Reacher's Greatest Weakness Is Its Stupid Universe

Suspension of disbelief is the quiet agreement between a story and its audience that we accept certain things are impossible, so long as the world on screen remains relatively convincing. It exists because entertainment is primarily escapism, not reality. This arrangement works when a show gives the audience enough reason to keep playing along, but when a six-foot-five, 250lbs human tank is getting his ass handed to him by two Asian chicks who are collectively smaller than my cousin's first blow-up doll, you're asking way too much.

Maybe I'm speaking out of line here since I haven't read a single Jack Reacher novel, but you're still pushing your luck trying to convince me that a tiny Indonesian woman can survive getting tossed out of a fourth-story window after being rag-dolled by a guy built like a linebacker. Get the fuck outta here with that shit.

Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher, Christopher Marquette as Jacob Merrick, and Sydelle Noel as Tamara Green in Reacher (2023)

Amazon Prime Video

Sadly, this is a growing trend with Amazon Prime's Reacher, now four seasons deep. As the hulking former military investigator chases down the latest conspiracy in the streets of Philadelphia, he faces off with hordes of lanky henchmen who look like their daily routine includes grinding in League of Legends. And if he isn't decapitating neck-bearded nerds with elevators or snapping their spines with metal doors in tight stairways, he's breaking bones and removing ears from government agents who keep coming back for more. It all unfolds in a universe so aggressively stupid that sitting atop the food chain are two femme fatales with less situational awareness than a six-year-old.

Brutal violence is baked into the DNA of Lee Child's book series, but the endless parade of disposable goons thrown at the hero remains a Hollywood cliché that deserves to die with them. The season's recycled cardboard antagonists are hellbent on acquiring a chemical weapon formula they can sell on the "dark web," paying out the wazoo for dopey contract killers who fail miserably at tying up loose ends, not realizing they'd make phenomenally more money lezzing out on OnlyFans.

I accept that Reacher is ridiculous and unrealistic, but its ultimate flaw is a reality where nothing actually works. CIA black sites, local jails, streets crawling with Philly cops, and being handcuffed inside a van parked in the middle of nowhere offer little more than token resistance, but Reacher almost bites the dust at the hands of female assassins whose talents would be welcome at any nail salon. I don't deny the appeal of the show is to keep throwing bodies at actor Alan Ritchson to creatively dispatch, but if I want to watch mindless retards go back and forth for so long that I forget what they're fighting about, I can forego the $8.99 monthly subscription fee and just watch C-SPAN.

Reacher deserves better. It's a series on a streaming network with endless cash, but is produced with the cartoonish buffoonery of disposable network television. I don't expect the writing chops of Vince Gilligan and Dana Gould, who spoiled television with complex, methodical villains, but Reacher's true talents feel wasted in a criminal underworld full of morons. Watching sheep jump off a cliff starts to get stale after four seasons, and there simply isn't any thrill in pitting a man the size of a gorilla against architects of evil who are ten times dumber than Paulie Walnuts.