I Love Amazon’s Reacher, Which Is Why I Need To Deliver Some Harsh Criticism

I wouldn’t be writing this article if I didn’t love Reacher. There’s just something about watching lead actor Alan Ritchson shoot people in the head without a single shred of remorse that’s so satisfying to watch. It’s one of those shows that I want to fire up immediately as soon as a new episode is available on Amazon Prime. At its best, it’s a thoughtful, vicious, highly entertaining and darkly funny action thriller. Unfortunately, it’s not always at its best, and that’s why, out of positivity and a genuine desire for Reacher to fulfill its potential, I’m here to deliver some harsh criticism.

Sometimes the writing is just not good enough.

I say sometimes because there are a lot of moments in which the writing is good enough. The show clearly gets Reacher as a character, and most of the things that come out of Reacher’s mouth feel like things he would say. There’s also a well-established track record of building up likeable supporting characters, which is why I’m stoked for the Neagley spin-off. She’s terrific and so are some of the unexpectedly poignant moments and relatable conversations we get here or there during each season. The recent stuff with Reacher and Richie is a great example of that.

But sometimes the writing is just not good enough.

Let’s talk about this most recent season and the overarching plot. A bad guy who Reacher once shot in the head off the side of a cliff as payback for torturing his protege returns under a different name to forcibly take over a gun smuggling operation because he survived for unclear reasons. He doesn’t recognize Reacher though because he has selective amnesia, which allows our hero to work undercover at a house he frequents. He joins forces with a DEA agent whose CI was kidnapped and kept alive because she saw something she shouldn’t have but also has red hair, which makes her an ideal gift to hand over at some point in the future to a subordinate of a Russian mobster who likes women with red hair.

Come’on. That’s obviously not good enough.

This season of Reacher wasn't a completely faithful adaptation of one of Lee Child’s novels, and to be honest, I really don’t care. The job of a TV show is not to adapt a book as faithfully as possible. It’s to make a good TV show, and a good TV show should always start with a basic narrative that makes logical sense. This season of Reacher, over and over again, just didn’t make logical sense. The entire sub-plot with the ATF, as an example, made no logical sense. Are we meant to think they all just died during that ambush and had no one monitoring what was going on? Or are we just meant not to think about it too hard?

If Reacher was always a poorly written show, I wouldn’t even bother complaining about it. Some TV shows are just meant to be dumb fun, and you either get on board or you move along. Reacher, however, has consistently shown it’s capable of being better than that. It has consistently shown it can be thoughtful in its little moments. It can have genuinely moving back-and-forths between characters. It can create a love story that makes believable sense. It can write some fantastic and icy cold lines for its lead to say. That’s why it’s so frustrating when it falls short.

I love Reacher, but when I tell other people to watch it, I have to add caveats and half-hearted apologies because sometimes the writing just isn’t good enough to unapologetically recommend. I hope Season 4 changes that whenever it gets here.