Still, for as likely as it is that Reaper would have been cancelled sooner than fans would have liked even without the Writers’ Strike, it’s hard (for this fan, at least) to think about one without thinking about the other. I mean, no wonder Ray Wise was always so frothed up when talking about “the Big Guy”!!)
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(That said, if the Reaper crew made for too awkward a fit alongside the likes of Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen, how, you might very well ask, does one then explain the staying power of Supernatural? Well, as far as I can tell, like this: Supernatural was basically a TV god, and you can’t ask gods to explain shit. And that’s fair! Sometimes the pieces, for whatever reason, just don’t fit. Similarly, for as irreverently clever as Reaper was from Go, its slacker-bro brand was always going to be a hard fit for a baby network who found its own early brand being shaped by the wild successes of rich-kid melodramas like Gossip Girl, Privileged, and 90210. Plenty of shows that debuted alongside Reaper, after all-including Nashville, Gossip Girl, and The Big Bang Theory, just to name a few-managed to come back from their freshman year hiatuses stronger than ever.
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Of course, it’s impossible to put the full blame for Reaper’s spring 2009 cancellation on a labor strike that ran through the winter of 2007-2008. And while Butters and Fazekas were eventually able to bring two of its stars back to cameo in a single 2018 episode of another doomed high-concept project, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, Reaper’s early demise just came too soon in the “new media” age for even the most fervently run fan campaigns to have had any hope of finding it a new home. That said, it ultimately failed to score a third. Were I to continue with my stoic march through still-recent Hollywood history, I would go on to note that, workage stop notwithstanding, Reaper-which finished its debut season with a healthy (for the time) 18-episode run-did get renewed for a second season. And a month after that, the Writers Guild of America, following a summer of failed contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, staged a walkout.
A little more than a year later, the cult-favorite supernatural comedy made its debut. Before the month was out, the newly minted youth-centric network commissioned a Reaper pilot script from Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, which followed the misadventures of Sam (Bret Harrison), a twentysomething white boy slacker who has to come to terms with the fact that-thanks to his parents selling his unborn soul to the Devil (Ray Wise)-he’s now saddled with being Hell’s least likely bounty hunter. That same week, on September 18, The CW was officially born. In the late summer of 2006-on September 15 and 17, respectively-UPN and The WB officially ceased broadcast operations. Come relive your TV past with us, or discover what should be your next binge watch below:
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Editor’s Note: Welcome to our TV Rewind column! The Paste writers are diving into the streaming catalogue to discuss some of our favorite classic series as well as great shows we’re watching for the first time.
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