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Reminder: Reacher season 2 coming out tomorrow (Dec. 15) on Amazon Prime

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
First ep is a real struggle. No urgency or intrigue to the new storyline so far. Bad, lazy choreography in the bar fight. And someone was instantly killed via one stab to the body with a two inch pocket knife…? No exaggeration.

I didn’t love season 1 but it was very watchable. Not feeling this at all. The characters still act like an idiot’s idea of a smart person but it lost the fun and devil may care edge that kept me on board.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Pig GIF by Angry Birds Movie
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Had to stop the season mid episode 2. What have they done to this show? Writing and the script are super bad. Acting and fight choreography are amateurishly done. Nobody talks like that....
Boss woman is super cringe. Meh.
 

Mossybrew

Member
Yeah, this second season feels like a downgrade in many small ways. In a larger way, I just don't care much for Reacher as part of an ensemble, I guess they want to add some depth or something having these connections to his old buddies but it just doesn't work for me. Jack Reacher is best in solo mode, maybe doing some light teamwork with the local hot chick/cop. Plus the vibe is just weird, they keep giving Reacher these scenes where he'll think about his dead buddy and stare into space and look like he's about to cry, but then his friend team are just happy go lucky and quipping jokes like it's just another day on the job. Weird tone. Reacher is best when the stakes are - he got involved just because, on a whim. Not 'deeply personal revenge job where hard man has the feels'
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I don’t think the show runners have any technical advisors, or they’re completely ignoring them.

Episode 3, the good guys room clear a house. Every time they get to a doorway, they stand in it and the bad guys ambush them, shooting into the doorway successfully. Then they’re shot by the good guys in response. The good guys are unharmed, even though it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll be hit.

No one stacks up or takes angles. Just stand in doorways and clear rooms by yourself. Has no one heard of the fatal funnel?
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
I don’t think the show runners have any technical advisors, or they’re completely ignoring them.

Episode 3, the good guys room clear a house. Every time they get to a doorway, they stand in it and the bad guys ambush them, shooting into the doorway successfully. Then they’re shot by the good guys in response. The good guys are unharmed, even though it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll be hit.

No one stacks up or takes angles. Just stand in doorways and clear rooms by yourself. Has no one heard of the fatal funnel?
Same stuff happens on Obliterated. I think the move to CG muzzle flashes and digital blood means they can do shit on set with very little professional oversight. No need for an experienced gun wrangler, much less stunt team, if they are all just waving plastic guns at each other while someone off camera yells "bang bang". So they can have excessive amounts of REALLY low quality gunplay as they try for a John Wick atmosphere without the months of choreography/training required.

Watching 80's action films you can see how they had to clear around a guy cutting loose with an assault rifle throwing out gobs of muzzle fire and tossing cartridges everywhere. Plus the actors reacted because the gun was doing stuff and they could FEEL it. It made gun play a complex, difficult thing, thus the directors made sure it COUNTED, they couldn't just toss in a half dozen direct face shots on a whim like they can now.

We had a bit of a golden period of fairly competent tactical weapon work in film, but I think we are gonna be headed back to sloppy crap pretty soon, stuff like Terminal List excluded.
 

_Justinian_

Member
I watched the first two or three episodes and decided that I'll wait until the entire season is uploaded. This second season just doesn't hit me as hard as the first season did.
 
Liked and followed the first season closely but I eventually got lost in all the drama... Loved the Bentley So much!! I will not be back for season 2 the way this thread is going.
 

Billbofet

Member
I agree this season is just not doing it for me. I think putting him with a team is really what holds it back. The entire team is full of one-dimensional cliches that are more annoying than endearing.
The way they solve issues is almost magical. Like figuring out a password in 60 seconds or knowing critical information is in a post office box. Feels like peak bad writing - are the books this bad?
Plus, season one was shocking when it showed his brutality and nonchalant approach to violence, but when it's his entire team, they just come off as maniacs - especially when they just laugh it off.
 

