So I got really dorky one night and wrote a mini-essay...this will contain spoilers for episodes 1x01-1x10.
Failure Is Not An Option
(why the Devil is a better parental figure)
It doesn’t take long, while trawling the Reaper message boards scattered about the place, to find someone
alighting on the idea of Sam Oliver being the true spawn and son of the Devil. While people insist on the dubious character
Cady being Satan’s daughter, there’s always someone using a username like Xanderman in the Reaper section of kryptonsite.com,
who will insist that Sam is “his TRUE child” (“Cash Out” discussion thread 2007).
That’s all fine, if you like to dabble in fantasy land, also known as fanfiction.net, where any theory is as good
as gold. But so far, there have yet to be any Sam-is-Satan’s-Son stories in the subcategory on fanfiction.net, which
is affectionately and disgustingly called the “pit of voles” (Pottersues, 2003). It could only be a matter of
time, should further episodes of Reaper reveal that Cady is in no way related to the Devil.
To figure out why people seem attached to the idea of Sam being the “TRUE” son of his demonic employee, one
would have to take a look at the actual show. Sam clearly already has two parents, Mr and Mrs Oliver, who couldn’t be
more supportive of their firstborn. This is as a result of selling their son’s soul to the Devil in return for Mr Oliver’s
good health before Sam was even born, a nasty surprise sprung on Sam in the pilot episode, when he turns twenty-one.
The problem with dear old Mr and Mrs Oliver is that they’ve coddled their firstborn at the expense of the younger
brother, Kyle. Sam’s slack behaviour is rewarded with understanding and supportive love, which has turned him into a
slacker. Even when Sam dropped out of college after one sole month, his parents were fine with it. “It’s just
that college made him sleepy,” Mrs Oliver explains in the first episode, while the father grills Kyle on not making
it into Stamford.
All this means that Sam has pretty much “amounted to nothing” (Collins, M 2007). As one reviewer of the show,
Collins, notes dryly, “Just because he's going to hell in the end doesn't mean he can't be responsible, or achieve something
before then. Typical baby-boomer parents, if you ask me.” To start down the path of the Generation Y debate would have
it forever dominate one’s destiny, and perhaps this path should be avoided. Even if it wasn’t because they thought
Sam was just going to end up in Hell anyway, that doesn’t rule out the other scenario where the child gets coddled.
Failure becomes the only option, because it is the way Sam Oliver has been raised. Bring on the Devil, who you couldn’t
possibly view as a good father figure. As one creator of Reaper, Michele Fazekas says, “on a certain level, you like
the devil more than Sam’s parents because he’s more parental” (2007). While some conversations between Sam
and the Devil may seem riddled with threats, quite simply, sometimes it’s the kick in the pants that Sam needs.
Rather than taking the flimsy attitude of Sam, the Devil calls him on it – “Things get hard, little Sammy takes
the path of less resistance.” And thereupon, Sam quickly accepts out loud that he’s a failure, and so forth. Please,
what a Generation Y wimp. All he needs is a push, to stop wallowing in his self pity and apparently doomed future, and this
is what the Devil delivers by saying “I don’t accept failure. Ever.”
By the end of the pilot, we see Sam being rewarded for his conquering of the ecaped soul, as the Devil credits him with
a huge sale – thus, victory ham. What’s this? Rewarding success instead of failure?
Give the guy a medal!
As executive producer Mark Gordon said, “there’s something wonderful for anyone who can find something that
they’re good at” – and he wasn’t just talking about a wonderful victory ham. Sam’s parents failed
to give him a sense of self or a sense of purpose. In steps the Devil to give him “focus” (Gordon, M. 2007), the
direction that the existing parental figures should be giving – and one can start to see why the Devil really is a better
parental figure for Sam Oliver.
Failure is not an option.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
• Gordon, M., Fazekas, M. quoted in Gillies. J. (2007) “Reaper' actor Wise having devil of a time”, Journal
Gazette <http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071120/ENT03/711200358>
• Collins, M. (2007) “TV show reviews: Reaper”, Helium <http://www.helium.com/tm/500263/reaper-stars-harrison-oliver>
• Pottersues (2003) Pottersues Profile <http://pottersues.livejournal.com/profile>
• Xanderman (2007) “1.10 Cash Out discussion thread”, page 2, KryptonSite Message Forum
· <<http://www.kryptonsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82967>
• Reaper 1x01 – “Pilot” (2007)
