I was so excited when Amazon Prime announced that the second series of Reacher was ready. I loved the first series, especially the performance of Alan Ritchson who I thought was the perfect Jack Reacher. But having watched the first episode last night all I can say is that I am disappointed, confused, and possibly even angry at what they have done to the show and the character.
<
Early in the episode, Reacher explains why the dead body they were investigating couldn't have been thrown out of an aeroplane. He said there were no wounds on the body to suggest that it has hit the tail of the plane, and if the body had been thrown from a plane that would've happened. Now, okay, at this point from the prologue we already know the body was thrown from a helicopter, but that’s not the point. Reacher clearly doesn't understand how momentum and gravity work. I did actually ask that question prior to my first parachute jump with the RAF parachute display team, I kid you not. I was told that by the time the tail reached the jumper, the jumper would already be more than fifty feet below the plane because the jumper is travelling at the same forward speed. There is zero possibility of jumping from a plane and hitting the tail. If that was a possibility, obviously skydiving would not be the popular hobby that it is.
I don't understand how something as basic as that could get into a final script and be broadcast. It makes Reacher look stupid.
Not long afterwards. Reacher gets the opportunity to play Sherlock Holmes again. He's waiting outside a post office and wants to check the post office box that belongs to the dead guy. First of all Reacher says that because the dead guy was right-handed he would've rented a box on the right. LOL, no it doesn't work like that but okay give him a pass. Then he says that because he was getting such a lot of mail he would've rented one of the bigger boxes. Okay nice logic, I can go with that. Then he says because the guy has been dead for some time the mail would've backed up in the mailbox so he'd look for a mailbox that was full. What? You can't see inside mailboxes, I've never seen a post office box that had a clear cover. Why would the post office want just anyone to look inside the boxes?
Anyway he goes inside, goes to the right and starts trying to open the boxes with the key he has. He finds the correct box and inside there about 20 letters - certainly not the big pile he had predicted. He takes them outside and his companion asks what was in the mailbox and he says bills and flyers. No way. Certainly in the UK utility companies, phone companies, banks, financial services, none of them will send email to a PO Box, it has to be to be a real address. And what about his deduction that the box will be full - it clearly wasn't and again it just makes Reacher look stupid.
Earlier on, we are told that Reacher doesn't have a driving license. But when he's in a thrift store, he's quite happy to hand over his passport while he pops over the road to use an ATM. I don't understand why he does have a passport but doesn't have a driving license. Can he not drive? I assume he can, so why not carry a driving licence? To conceal his ID? But he has a passport which he later uses to get on a plane. I did think that he only ever took buses, but now he seems happy to fly.
Oh, then his friend passes him a message by paying money into his account and he spots the transaction on the slip he gets from the ATM. Give me a break. Really? In what world could that possibly happen?
And what is the business of him not allowing enlisted men to call him Major or Sir? He makes the point several times, he wants them to call him Reacher. Just Reacher. That doesn't happen in the US Army. It doesn’t happen in any Army. Enlisted men do not call their officers by name. Maybe in special forces, maybe but his team aren't special forces. At one point he says “you don’t have to call me Sir, but you do have to do what I tell you.” Idiotic.
Then he decides that as a team building exercise he's going to take them to the officer’s club and get into a fight with another group of soldiers. In what world does that happen? He's drinking in uniform, which is a complete no-no, plus he's drinking with enlisted men who shouldn't be in the officers’ club. A fight ensues and the team is now stronger. Who writes this drivel? In the real world there wouldn’t be a fight, the MPs would be called and Reacher would be arrested and his career would be over.
And how can there be no repercussions to this fight? I don't understand how the series went down the street. That's not the Jack Reacher that I know and love. The Reacher I know avoids conflict wherever possible but in this first episode he seems to deliberately go out of his way to start fights.
And don’t get me started on the British guy we first meet entering the country. The immigration officer calls him Mr Whatever, to which he replies ‘Please, call me Adrian.’
WTF? In what world does this happen? In all my years travelling to the US I have never been addressed by name by an immigration officer. And it’s not a British thing to tell a Government official to call you by your first name. We need to know someone for at least a year before we’re on first name terms LOL.
Then the immigration officer asks him if he has anything to declare? Why? That’s not his job. His job is to stamp the passport, it’s a Customs officer who will want to know if he has anything to declare.
Having got into the country, what is the first thing our Brit does? He pops along to the airport toilet and sets fire to his passport. Yeah, passports don’t burn that easily (don’t ask). They are quite sturdy with lots of plastic and a chip. Why stand in a toilet watching it burn when anyone can come in? Why not just dispose of it when you are away from the airport?
Having disposed of the passport he used to get into the US, he buys some more. Then he kills the guys he bought the passports from. Yeah, in the real world that doesn’t happen. If it did, it’d very quickly become impossible to buy fake documents. It’s lazy writing, but it is a staple of thrillers, so we can maybe let that go. But how does he kill the guys? Well, he whips out a concealed knife which has a blade all of an inch and a half inch long. He uses that to slash the throat of one of the guys, who goes down. Now that it doable, but it takes a lot - and I mean a lot - of practise. But he kills the second guy - who is built like the proverbial brick shithouse - by stabbing him once in the gut with the tiny blade. WTF? It wouldn’t even have penetrated the blubber. He could have stabbed the guy a dozen times with that knife and done no serious damage. But the big guy goes down. Dead.
One of the things I really, really hated involved the actor Robert Patrick, who we meet early on in episode one. He plays an ex-NYPD officer who now works for a defense contractor and is trying to track Reacher. He is told that Reacher's hotel room has been found and that Reacher checked into the hotel under the alias of MLB All-Star player Starlin Castro, while his female companion checked in under the alias of "Sarah Connor.” Patrick knows that Castro is actually a baseball player; but when he is asked who Sarah Connor is, his response is an unequivocal "I don't give a shit."
Ha ha, hilarious. Because of course Robert Patrick played the terminator in Terminator 2: Judgement Day so he knows exactly who Sarah Connor is. Except of course in this series he isn’t the terminator, he’s a shadowy bad guy working for a defense contractor. So am I supposed to find this funny? I’m supposed to be watching a thriller, I am supposed to believe in these characters and what they’re doing, but the writer, and the director, and the producer, are now telling me it’s all a joke. That one infantile frat-boy joke has pretty much ruined the series for me. If the writer can’t take it seriously then why the hell should I?
I mean, who writes that stuff? It’s just insulting to the viewers. And why didn’t Lee Child go through the scripts to point out all the things that just wouldn’t happen in the real world. I guess he has just stopped caring about the character, which is why he gets his brother to write the books these days. And he never spoke up when Tom Cruise announced he was going to be the movie Jack Reacher. He did long after the event, but by then the damage had been done. I love Tom Cruise, great actor and a great producer, but he’s no Jack Reacher and Child should have said that at the time. And he should have spoken up about the damage that is being done to Reacher by this current series. I’m not sure if I’ll continue with it or not, because I feel it’s going to get worse and not better. I still love Alan Ritchson’s performance, the fight scenes are awesome and it’s well photographed and the sound is great, but the slack writing is making it pretty much unwatchable for me. For me, TV like this is all about plot and dialogue, and both are pretty shoddy so far. Any thoughts?
