Reaping Rewards

SPOILER ALERT: Brief spoilers about the Reaper season finale follow.

With so many shows disrupted and marred by the aftereffects of the writers' strike, it's good to see one series that actually considerably improved at the end of this season. I had pretty much given up on Reaper by the time the strike hit, but the show finally started to live up to the potential its pilot showed by moving away from the soul-of-the-week stories and developing more of an ongoing story arc. (It, like so many new fall 2007 shows, seemed wary of becoming too serial, but guess what? It's actually kind of a good thing to develop continuing stories that viewers become invested in.) The CW picked up the show for a second season, and now—with the continuing falllout from the demon rebellion and the possibility that Sam is the Devil's son—it's become a show I look forward to seeing more of.

Naturally, of course, we now have to wait for midseason next year to do that. Trust a show about Hell to leave you in Purgatory.