I’m having deja vu. Watching the second season of Reacher on Amazon Prime Video reminds me of how I felt reading the second Reacher book by Lee Child.
They’re not the same story. While Season 1 was wisely based off the first Reacher novel, Killing Floor, the second season is not based off of Die Trying, the second book in the series, but rather the 11th book, Bad Luck and Trouble. I haven’t read that far into the series yet.
In any case, reading Die Trying was such a letdown. Killing Floor was fantastic. It had just the right amount of mystery, ultra-violence and character development. The story was contained and plausible, with just enough over-the-top action to give it that special Reacher flavor.
The second book was ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but the plot was just completely absurd and the villains were a treasure trove of outlandish tropes. I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say, I did not love the second book. And this is how I feel about the second season of the show, though for different reasons.
This season just feels off for so many reasons. I still think Alan Ritchson is the perfect choice for the titular character, but he’s bulked up almost too much at this point. I picture Reacher as a leaner kind of muscled fighter. He’s described in the books as the kind of ripped you get not from the gym, but from digging swimming pools and getting in fights. He’s almost as quick as he is strong, whereas Ritchson this season feels almost weighted down by his bulk. Reacher is a street fighter, fast with a long reach (get it?) not a bulked up gym bro.
But more than that, I’m not in love with the dynamic of the Special Investigators, in either the present timeline or the flashbacks. The chemistry between Reacher, Roscoe and Finlay was perfect in the first season. Neagley is the only character other than Reacher to make the jump between seasons, and it’s no great surprise that she’s also the one that feels like the best fit in Season 2 (and the cameo in Episode 4 just reminded me of how much I prefer the Season 1 cast). I realize that due to the nature of the books—Reacher is the forever drifter, always moving from one place and story and cast of characters to the next—it’s impossible to carry over the cast between seasons, but it’s hard not to compare. There’s virtually no romantic chemistry between Reacher and Dixon (Serinda Swan). I’d say the best chemistry between characters in Season 2 so far is between Reacher and detective Russo (Domenick Lonbardozzi) who are effectively “frenemies” at this point.
Other stuff that’s irking me:
- I don’t like the constant jumping between timelines. I don’t need to follow two stories for an entire season. One episode with some flashbacks would have been fine. It doesn’t help that the latest flashback sequence was a completely absurd drug bust gone wrong. When one of the dealers arrives with food, he recognizes Swan (Shannon Kook) as an Army cop. Instead of talking their way out of the situation—the bad guys already knew they were military, it wouldn’t have been a stretch for Reacher to convince them that being the military police makes this deal even sweeter—they go straight to killing. I don’t think that’s how it works! I think cops arrest people if they have a chance.
- Other plot-holes abound. Why was the driver shipping 650 advanced missiles all by himself without even a single guard? Why did he stop to help people in what was an obvious trap? Honestly, if this whole thing is rigged, why didn’t the bad guys just get a driver who was in on it from the beginning instead of needlessly killing someone? And are there like…no cars on this road at all? Nobody else drives by? (And yes, I get that since the bad guys orchestrate this maybe they sent the driver off by himself, but surely if they want their story to be believed by anyone investigating it, they wouldn’t break protocol to this degree!)
- The fight at the work site was also kind of goofy. How was that cement still wet? That’s not how cement works. And do they expect us to believe that they covered up that entire fight scene by burying those guys in the cement? It was that wet that they could bury everyone and clean up the blood and everything with no trace? What about all the damage they left at the site? Nobody is going to investigate that?
- Don’t even get me started about the magical flying barbecue. After a truly ridiculous home invasion our heroes pull off against armed bad guys, another bad guy takes off in his vehicle. Reacher tries to run after him, but he can’t run with all that bulk, so he gives up. But then his compatriots give him the location of the vehicle and he manages to throw the barbecue from . . . somewhere, quite a ways off, and hit it in the windshield. Then he comes running from what appears to be a totally different direction from where the barbecue was thrown. He couldn’t catch the car but he could throw a barbecue at it and hit it from blocks away? I know he’s strong but seriously?
- Lots of little lazy writing errors, like a US Senator referring to himself as a congressman. Nope. No Senator is going to say that. And they’ve referred to him as a Senator numerous times prior to this.
- Why does nobody have a lock on their phone? The incompetent hitman hands his phone to Reacher in episode 5 and Reacher just starts using it. It would be locked with some kind of security (pin, fingerprint, etc.) This keeps happening. It’s so annoying!
- The fights are worse now. I think this is a symptom of a larger problem, which is that they’ve made this an ensemble season instead of making it mostly about Reacher. Sure, he had a team in Season 1 but they weren’t all fighters. Reacher was the muscle. Rosco and Finlay helped out, but didn’t overshadow him in any way. This season is suffering from the same things the CW’s Arrow and The Flash suffered from once they took a show about a single hero and turned everyone into a fighter. The really cool fight scenes are now divided between a bunch of people, when all we need to see is Reacher doing cool stuff like kicking a car so hard the steering wheel balloon goes off.
- Another issue with the fight scenes is bad guy incompetence. Let’s call it Stormtrooper Syndrome. The snipers in this last episode were totally incompetent. You know what I hate in shows? When they make everyone look really stupid so that the hero looks smart. Well the same thing applies to bad guys. You don’t make your protagonists look like badasses by making the bad guys completely incompetent. Not only that, but it robs the action scenes of basically all tension. Same thing when Dixon and Neagley somehow get into the trunk and one-shot the bad guys during the hijack scene and then the third guy runs away. Having bad guys run in fear from the good guys is just silly. At least in Killing Floor/Season 1, Reacher does some clever prep work to take out the bad guys!
- Speaking of bad guys, they’re apparently doing all of this for $65 million minus expenses (which include hitmen, corrupt cops, etc.) divided who knows how many ways, and many of the conspirators seem like they’re not exactly hurting for cash. I mean, I guess that’s still a lot of money, but I’m getting serious Doctor Evil vibes.
So what do I like about Season 2? It’s still fun, mindless entertainment. I guess I’m trying to view it like I do some of Child’s books. They’re hit and miss to a large degree. I can still enjoy the ones that aren’t great because I like the characters and the mystery.
I’m definitely curious about what’s actually going on here. It’s pretty obvious that Swan being guilty is a red herring, but does that mean one of Reacher’s current team is dirty? It’s clearly not Russo. It’s even more clearly not Neagley. So that leaves Dixon or O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) as potential candidates. After all, somebody had to reveal their location to that biker gang (who, like the snipers, were totally incompetent). I prefer Dixon as the Judas here, simply because O’Donnell is way too obvious as the wisecracking jester who showed up in their hotel room out of the blue at the same time it was ransacked.
Honestly, I’m not a big fan of any of the Special Investigations members being a bad guy. That feels like an unnecessary twist for a Reacher story. That being said, it hasn’t been a particularly compelling mystery up to this point so maybe a “shocking” twist would add a little bite to this toothless season.
If you want to get into the Reacher books, start with Killing Floor. Check out my video review below:
Am I being too harsh? Do you want to throw a barbecue at me? Or do you agree that this season is a little weak—despite Ritchson’s gains—compared to the first? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.
