Not For ‘Reacher’

About halfway through season two of  Reacher, an associate of Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) asks if he’s ever been diagnosed as a sociopath. By this point, Reacher has kicked a car hard enough to break the driver’s nose with the airbag, and hucked a barbeque grill at a completely different SUV. The grill, the SUV, and its driver all died. “Diagnose? No.”

Jack Reacher, former Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officer and current itinerant slab of beefcake is back for another season of being completely unable to stay out of trouble. When we pick up with Reacher is season two, his innocent excursion to exchange some secondhand clothes in Arkansas ends with him smashing a minivan window to extract a carjacker. Seriously, don’t let this guy anywhere near your automobile.

Carjacker and Carhartt mission complete, Reacher is called away from his happy hoboing via a coded ATM message (?) from his old loyal sergeant Neagley (Maria Sten). Someone’s targeting their old special unit, AKA “the special investigators.” As they will tell you approximately 15,000 times in the first five episodes, “You do not mess with the special investigators.” As an aspirational mantra, it’s okay-ish but even The Zohan would get sick of these freaking yahoos after about five minutes and hit the road with just a toothbrush, just like Reacher.

It is my sad duty to inform you that season two of Reacher  is no season one of Reacher, and a lot of that is due to the very messible-with special investigators. Wisecracking O’Donnell’s (Shaun Sipos) cracks aren’t so wise and he gives off serious red shirt vibes. An after-all-these-years consummation of a workplace flirtation between Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan) and Reacher isn’t very steamy. The love scene reminded me less of Basic Instinct and more of the Insta posts of The Mountain from Game of Thrones cuddling his Pomeranian. Neagley manages to retain some of the mercurial badass-i-tude that makes her character a welcome presence in the book series. Part of what makes that relationship work is Neagley keeping a mission control distance from Reacher as he cowboys around, punching lunar landers or whatever. Reacher doesn’t need to be part of a quartet.

Reacher’s best season two foil is NYPD detective Gaitano ‘Guy’ Russo (Dominic Lombardozzi, doing karmic time here for the crap he pulled as Herc on The Wire). Russo is the kind of counterpoint Reacher needs, an establishment figure chasing the same MacGuffin as Reacher but pleading with the big guy to play by the rules and not throw any Webers. It’s the basic buddy movie dynamic of teaming the renegade with the rule-follower. I’d love to tell you that Russo and Reacher eventually drive a golf cart off a cargo plane but Russo is relegated to hand smacking Reacher and, sigh, his team of renegade special investigators.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun to watch Reacher beat up a car, bad guy, or both at the same time. But the story is silly and forgettable, as are the bad guys. Something about missiles that are way too effective and Robert Patrick has something to do with selling them. And Ferdinand Kingsley is apparently a super badass bad guy who spends most of his time giving comic books to children at rental car agencies. No, really. As of the end of episode five, I’m not really entirely sure why these guys are messing with the special investigators. And I read Bad Luck and Trouble, the book it’s based on.

Reacher’s at his best when his enemies are actual bullies and not yet another shadowy semi-governmental cabal. Or even worse, something to do with money and missiles that’s a little less clear than a glowing suitcase. Reacher lives the lifestyle of gold-hearted gunslingers like Shane or uh, James Spader’s character in sex, lies, and videotape: open road, no attachments, few possessions, and a sense of justice. Okay, maybe Spader doesn’t have the sense of justice but neither does most of Reacher season two. The violence sometimes feels wanton and cruel, like a low budget Eastern European action flick that just feels slightly off until you realize you’re watching bodies hit the floor without art or reason. You know, like the fifth Die Hard movie. John McClane didn’t feel right in that and Reacher doesn’t feel quite right here.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Will you hate Reacher season two? If you’re reading this, probably not. It’s not as awful as A Good Day to Die Hard, but it’s more boring and less funny than it should be. Will I watch the whole season? Yes. But I’ll hope that season three has one really, really bad bully with the keys to a car dealership that has plenty of punchable things for an undiagnosed sociopath justice hobo.