Good and Evil on Reaper and Cane

What is it about Cane that I like, can someone explain it to me, but I can't figure it out.  Partly it's Nestor Carbonell, it's more Jimmy Smits, but a lot of my reasons are wholly unknown.  Look at last night's episode.  They started off with the most hackneyed, over-used addicted to gambling clichés ever, even poor Frank's (Carbonell) Ferrari was taken from him.  Threats were made.  Soon there was even talk that it was quite possible for Frank to wind up with some broken bones.

I wonder when such things appear on television if writers have a catalog of recycled scripts and plots that they're allowed to use without paying royalties.  You know, like one can buy canned music to use on TV, radio, film, web, etc., without paying any royalty fees. It seems to me there ought to be a set of scripts writers can buy for just such an occasion.  That way they can talk in the writers' room, decide that this week they need a script on gambling, or alcoholism, or a will-they-or-won't-they relationship, or a mysterious and hidden past, go to the stock script book and grab a few pages.  Why bother reinventing the wheel every time.

Wow, did that get far a field and I didn't mean for it to.  I like the show, sure, that plot wasn't good, but Samuels serving up his daughter to the FBI on a shady Cuban land deal that he almost certainly orchestrated was great.  That's the kind of backstabbing you don't see everyday.  There is always the possibility that the show will step away from this, that Samuels and his daughter orchestrated the whole thing in advance and that she knew all along that he was going to turn her in.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more likely that is.  Such a tactic will push Ellis (the daughter) right into the bosom of the Duque family, and allow her to attack her enemy from the inside.  It's a great strategy, except for the fact that it may just leave Ellis in jail for a number of years.

Then there was Reaper.   Ah, Reaper.  What am I going to do with you?  You guys have clearly been lifting pages from the aforementioned stock script book, particularly the will-they-or-won't-they part.  Last night Sam confessed his feelings for Andi.  Andi shot him down despite the fact that she's been leading him on for weeks now.  In another couple of weeks Andi will change her mind and Sam won't be willing to pull the trigger.  Yes, I've complained about it before, but they persist in pushing the plot, so I'm going to persist in my complaints. 

It's unfortunate because some of the show is so clever.  Sock and Doris last night were great.  Who doesn't want to find out more about the Devil's henchwoman from the DMV?  Who doesn't want to find out more about the way Hell works, in general?  Enquiring minds want to know.  When Reaper covers new territory, when the show explores the rules and underpinnings of the world it has created it is clever, funny, and one of the more interesting shows on television.  When Reaper decides to do the relationship thing with Sam and Andi they completely jettison new, different, and wonderful, for old, staid, and boring.

I think we all know which one is a better choice.