I Met Your Mother's" Ted telling his kids the longest, most intricately detailed, age-inappropriate story ever -- a series about the Devil and his minions, all the way down to the one manning a window at the DMV, has to have some.

"Everybody that was pitched to do the show, it was all about the mythology," Harrison said when I caught up to him over the summer, shortly before he came to town for a bachelor party for "Gossip Girl" and "Chuck" creator Josh Schwartz. "It was all about this kind of 'X-Files'-esque thing going on, and we were not getting to do that as much as we would like."

Then a funny thing happened: "Reaper" came back from the writers strike with a half-dozen strong episodes, a sense of purpose, and a gay demon couple ("The State" alums Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black) out to destroy the Devil.

"Everybody was a little pissed off, and everybody was definitely frustrated," Harrison said of the episodes before the break. "I mean it was like, once we came to our wits' end, luckily that next episode (with Marino and Black) came. And then the next episode came, and it was like, 'What's happening? Why is it all of a sudden getting really good?' "

With a little mythology finally in place, "Reaper" started living up to its promise. A sort of "Buffy the Vampire Slacker" if you will. Then it was left off the fall schedule, wasting that brief burst of momentum.

To add insult to injury, The CW recently moved "Reaper" from a relatively safe time slot and threw it up against the "American Idol" buzz saw just to protect the struggling "90210." Talk about your deals with the Devil. How's that show even still on the air? I've seen more drama at a Harlem Globetrotters game.

But back to "Reaper." Its sly genius has always been the way it took its Satan's bounty hunter premise -- which would have made for a good Vin Diesel movie, assuming such a thing is even possible -- and turned it on its ear. Sam and his friends, Sock (Tyler Labine) and Ben (Rick Gonzalez), aren't exactly what you'd call bright. Or motivated. Or even capable. They're better-equipped to nap the day away than to save it.

Take Tuesday's season premiere. What begins as a night of brainstorming for ways to send 40 brawling, fight club types back to Hell -- Seriously, who knew Hell was easier to get out of than jury duty? -- quickly turns into a night of the kind of drinking you should only attempt if you just found out your girlfriend has been sleeping with your liver.

This eventually leads to the realization that the best way to subdue that many escaped souls is to get them all drunk. (It may not be quite on the level of the eureka moments on "House," but it works.)

It also leads to a pretty good example of "Reaper's" humor as Sam and the gang contemplate stealing a beer truck. "Sometimes in order to do something good," Sam rationalizes, "you have to do something bad first." To which Sock -- a sort of younger, furrier, more Canadian Jack Black -- responds: "I want you to keep that in mind when I eventually make love to your mother."

Sure, it may not be sophisticated. It doesn't feel important. And isn't going to change the world.

It's just pure fun.

And whether it lasts five weeks or another five years, at least "Reaper" finally is the series it was meant to be.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.