By Brandon Nolta
The Devil (Ray Wise) has a girlfriend named Mimi (Melinda Clarke). As befitting the Devil, she’s hot. However, she also appears to be quite nice, which probably isn’t the run of the mill for him. You’d expect him to spend more time with a succubus or the Whore of Babylon or someone like that. Anyway, Sam (Bret Harrison) finds this out when the Devil pops by with his latest job: fix Mimi’s dishwasher. Apparently, being Hell’s bounty hunter also covers plumbing work.
It also covers being a sympathetic ear to the lonely Mimi, who doesn’t see as much of “Jerry” as she likes. Why a woman with as winning a personality as Mimi on top of being stone cold foxy would be lonely is a question best put aside for another time, although it helps to distract Sam from his problems with Andi (Missy Peregrym). Also distracting him is his latest soul to seize: a former funeral director who picked up some extra pocket green by harvesting parts from his clients. Back from the fiery bowels of Hell, the soul is bound and determined to punish the families of his former clients, who sued him, took his business, drove him to suicide, etc. Since the soul needs the ashes of the dead to become physical, the boys decide to sneak the ashes of all the victims from the families under the aegis of free carpet installation. This can’t go wrong in any way, right?
Meanwhile, Ben (Rick Gonzalez) is at a family party that he didn’t want his friends to attend, mainly because his battleaxe grandmother wouldn’t approve. However, since Grandma has the second sight, Sam decides to ask her for her help, to which she responds by stabbing a fork into his hand. See, that’s what you get for hanging out with Satan. The boys walk Mimi home, whereupon the place starts rocking and rolling, which is generally the opening sign of the cranky killer funeral director. Does Mimi have ashes in the home? Of course she does. Nothing a little duct tape and a Shop-Vac can’t fix, though. Temporarily, that is, until the boys store the angry soul with all the other ashes they’ve collected. Do the boys triumph in the end? Of course they do, though not without resorting to a magic hair dryer.
The writers of REAPER must be feeling good about their chances, because they’re starting to throw in arcs that last beyond an episode, specifically the hints that the Devil may have himself a daughter. I hope they’re right, because REAPER remains a barrel of laughs on Tuesday nights, and there just aren’t enough of those on. I’ve read articles of late complaining about the excess of “beta male” characters on the tube right now, but the hell with that; as long as the entertainment quotient is as high as REAPER consistently delivers, I’m good with the trend. Besides, even if Sam, Ben and Sock (Tyler Labine) weren’t all that, there’s still the Devil, and this one deserves his due.