Reaching
The only problem with 'Reacher' is everything that isn't Jack showering
Stupid can be sexy. But boring never is. Stupid and boring though is unbearable.
This is my problem with Reacher, which is back on Prime Video for a second series.
I watched about five episodes of the first, 2022, series, before I realised that I was only enduring it for 41-year-old Alan Ritchson’s shower scenes. And there weren’t nearly enough of them to warrant putting up with the arrant awfulness of everything else: the script, the vapid acting, the cringey dialogue, the clunky direction – or the annoying assholery of the Reacher character/concept himself.
A former military policeman in the US Army, Jack Reacher is a homeless, phoneless drifter who sleeps in cheap motels and on parked truck flatbeds, buys his clothes in thrift stores, and hitchhikes around the US, terminating violent bad guys along the way with extreme prejudice while protecting the innocent, ma’am.
A swole, latter-day, Man With No Name, with invincible firearm, knife, and fist skills, Reacher is able to take on entire legions of baddies single-handedly without getting a hair on his perfectly moussed head out of place.
Unfortunately, unlike Eastwood’s cowboy, he also talks lot. He’s the strong silent type that doesn’t shut up. He’s not just a V-shaped vigilante, you see, he is also incredibly smart and well-informed, as he likes to keep reminding us with tedious recitations of crime-fighting info and stats.
Luckily for Ritchson and Prime, the public - and even more the critics (100% on Rotten Tomatoes) – seem to love the “pulpy fun” of Reacher, which has already had its third season commissioned. But I have yet to work out where the fun is, aside from those meanly rationed shower scenes. With its cheesy dialogue and acting Reacher feels like big budget porn – but almost entirely composed of the intro bit you fast forwards.
As a measure of how bad it is, Tom Cruise’s 5’7” 2012 movie Reacher – 6’5” tall in the original Lee Child thriller novels – was less preposterous and less boring than Ritchson’s. For that matter, Arnie’s cyborgs were more loveable. It was, though, probably all the screeching from disappointed size queens over Titchy Tom having the effrontery to step into man mountain Reacher's size 12s, that produced the Ritchson reaction.
But because it’s been a while since I huffed and snorted at S1 - and because social media kept telling me Mr Ritchson has got even hencher - I thought I would get over myself and vada S2.
And… it’s somehow even more boring and preposterous than S1. Ritchson, at 6’2” (three inches shorter than Lee Child’s Reacher), is so massive now, and so top heavy, that he looks like he’s about to fall over when he walks, let alone runs after baddies. His traps are now bigger than his head - and do most of the acting.
Worse, there’s only one short topless scene in the first three hours (I stopped watching after E3). Even the fight scenes seem s/lumbering.
This time Reacher has a posse, comprised of some old Army buddies, but they bring extra problems. You care even less about them than you do about him, and they talk a lot. And ‘banter’. Which, given the standard of writing and acting, is pure sadism. Towards the audience.
Season 2 makes even more of the fact that Reacher, in contrast to his buddies, has no luggage, no possessions – all he owns in the world is a toothbrush, which he carries around in the inside pocket of his thrift store jacket. Which is cute.
But where does he keep his grooming products, body shaver, spray tanner, make-up, clean designer underwear, and all the protein powder and bodybuilding supplements he must consume every day to stay so swole? (He would need a much bigger bum-bag for his ‘indispensables’ than Nath’s from Upload.)
Reacher is incredibly ripped, flashes perfect white teeth, but he tells us, only consumes diner food and all you can eat buffets. His clothes are all bought at thrift stores – that somehow always have the right size in as-new suede jackets, jeans, and stretchy muscle-Ts for a massive barrel-chested, narrow-waisted bodybuilder with 'shoulders like boulders'.
Likewise, we never see him going to the gym, or even acknowledging that such places exist. I suppose because he obviously lives there – which would slightly undermine his romantic homeless hobo schtick.
In E2 S2 there’s a long exchange with one of his army pals which paints a picture of Reacher’s lifestyle. In case you think I was exaggerating when I described it, I have reproduced the meat of it below, in all its zinging, convincing beauty:
‘One day I was in a bar, and someone plays Howlin' Wolf singing about trains going by in the night. That sounded like real freedom to me.’
‘Are you jumping on freight trains like Boxcar Willie?’
‘Sometimes. Mostly I take buses or hitchhike.’
‘What kind of lunatic is picking up the world's biggest drifter?’
‘They can be interesting.’
‘Where do you eat?’
‘I steal pie off windowsills.’ [chuckles]
‘I'm being serious.’
‘Diners. Sometimes people who pick me up share a meal with me. Sometimes I share with them. Where do you sleep? Reacher: Cheap motels mostly.’
‘And what if you can't find one?’
‘Unattended boats in marinas are good for a night. Flatbeds of parked trucks. Had a great night's sleep in a hammock I spotted in some guy's backyard once till the sprinklers went off.’
I think we know what kind of ‘interesting’ driver would stop to pick up Ritchson, I’m just not sure that the script does.
Ritchson’s Reacher is all about his spornographic impact. But Reacher the drifter must totally disavow any of the work, fastidiousness, and narcissism needed to achieve it. Which I guess is what happens when a late 20th Century pulpy vigilante cowboy fantasy collides with 21st Century superhero aesthetics.
Ritchson’s Reacher has a superhero body, even though his character is meant to be super down-to-earth and utterly innocent of Instagram, because that’s what twelve-year-old boys – who must be the target demographic – expect now.
Yes, I know I’m being painfully pedantic about a silly TV show, but there is a real-world dimension to this.
After loud online discussions about what ‘vitamins’ he must have been taking to put on 30lbs of lean muscle – in just a few months – for the first season (I know, some people are so cynical not to believe it was all down to supersets and steamed broccoli) Ritchson has come out about juicing and become an enthusiastic TRT advocate for men entering middle age.
He claims he was ‘natty’ for S1, but that the punishment and injuries his body took in the endless hours he spent in the gym to get to that size meant that he had to take testosterone afterwards to recover for S2, and because he wants “to play Reacher for the next fifteen years.” (TBH it feels like it’s been that long already.)
‘Getting on testosterone was huge for me. I had none by the time I was done with season one, due to the stress and the fatigue and what I had done to my body.
‘For me, it’s a long game. I want to do Reacher for 15 years... I don’t want to have to have surgery after every season, and testosterone helps.’
‘I'm a big advocate of it, especially for people in their forties or above. [Men aren’t] aware that it’s out there, but it could be really life changing. It could be a mood stabiliser for people... It can do a lot more than just help you be buff, but it certainly helped in my journey.’
I guess that toothbrush Reacher carries around must be one of those new-fangled ones that doubles as a syringe.