I am watching the second season of the TV show, Reacher. It premiered on Dec. 15, 2023. The first one was based on Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” novel, Killing Floor, his debut novel of the series. This season is based on Bad Luck and Trouble, which was published in 2007 – so many years ago. You may well ask, is it still relevant? Well, the plot and settings may change but Reacher is Reacher, a classic hero-type. This is reassuring to viewers and readers, and has led to the sustained popularity of these thrillers over the decades.
I say, thank goodness for Jack Reacher, something I can watch without being nauseated, because each story is a straightforward thrill that also feels moralistic. In The Walking Dead TV show, the last few seasons showed violence that was gruesome, mindless, and unjustified. In the beginning it was fun and made a weird kind of sense. Later, it was horror porn for the sake of generating shocks. This is not the case with the Reacher show. The characters are searching for revenge, but also for justice, and there is very little camera-work that lingers on blood and body parts.
Reacher kicks butt – Hooray!
I am giving myself this as a holiday treat because you are not required to do much critical thinking, and the lead actor is Eye Candy. Alan Ritchson is tall and straight-faced (even when joking) and built like a brick outhouse, with biceps like loaves of bread and insane fighting skills on screen. I am glad that the producers chose Ritchson, rather than Tom Cruise. Physically, Ritchson fits the role perfectly. I love how he merely raises an eyebrow, or flexes his fingers, when things get nutty around him, as if his patience is being sorely tested but he’s putting up with it.
Not to spoil the plot, but in the very first episode he realizes that a woman in the ATM queue in front of him has been car-jacked. She confirms and says, shivering with fear, that her son is in the back seat of the car. We, the viewers, know what that line of questioning is going to lead to. Reacher says; stay here, do not look back. He takes off his jacket and, well, the rest follows. The hijacker is left very very much worse for wear. The sheer efficiency and force of Reacher’s attack is impressive and fantastically satisfying. The same thing happens when he confronts a couple of drug-dealers on a street corner. They sure are sorry that they tried to pull a gun on him.
No concessions, no revisionism
It pleases me greatly that the show’s producers had decided to stick to the tried and tested recipe of the Reacher character and plot, as Child wrote them. It has none of the default (and superficial) messages and virtue signalling that so many TV shows and movies have these days. There have been no concessions to make Reacher less masculine and more likeable, and no historical revisionism that I could pick up on. He is (still) a loner, a drifter, a military veteran, and a killer, and he knows it, and he obviously questions the justification of his actions. These are completely justified according to the norms and values of his world. Isn’t that why we read novels and watch TV dramas and films? We can experience things, vicariously, that, in real life, would be unthinkable and impossible.
You may ask, has anyone got the right to act as policeman, judge, jury and executioner? That is not the question to ask, since this is Fiction, and the world works according to the fictional characters and the settings. In this season, we are introduced to Reacher’s background, and how he came to be this way, but it’s still firmly in the realm of the imaginary construct.
Interestingly, this series features a female character that actually isn’t just there to tick a box or rubber-stamp the gender or race equity aspects of the production.
This is one of Reacher’s team members, “Frances Neagley”, played by Maria Sten. The character is properly motivated and complete. Neagley is smart as a whip, tough, and a fitting sidekick for Reacher. Sexy and gorgeous too. But do they get into a clinch when they are alone together, as “James Bond” would always do, even with women he had only met a few minutes ago? Nope. Is Reacher not interested in women? Nope, he is. But when Neagley asks him why he never slept with an attractive member of his squad, he says that he was her commanding officer and it would not have been right. Quite so, Reacher. Quite so. There is something of the monk in Jack Reacher. And there is something of the purist in Neagley.
More, please!
The bad guys are going to suffer, and since there are many books in the series, you know that Reacher will survive, and they won’t. At what price, would be the issue. As Reacher says with a look of carefully subdued malevolence, realizing that someone is targeting the members of his former special investigations squad: “…they are coming after us. Good.”
SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES 
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