A big part of the appeal of the first season of Reacher, Amazon Prime Video’s series based on the exploits of Lee Child’s hulking ex-military policeman, was how it highlighted the character’s solitary nature. Jack Reacher (played again by Alan Ritchson) is that rare protagonist who’s truly rootless, walking the earth (like Kane in Kung Fu) and getting embroiled in situations he didn’t cause, but which are in desperate need of his particular set of skills.
This time around, showrunner Nick Santora pivots to a plot requiring the talents of more than just our favorite taciturn murder machine. The first episode opens with an unfortunate fellow getting pitched (alive) out of a helicopter 3,000 feet over the Catskills. Said fellow is Calvin Franz, a former member of the 110th MP Special Investigations Unit, serving under a certain Major Jack Reacher.
Reacher himself is in Murfreesboro, TN. We’re introduced to him as he begrudgingly interrupts a carjacking/kidnapping in progress while in line at an ATM. That done, he sees a deposit in his account for $1030, Army code for “urgent help needed.” The depositor, Frances Neagley (Maria Sten, reprising the role from Season One), informs Reacher about Franz’s death, and also lets him know he’s (ironically) the only one of their old nine-member team she’s been able to get hold of.
It’s not a spoiler to say Neagley and Reacher manage to reunite … some of the former team. That includes wiseass David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos), now a P.I. in Washington, DC, and accountant Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), who we’re led to believe shared some unrequited attraction with Reacher back in the day. And I say “led to believe” because looking at Ritchson and the petite Swan next to each other, one is reminded less of a burgeoning romance and more of King Kong and Fay Wray.
I’d swear Ritchson has actually gotten bigger, but it might simply be the fact he’s wearing more clothes (the action for this season mostly takes place in NY/NJ during winter). That’ll be a bummer for those of you who grew accustomed to him taking his shirt off in every episode.
Season Two is based on the 11th book in Lee Child’s series, Bad Luck and Trouble, which finds the team going after a rogue defense contractor. In addition to showing Reacher working with his old team, we get flashbacks to their time in the 110th, which allows for more character development than we’ve enjoyed before. As a result, there are more subplots: were any of the 110th in cahoots with the bad guys? Will any of the surviving MPs be reluctant to join their old commander? Will Reacher and Dixon give in to their throbbing biological urges?
The bad guy this time around the head of the defense firm, Shane Langston (Robert Patrick). Patrick has always played a reliable villain, from Peacemaker all the way back to T2 (Santora gets in a great Sarah Connor joke), and if you think his days are numbered once Reacher clocks to his involvement, congratulations, you’ve got at least three functioning brain cells.
But it isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. That’s fitting for our vagabond badass, who we know is destined to strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy the Special Investigators. The fistfights are entertainingly brutal, the gunplay far-fetched, and cars chase each other in hilarious defiance of physics and gravity.
Santora also gives us more of Reacher’s insatiable appetite (for food), especially when he basically imitates Homer Simpson’s “Frying Dutchman” escapades at an Atlantic City casino buffet. And I don’t know what if any connection the writers have to Rutgers Law School, but somebody really has it in for that place.
It’s also endlessly amusing whenever anyone (in this case it’s Russo, the NY cop played by The Wire’s Domenick Lombardozzi) tries to step to Reacher. I’m as tall as Russo, but I’m confident I’d try to fade into the wallpaper if Reacher ever gave me the stinkeye. Discretion, valor, all that.
An early reference to James Barr (the alleged sniper in the first Jack Reacher movie) suggests that Child and Santora are retconning Ritchson into the Tom Cruise movies, or at least trying to plant that visual into our memories. Child has already said they’re not making any more features, and why would they? The first season was met with almost universal acclaim, and – IMO – this season is even better.
But I may have been mistaken when I said in my S1 recap that Ritchson’s portrayal may have been too emotional. This time around, Ritchson humanizes what could easily be an automaton, even if his only emotions appear to be anger, annoyance and hunger.
The first three episodes of Season Two of Reacher are now streaming on Prime Video.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
