Amazon’s adaptation of Lee Child’s Reacher novels has returned to Prime Video and I’m happy to report that Season 3 is a huge step up from last season.
Season 2 of the crime drama was a mess. The story was filled with plot holes, the fight scenes were sloppy and there were simply way too many characters in Reacher’s team. This time around, while Reacher (Alan Ritchson) has help, he’s mostly the one-man army we know and love. He also looks better: Less bulk, a bit leaner and more natural-looking, though still massive.
Season 3 is based on the book Persuader by Lee Child. I’ve only read about 8 or 9 of the Reacher books so far and of those, Persuader is my second favorite after the first, Killing Floor, which was the book they adapted into Season 1. It’s a much better choice than Bad Luck and Trouble, the novel they used for Season 2, which many fans consider one of the weaker Reacher novels. We really didn’t need a full team of investigators in Season 2.
In any case, the good news is that Reacher is back in a big way and while Season 3 isn’t perfect, it’s still plenty of over-the-top fun. There is nothing glaringly stupid like so much of Season 2, and the idyllic Maine setting is a much better fit for our nomadic protagonist. The bad news is that it still falls short of Season 1 for a number of reasons I’ll get to in a moment. There’s just . . . something missing here.
The series begins with a bit of a headfake. Reacher sees what appears to be a kidnapping taking place as a truck rams into a car across the street from where Reacher was trading in some vinyls at a record store. He goes into action, rescuing the young man who was the apparent victim of the kidnapping and hustling him back to his van. Another man rushes up with a gun and Reacher, seemingly in a panic, shoots and kills him. Unfortunately, the man is a police officer, and Reacher realizes he’s just committed murder. They escape, pursued briefly by campus police, and then change out the van for a new vehicle.
All of this, we later learn, is a subterfuge. Reacher is working with DEA agent Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) on a secret mission that she’s running as something of a rogue agent. The goal is to get Reacher inside of a mysterious criminal organization apparently run by an exotic rug dealer named Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) whose son, Richard (Johnny Berchtold) Reacher “rescued.” The entire rescue was a setup and the cop Reacher shot is actually DEA agent, Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos).
Duffy wants Reacher inside the organization to figure out both what it is they’re up to and to find a mole she planted previously who has gone dark. They fear for her life, and rightfully so. Beck is mixed up in a much larger criminal organization run by a guy named Quinn (Brian Tee) with whom Reacher shares a dark past. Quinn goes by the name Julius McCabe now, and is basically the top boss.
It builds from here. Reacher gets in, but his new employers don’t trust him. Right off the bat, he has beef with the enormous Paulie (Olivier Richters) because Paulie is a jerk and, I suspect, because Reacher isn’t used to anyone being bigger and stronger than he is, so a pissing contest is inevitable. Beck and his cohort are paranoid and put Reacher up to some loyalty tests, but they’re also not terribly bright and Reacher is able to sneak out of Beck’s sprawling compound unobserved with relative ease. At one point, one of Quinn’s goons discovers that Reacher isn’t on the up-and-up so Reacher kills him and is forced to come back later and dispose of the body. He uses this to his advantage by sending an email from said goon to Beck, giving him the “location” of the kidnappers.
This is actually a DEA safehouse that Duffy knows about. Reacher lures Beck and his top security guy out to the safehouse at night. For some reason it’s just the three of them, and Beck has no intention of going inside. Here, Reacher kills Beck’s security guy, blows up the house and frames the other goon for the whole thing. Beck, who is nearby but doesn’t see any of this transpire (other than the explosion from a distance) promotes Reacher to his #2 spot.
Mostly, all of this works best if you just don’t think too hard about any of it and let the action play out like the bombastic, comic-book action show it’s meant to be. I think it all works a bit better in the book, but that might be something to do with the medium rather than the story itself. This is, overall, a pretty faithful adaptation of Persuader, with a few big changes. On screen, the goofiness of the plot just stands out more.
And that’s fine! Honestly, I watch this show for the same reason I read Lee Child’s novels. It’s fun, has exciting action and suspense, and Reacher is both smart and lethal. That it’s all way over-the-top and a little ridiculous doesn’t bother me, as long as it works. In Season 2, a lot of stuff just didn’t work. The fight scenes were lame. There were way too many characters. Here, we’re back to a slimmed down cast and Reacher as mostly a solo operator.
It falls short of Season 1 in some key ways, however. The fight scenes still aren’t as good. The cinematography is a big step up from Season 2, but Season 1 still had the most interesting camera work. And while I like Duffy, her accent is a bit much. Cassidy is British trying to do a thick Boston accent, and it just sounds off. Still, I can look past that pretty easily. I like Duffy as a character, though she’s definitely too emotionally involved and that makes her a bit sloppy as a DEA agent.
The big changes from the book also make sense. Beck’s wife was alive in the novel and there’s a very uncomfortable storyline involving her and Paulie and her son that the show was wise to cut. Neagley (Maria Sten) is not in the book, but is featured quite a bit in the third season. This leads to a pretty good action scene, but is mostly an unnecessary addition. The show’s creators are clearly intent on making Neagley a series regular despite that being a major departure from the novels, so I guess it’s best to just accept it at this point (and she’s getting her own spinoff, which I find very strange).
I think the thing that bothers me most about Season 3 is the lack of overall chemistry between characters despite this being a very chatty season. We get lots of talking and exposition at every turn, but I never really get a sense that there’s real chemistry between really anyone. A list:
- The obvious pairing here is Duffy and Reacher, who have a bit of a fling despite there being no real romantic chemistry here other than Duffy ogling him when he’s in his boxers. To be fair, there wasn’t really chemistry in the book, either. (He should have hooked up with the French maid, obviously, and then her death would have been way, way more impactful on him).
- Beck and Reacher. I just don’t see Beck having any faith or trust in Reacher so quickly and none of their interactions make me change my mind. Reacher and Beck’s son also lack any kind of real connection. This all feels stilted and weirdly rushed.
- Reacher and the bad guys in general. The one guy that won’t stop talking so Reacher just smacks him. It feels forced. Quinn is such a mustache-twirling villain throughout that his interactions with Reacher feel overly cartoonish. Only Paulie and Reacher have any kind of chemistry here, but I fear that might be mostly the size gimmick at play.
Also, Reacher himself. Reacher and me. Reacher and the audience. There’s something missing from our hulking hero this season. He seems so dour and grumpy. That flicker in his eye is gone. Even pranking Paulie was done so stiffly. I think Ritchson is great, but he seemed like he had more fun filming the first season. He wasn’t just funnier, however. He seemed more cerebral, more of a thinker, less of a one-note character constantly spouting out one-liners. Reacher had such magnetic charisma in the first season and now . . . he just doesn’t. At least he’s not torturing and murdering people this time around (Season 2 proved time and time again that the show’s creators and writers had no idea who Reacher was supposed to be) but he’s also not as much fun. You can justify this with the plot, with Reacher being older, with any number of things, but the fact remains that Season 1’s Jack Reacher was just a lot more fun to spend time with. So were the rest of the cast.
With just a couple of episodes left, we have the big, dramatic conclusion yet to come. Reacher has to face off against some very bad dudes, and you can expect plenty of action and violence in the weeks ahead, and then our nomadic protagonist will be in the wind again, in search of some other adventure, some other nefarious criminal organization whose plans he’s destined to foil. This season isn’t as strong as the first, but it’s a fun enough action-thriller and it’s clear they’ve righted the ship after it very nearly sunk in Season 2. Hopefully Season 4 can recapture more of that Season 1 magic.
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