'Reacher' Loses Its Charm
When the first season of Reacher came out in 2022, it truly felt like a breath of fresh air. At a time when the world was still recovering from the Covid lockdowns, superhero fatigue had set in, and woke storytelling and diversity quotas ruined most popular franchises, here was a straightforward show about a big, strong dude singlehandedly taking on a small army of bad guys and reestablishing order. Moreover, in its casting and television format, it did justice to the source material, presenting a physically large and imposing Alan Ritchson as the actual Jack Reacher as he’s written in the books, not a diminutive Tom Cruise acting more or less like Tom Cruise.
Less remarked upon, but more significantly, Reacher worked because it featured a solo protagonist who set his own terms and made his own decisions. True, he had a few people supporting him, but they never came close to overshadowing or rivaling him. Once again, this helped the series stand out since every other show and movie at the time seems to have the protagonist learning to work in a group or ask for help, all to be inevitably upstaged and humbled.
However, as I explained in my review at the time, the very freshness that made Reacher so enjoyable also obscured some of its weaknesses as a show. My main criticisms were the performances and the stereotyping of its setting. Although Alan Ritchson very much looks the part of Jack Reacher, he seems to lack the presence and charisma that would make him a more compelling protagonist. His surrounding cast wasn’t much better. As for the setting, which took place in small-town Georgia, the writers hardly bothered to do much research and served up some tedious tropes of the Old South, depicting the side characters and villains as provincial bumpkins.
These were easy problems to fix so that the next season of Reacher could be even better. But in the second season, the writers instead chose to lean into these weaknesses and let go of some of the show’s redeeming virtues. Now, Jack Reacher is part of a team, investigating the death of some former friends in New York City. And instead of taking acting lessons, Ritchson took testosterone to look even bigger and more cartoonishly muscular. As one might expect, the end result is that the show has become unbearably generic and boring. Worse still, Reacher’s cool, mysterious persona is oddly questioned and undermined in a show meant to showcase his exploits.
The series begins promisingly in the first scene of the first episode with Reacher punching through a car window to save a woman from being robbed. Unfortunately, this comes to an end when he goes to New York City after hearing about the death of a former colleague that was part of his team of special investigators in the army. It turns out that multiple members of his old team are being murdered, so he summons the surviving members of the team to help him uncover the plot.
This is where the show goes downhill. Upon catching up with his old friends, it becomes painfully apparent that Reacher is a weird guy for randomly going off the grid and never making anything of himself. His two female friends—one of whom becomes his lover despite the lack of chemistry between them—are both succeeding in their careers. The other male in the group settles down and has a fulfilling life as a husband and father. It might be said that Reacher sacrificed his own wellbeing for the livelihoods of his comrades, but this doesn’t seem to be the case at all. They moved on with their lives while Reacher just moves from place to place supposedly enjoying his “freedom.”
Nor do his old friends seem to miss a beat when they have to become investigators again and track down bad guys and engage in shootouts and hand-to-hand combat. In every regard, they are just as competent and focused as Reacher is. Even the women who are a third his size are able to quickly dispatch burly bikers (wearing heels and formalwear, no less). Sadly, this insistence on everyone getting their licks in takes away from the grounded, brutal quality that made the actions sequences in season one so satisfying.
Of course, none of this would be a problem if these characters happened to have some personality, but they don’t. They are flatly written and flatly performed, with many conversations that are outright cringe-inducing. That said, this could have been remedied somewhat by reducing the number of characters, as was done in the first season. It’s difficult to sketch out well-rounded characters with only so many lines and so much screentime, particularly with actors who don’t communicate much range or depth.
The antagonists are similarly flat and empty, even though nearly all of them are played by competent actors. Nothing much is done with Robert Patrick, who plays an unscrupulous weapons manufacturer, nor with Ferdinand Kingsley (son of the legendary Ben Kingsley and definitely a chip off the old block) who plays a suave yet deadly arms smuggler. They’re evil, they kill people, and that's about it. There’s also a side plot with a police officer, ably played by Dominick Lombardozzi, fruitlessly trying to rein in Reacher and his gang, along with the involvement of a corrupt politician, though neither of these plot lines really go anywhere.
Thus, what follows a tight, coherent first season is a loose, convoluted second season. Although it’s admirable to mix things up with Reacher, showing that he can work on a team and kick butt in an urban setting as well as be the ruthless vigilante saving a small town (each of which is demonstrated in the books), this takes away from what made the show so appealing in the first place. If fans wanted to watch a team of competent ex-operatives investigate a murder and take down a conspiracy, they would be better off watching the first few seasons of Burn Notice.
That said, because the action media landscape hasn’t changed much since season one, most fans might be more forgiving. Despite his limited ability as an actor, Alan Ritchson is still better than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and has effectively replaced him as today’s preferred bulky action hero. He still has potential to grow into his role as Reacher and take control of the stage. It would help if the writers finally learn their lesson and return to a winning formula that makes for good entertainment. As for this latest season, Reacher overreached (pun very much intended) and tried to do too much when the original simplicity is what most of us wanted.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
