Reacher
I am Jack’s crushing sense of disappointment.
Something terribly, terribly wrong has happened over at Amazon Prime Video. I was going to say “Something terribly, terribly wrong has happened in the writer’s room for Amazon’s Reacher Season 2” but it’s not just the writing that has capsized this season. That’s a part of it, but the problems with this show extend much further. Maybe it would be best to just list off everything that went wrong in Season 2, Episode 6—“New York’s Finest”—because there’s a lot.
And details matter.
- We’ll start with that little jab. The characters in Reacher’s second season all speak like robots who say the same phrases over and over again ad nauseum. One of these is “Details matter” though it apparently doesn’t apply to anyone who actually works on the show itself. Others include “Did I ever tell you that you’re smart Neagley?” and “You don’t mess with the Special Investigations Unit!” I keep waiting for someone to say “The sea is always right!” or “We need to help people to make up for all the bad things we’ve done.” (Sorry, but as this show approaches Rings Of Power and Fear The Walking Dead levels of quality, I can’t help myself).
- The fight choreography is terrible. This is partly because they have so many people fighting now rather than just highlighting Reacher and his massive club-like fists, but it really just feels like amateur hour. People just stand in the open and if you’re on Reacher’s team your plot armor stops every bullet. Bad guys stupidly walk into Reacher’s bus to get murdered. In Russo’s heroic scene, he leaves cover and walks directly at the guys shooting at him.
- Speaking of Russo, why didn’t he drive to a police station that wasn’t his corrupt boss’s? Or call for backup? They’re in New York City. There are countless places he could go that would be safer than just driving. It’s not like his boss is the boss of all the police in NYC. Also, where’s the traffic? Where is anybody at all as he’s chased and shot at through the city? Why doesn’t anyone call the cops? What is this sloppy crap?
- I laughed out loud in dismay and disbelief when they were questioning Marlo, the lady from New Age, and she was telling them the truth about Swan. She starts to tell the crew about Langston and how bad he is and then lists off the disreputable people he has in his pocket. In order, it’s the exact same bad guys who attacked Reacher’s crew. “A biker gang,” she lists off and they basically say “Check.” “Some hitmen,” she says lamely. “Check.” Truly stellar writing here, Amazon. Wow.
- The gamer stuff was a mixed bag. It’s cool that Neagley is a gamer but the writing makes me think the writers of the show are not. “I am a first-person shooter” was a funny line, but the rest of it fell flat.
- Reacher’s quirks can be charming when the show isn’t beating us over the head with them. For instance, I’m not really sure where you buy your clothes, but I rarely find any at convenience stores. This is partly because very few convenience stores sell much more than maybe a touristy t-shirt and sunglasses. I’m the same height as Alan Ritchson (6’3”) and finding clothes when you’re a bigger guy isn’t always easy. Reacher is 6’5” in the books. There is approximately a 0% chance that he would find a shirt and pants that fit on the one rack in the entire bodega. Beyond the unlikeliness factor, do we really need this many scenes of Reacher getting new clothes and tossing his old ones? I get that’s his schtick, but in this context—when who knows if he’ll need that suit again—couldn’t he leave some of his clothes in the back of their SUV?
- The ending, when they find Russo and just sort of let him die without even trying, and Neagley holds his hand despite not liking to touch people which we were reminded of by the stupid bodega clerk who wanted her to “scooch in” ugh. Ugh, how corny and predictable and lame all of this was. Good grief. Also, Russo was a better character than literally anyone on Reacher’s team other than Neagley, but they kill him off in this absolutely ridiculous way. What a waste.
- Speaking of corny and lame: They discuss the missile system and how easy it will be for AM to learn how to use the chips and they’re told that an engineer could explain it pretty easily. Barely an inconvenience! Then moments later they cut to a room with a big ENGINEERING sign and we see Langston talking to an engineer and they have effectively the exact same conversation. The acting from these smaller part characters is truly atrocious, by the way. Both Marlo and the engineer really deliver lines. Not well, mind you, but they say the words. Wowza.
- AM is the worst villain ever. In what universe does a police officer examine a nice SUV parked at a rest stop and give a written warning to the driver for having something hanging on the mirror in the middle of the night? Are cops really this bored that they’re doing this crap? And then he waits until she phones it in to kill her? And he kills her with one stab of a SUPER TINY KNIFE???
- I am now convinced that the showrunners of Fear The Walking Dead have taken over Reacher in secret. It’s the only explanation for just how thoroughly this show has jumped the shark. It’s honestly a little heartbreaking!
Before this episode I was thinking about writing a slightly different critique of the show, focused mainly on the setting. I’ve already discussed how Reacher’s team isn’t clicking with me. There are too many people involved in the story this season and they’re all badass fighters this time around, and the team chemistry is off. But there’s something else different this season and that’s the location.
In Season 1, Reacher was in the small, artificially wealthy town of Margrave, Georgia. Reacher was a big fish in a little pond in that setting. He was also a fish out of water, if we want to keep reeling in this big metaphor. That was a nice hook. The town was, in many ways, another character in the show. Reacher turned heads. Everybody in the whole town was talking about him. He made a big splash everywhere he went.
In Season 2, he’s just another guy in New York City (though this is filmed in Toronto, and is pretty obviously not NYC). The Reacher effect—the books often take place in small towns or off-the-grid locations in Montana, Texas, New England and so forth—works best when he’s a force of nature in his surroundings. When he’s just another guy on a team, well there’s just not enough going on to make him a particularly compelling protagonist.
But I think I could live with that—and with Reacher’s boring team—if the writing and direction weren’t so awful. The show feels really cheap now. It’s like some budget network procedural with lousy, unimaginative cinematography, crappy fight scenes and bad writing. Everything good about the first season is gone. Reacher—or, rather, Ritchson—has gotten bigger, but he feels smaller and less important than he did before.
I hope the show’s creators listen to fans and critics and correct course for Season 3. Sure, the Rotten Tomatoes score is great, but that’s based on critics only watching the first episode or two, before the show crapped the proverbial bed. What a disaster.
Here’s my video review:
Thoughts? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
