A friend of mine once said that shows like “Reacher” are “Doritos shows.” You know, junk food that you can’t help but keep digging into the bag, even though you know you’re full, and all you’re eating is empty calories. Amazon Prime’s hit series “Reacher” resembles a bag of Doritos. Unfortunately, as Season 3 of “Reacher” wraps, I’m starting to feel like I’m at the end of the bag, and all that’s left are the crumbs.
“Reacher,” based on the successful and long-running book series by Lee Childs, is about a wandering ex-military police guy with an imposing figure, a keen intellect, and a penchant for finding trouble no matter what town he wanders into. It’s like a cross between “The Hulk,” “Highway to Heaven,” and “Rambo,” all rolled into one. Each season, thus far, is based on one of Childs’ “Jack Reacher” series. Two books have made it onto the big screen, with Tom Cruise enjoyably miscast in the title role. And now, with Season 3, an additional trio of stories in Childs’ 29 has entered the stratosphere.
You don’t have to know much about the plot or the backstory to dive in and watch a season of “Reacher.” It’s pretty formulaic stuff. Jack Reacher shows up in a town, typically for some vague purpose, and quickly gets mixed up in solving crimes of corruption, murder, kidnapping, revenge, drug-running, gun-running, or some form of conspiratorial malevolence. And part of the fun, if this kind of thing is your bag, is watching Reacher beat the crap out of scores of endless henchmen and kill scores more without a hint of remorse. Reacher (he prefers a last name only) isn’t one for sentiment, and judging by the sheer volume of people he kills every season, he doesn’t have much of a conscience. Basically, if you are on the wrong side of the law, you are fair game to Reacher.
The first season was over-the-top and ridiculous, but it was the kind of fake-show plot contrivance nonsense that you could forgive because it was so much fun and had great characters that Reacher interacted with. In the role of Jack Reacher, gentle giant Alan Ritchson is a good time to watch. He’s built like a cartoon brick house, and his cool, calm line delivery makes him the sort you’re rooting for every step of the way, even as he ratchets up a body count that would impress even the most ambitious serial killers.
Season 2 wasn’t nearly as good as Season 1, and it was probably more over-the-top, but it did feature more screen time with Season 1’s breakout star, Maria Sten, as Reacher’s ex-military police buddy, Frances Neagly. She is also fun to watch, and while her kill count isn’t relatively as high as Jack Reacher’s, she dispenses her fair share of baddies.
That brings us to Season 3, and I’m sorry to report that even for a show as unbelievable as the Jack Reacher series is, this one is hard to swallow from the get-go. The plot involves Reacher saving a corrupt rich guy’s son to go undercover to seek revenge on some guy he thought he killed years ago. The feds have enlisted Reacher for their purposes, to try and rescue an undercover snitch, and no snitch is probably worth the insane amount of people that get wasted in the eight episodes that make up S3.
I get the sense that Season 3 of “Reacher” had a budget downgrade because the action takes place in and around a large mansion and a Canadian town, substituting for a fake Maine town. There is more than one instance of poor CGI green-screening of backgrounds that is borderline embarrassing.
There isn’t a lot of guesswork required in this installment. You are not a good guesser if you can’t predict every step of this lumbering actioner. I was 10 steps ahead of this one at each turn, and by the later episodes, things had gotten so contrived and ridiculous; I’ll admit, my smartphone kept me more entertained than what was happening on my television screen.
Anthony Michael Hall plays the rich bad guy with all the henchmen. It’s always strange to see the Geek from “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” turn up as a heavy in a show, but that’s what’s happening with him now. And, of course, it will eventually turn out that Hall isn’t the one pulling the strings. In these shows, there is always layer upon layer to the villain hierarchy.
The saving grace in previous “Reacher” seasons was the enjoyable characters. This season, we are treated to far too much of FBI Agent Susan Duffy, a tough-as-nails Boston field agent played by British actress Sonya Cassidy. I’m from Massachusetts, so I’m particularly sensitive to the many versions of television and movie Boston accents. Few get the accent right. Most overplay the accent, as if they were raised on the streets of South Boston and driven back and forth from Roslindale to Winthrop every day for 20 years, with weekends spent in Maine. I don’t know what Cassidy was going for, and maybe it’s worth watching Season 3 to admire how much a Boston accent can be butchered, but hers is an all-time worst. After a few episodes, her accent became a running punchline between my oldest son and me. Okay, it gave us some chuckles.
In the end, I was happy to see the season over. The last episode does give fans a doozy of a fight between Ritchson’s giant 6’3”, Jack Reacher, and a towering Dutch monster, the 7’2” Oliver Richters. It’s like a live-action Peter Griffin vs. Chicken fight from “Family Guy” on steroids. So, while I was left unfilled with “Reacher” Season 3, I’m sure I can be convinced to dip into the Doritos bag one more time next year for Season 4.
James Kent is the arts editor for the Mountain Times.
