I know a few commented in the other thread, but i wanted to give this show its due and have a whole thread to praise it.

OK... I like Bret to begin with... I also love Rick Gonzales... I am also a KSmith fan... so i was biased going in, but also had huge expectations.

WOW. Impressed! I really wish this wasn't on the CW!! The cast was EXCELLENT. The friend (Tyler Labine) was absolutely hysterical. And, I have to say it, acting wise, this was the most believable thing I have seen in a while. Too many actors - including the big name ones - revert to 'one character' that they play over and over... and they just can't act. the cast of this show was excellent...

pair that with direction of Smitha nd some very decent special effect and you have a winner. I really hope that people can find this show and keep it on. I hope that CW can find a slot for it to exist in harmony. Tuesday at 9 is a killer.

30 minutes into the pilot, my wife and i decalred this as definitely the best new show of the season. call me crazy and silly... but I just thought it was excellent.

"Sam" is like a jedi knight ghostbuster... how can you go wrong?!?!

I like the pilot more than I thought I would. However, if it doesn't get out of it's timeslot, it will be gone before episode 4. B&TG's lead in does not help it at all. I would switch Gossip Girl and Reaper. Reaper has scored higher on critics list and shows more potential. However, the CW never follows logic so I'm assuming they will let all this potential go and then wonder what happened.

Thanks for mentioning the cast, which is the most important reason this show is better than Chuck in my opinion, even though I still think Chuck was one of the strongest pilots. Across the board, I love Reaper's actors and find the Chuck ones to be pretty bland (the only real exception being Adam Baldwin, and even he is upstaged by his Reaper counterpart Ray Wise). I may just have a soft spot for Labine because of Invasion, but I was squicked out by the "sidekick" on Chuck.

I definitely felt this show was a little more "real" and heartfelt in terms of character and dialogue, while Chuck is a little too slick for my tastes. I don't know how much of that is the Kevin Smith influence, especially since I can take or leave all his movies except for Dogma. Will be interesting to see ep. 2.

The second episode held up quite nicely, and transitioned the show towards the developing relationship with the girl at the store.

Not as much of Mr. Ray Wise and his devillishly clever quips in this episode, and that was too bad.

quote:

Originally posted by dumont:
The second episode held up quite nicely, and transitioned the show towards the developing relationship with the girl at the store.

I agree that her character was developed well in this episode. Her 'work strategies' were funny and endearing in a slacker sort of way. Meanwhile, his chubby friends 'work strategy' of destroying stuff was not at all funny or endearing.

The introduction of a little brother was odd. I guess that sets up a future where we find out his soul got sold off for a new car/house/job or something in the future?

quote:

Not as much of Mr. Ray Wise and his devillishly clever quips in this episode, and that was too bad.

The grin at the end made me ponder 2 things.
1. He is actually God. I hear he works in mysterious ways.
2. The girl is also working for him.

I thought this one was significantly weaker than the pilot. After what I thought was the best pilot of any that I saw, I'm quite afraid as a series it'll become too formulaic and end up just an average show.

Part of the problem was that so much of the pilot was repeated. He spent at least half the episode resisting working for the devil, which was what the whole pilot was about resolving. The actual plot of this episode took up maybe ten minutes. I'm a little worried that we're gonna have a lot of filler every week. Based on the pilot and cast, though, I'm a long way from giving this up.

I did like the parents better in this one than I did in the pilot, though. And I agree that Peregrym's Andi was better.

I thought this episode was a little repetitive too. The whole avoiding-the-box part dragged on for much too long, to the point where I thought the characters were kind of stupid. The mom looks much too young, and neither parent is given much development.

The best friend was not as annoying, which is a good thing. Is this supposed to be a dramedy? It has the feel of "Charmed", a little cheap and not taking itself very seriously.

This ep was much weaker. I want parent development and for Sam and Andi to have some real interaction time together.

quote:

Originally posted by Jared:
Is this supposed to be a dramedy? It has the feel of "Charmed", a little cheap and not taking itself very seriously.

It's definitely going for that light genre feel that characterizes a lot of the well-known netlet shows like Buffy and Charmed. Still remains to be seen whether this can hit Buffy-like quality on a consistent basis, but I have to say in general that I like this approach to a genre show much more than dreary, humorless shows like Heroes and Bionic Woman. (Though Heroes is often good enough to transcend that.)