I have already discussed elsewhere much of my feelings about last night's Boston Legal, but to recap: frankly, I felt cheated. Actually, the TV I watched last night was entirely about being cheated, wasn't it?

On Boston Legal the new folks pushed out the old folks with nary a mention of what happened to them. Well, there were one or two mentions for some of the people, but the vast majority got nothing said about them. Nothing on the disappearance of Claire, nothing on the disappearance of Paul, no reason why Brad became an ADA. It all sort of just was.

Then, there was the true cheat. Alan won his case last night (wherein Shirley wanted to rescind a donation to Stanford University) because the old fogey judge didn't understand the argument. I know that the show isn't a straight-up legal show, and that even legal shows don't necessarily follow the law, but this was a complete cop-out of a result. It was, simply put, cheating. The lawyers at Crane, Pool, and Schmidt need to win the case for something they did, not because the judge simply doesn't understand the facts of the case. The show can function as a decent soapbox for the producers' beliefs (and does regularly), but those beliefs need to be borne out through the result of the trial and not be a completely different entity.

Speaking of different entities (you know you like that transition), I watched Reaper last night, and boy, did I have fun. I didn't particularly think the show was terribly brilliant and unquestionably expect more out of Tyler Labine than I got last night, but it was funny. Labine plays the same irreverent social outsider that he usually gets to be, but his Bert “Sock” Wysocki seemed more sad and pathetic last night than the usual outsider. I don’t think that was intended, maybe it means I'm getting old, which would be a huge disappointment. Or, maybe the irreverence will increase and sense of patheticness decrease in the future

Of course, as everyone is saying about Reaper, the standout here is Ray Wise as the Devil. He was absolutely hysterical. No joke, there were moments that I thought to myself “Hey, I know he's the Devil and all, but I totally want to go and work for this guy.” None of those moments were during the scene when the Devil had the Zamboni driver get run over by the Zamboni, but virtually every other time we saw him. One wonders how long it will take for our “hero” Sam (Bret Harrison) to ask the Devil to help him get Andi (Missy Peregrym). Andi does seem to be throwing herself at Sam, but he looks like he could use the Devil's help anyway if he wants to date her.

But, I promised you that there would be cheating with Reaper, didn't I? Well, isn't it obvious? Sam's parents have cheated Sam out of a normal life, what with selling his soul and all to the Devil prior to Sam's even being conceived. It's an odd concept for a show, but it works really well. The show also definitely had that Kevin Smith feel. I wonder if that was just because Smith directed the pilot, or if it had that sense before and will have that sense in the future. I'll be tuning in next week to find out, because despite my already being terribly over-burdened on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights with shows, I'm adding Reaper to my TiVo Season Pass list.

No? Did you watch? Did you have thoughts? Don't you like that Devil guy?

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