"Reacher," Season 2: two-paragraph review

L to R: Russo (Domenick Lombardozzi), O'Donnell (Shaun Sipos), and Reacher (Alan Ritchson)

[WARNING: spoilers.]

Season 2 of "Reacher" sees the bulky Alan Ritchson, as ex-MP Jack Reacher, surrounded by a mostly new cast, with only two Season 1 returnees: Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) making a cameo, and Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), who has a much larger role this time. Otherwise, Season 2 stars Serinda Swan as Karla Dixon, Shaun Sipos as David O'Donnell, Domenick Lombardozzi as difficult NYPD detective Guy Russo, Ferdinand Kingsley as the mysterious AM, Noam Jenkins as Senator Lavoy, and Robert Patrick as major bad guy Shane Langston. This time around, Season 2, based on the eleventh Reacher novel Bad Luck and Trouble, changes way more details from the book—too many to list fully here, but a partial list would be: the setting, which is switched mostly from the West Coast to the East Coast; the name of the big bad guy (Lamaison in the novel; Langston in the series); the introduction of characters not in the book such as Senator Lavoy; the ultimate fate of characters like AM (who, among all the characters, is remarkably well preserved in his translation from book to TV). The basic story of Season 2 is that Reacher had been put in charge of the 110th Special Investigative Unit, and now, unit members are turning up missing or dead, and this is somehow tied to the case of a weapon system called Little Wing that is being clandestinely sold off to terrorists.

Partly because this is a less faithful adaptation, and partly because Bad Luck and Trouble is not as good of a story as The Killing Floor (the basis for Season 1 and Lee Childs's first Reacher novel), Season 2 was a bit of a letdown. Perhaps the best thing about the season was the further development of the relationship between Reacher and Neagley; their dynamic feels a lot like the gotcher-back dynamic between Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian in "24." Neagley has haphephobia, a fear of being touched, and I suspect that, whenever the final season might air, the last episode will show Reacher and Neagley finally hugging (Reacher respects Neagley's boundaries, which is one of the reasons why they work together so well). Season 2 had its moments, but it also had trouble fitting certain plot elements into the main storyline. Reacher's romance with Dixon, for example, feels a little stitched on, and the subplot involving AM, the murderous middle man who kills his way across the country as he collects the Little Wing weapon and approaches the rendezvous point where he is to learn how to fire the device, runs parallel to the main plot for so long that it feels almost like its own story, and not the most relevant one at that. The fight scenes suffer from the same problems as Season 1's did, with Alan Ritchson being burly and unwieldy. I saw a lot of YouTube theories about how either O'Donnell or Dixon might end up betraying the team, but those predictions came from people who hadn't read the novel: Reacher's team, like Reacher himself, is a bunch of straight arrows. Tonally, Season 2 falls far short of the emotional intensity of any season of "24," which is, for me, the gold standard by which to compare any of these new series. I've read the novels in anticipation of each season, so I was already familiar with The Killing Floor as well as with Bad Luck and Trouble. Perhaps for Season 3, I ought to avoid the novel and see how that affects my viewing experience, reading it only afterward. In all, Season 2 of "Reacher" was entertaining enough, but it's definitely inferior to the previous season.