Drew1440

Member
Does appear to be hit or miss so far. There's way too many silly wisecracking/quips between Reacher's team which makes them hard to take seriously. Apparently a pipe bomb can go off in Queens and the police will take their sweet time to respond.
Nice to see Robert Patrick again, even got a Terminator reference in there.
 

INC

Member
Guarantee the home alone adult looking Kevin side kick, ends up double crossing and being a bad guy.

Also reacher dude should be the new terminator, not dwayne the one dimensional rock Johnson
 
I agree this season is just not doing it for me. I think putting him with a team is really what holds it back. The entire team is full of one-dimensional cliches that are more annoying than endearing.
The way they solve issues is almost magical. Like figuring out a password in 60 seconds or knowing critical information is in a post office box. Feels like peak bad writing - are the books this bad?
Plus, season one was shocking when it showed his brutality and nonchalant approach to violence, but when it's his entire team, they just come off as maniacs - especially when they just laugh it off.
The books are awesome.
 

Mossybrew

Member
The books are awesome.
Like any long running series, there are weaker and better ones - I certainly enjoyed most of them. However Child now has "help" writing them, supposedly Blue Moon was the last one he wrote himself, but that book sucked so bad it made me stop the series there. Reacher almost feels like a different character in the book, just murdering left and right like a thoughtless terminator. It was weird. But, that was the 24th book, so there are plenty before that to enjoy.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Guarantee the home alone adult looking Kevin side kick, ends up double crossing and being a bad guy.

Also reacher dude should be the new terminator, not dwayne the one dimensional rock Johnson
He ought to be He-man in a Michael Bay reboot. Guy is a damn tank, better cash in while he can with that physique.
 
Like any long running series, there are weaker and better ones - I certainly enjoyed most of them. However Child now has "help" writing them, supposedly Blue Moon was the last one he wrote himself, but that book sucked so bad it made me stop the series there. Reacher almost feels like a different character in the book, just murdering left and right like a thoughtless terminator. It was weird. But, that was the 24th book, so there are plenty before that to enjoy.
Oh yeah, for example, I thought the second book was contrived. But generally they are books that grab you like old Stephen King used to.

I've not read the last five or six. I only read them on plane journeys or when I'm stuck at my parents-in-law for a week.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Not a big fan of this season after 3 episodes. Reacher is best when he wants to work alone and maybe allows other people to tag along. They shouldn't have skipped so many books and instead they should've kept the original formula for at least 2-3 seasons.

Couldn't care less about the heli deaths or the main villain. Season 1 had more charismatic villain characters right from the start.
 
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Alx

Member
but when it's his entire team, they just come off as maniacs - especially when they just laugh it off.
Yeah that raid on the house made them look like a bunch of psychos. "We had good reasons to think it was full of bad guys so we just went in and killed everybody".
Reacher in season 1 gave a different vibe of "leave me alone and everything will be fine, come look for trouble and you'll find it". But this is different.
 
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Tams

Member
It's alright. Not as good as season one, so be that was good at best.

Good dumb, tacky, cheesey fun watching a steroided autist beat bad guys up.

The password scene pissed me off though.
Reacher
, really?!
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Just tell me we get a good sex scene with that Dixon chick, yowzah!

Too bad the usual off the rack class Bs are not so well fitted :p

The "he fell from a helicopter vs plane" thing got me as well, where is he getting this precise info about injuries such that he can definitively rule out certain types of blunt trauma or comment on gastric contents? I get the intent of the scene, but he ought to be a little less definitive and just say "I suspect that..." and then get some confirming info later. Better writing for the audience and makes him seem less of a smug jackass all the time.

I really hope at some point a bad guy gets a good enough read on Reachers predictable behaviors to exploit it. I know the books are basically male fantasy and in the few I've read Reacher is nigh infallible but for the sake of a show it would be nice to have a little vulnerability.
 
Just watched ep 4, pretty good. But the fact that Reacher looks like he's constantly dirty / smeared with browner on his face is annoying. Or maybe another side effect of the steroids?
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Just watched ep 4, pretty good. But the fact that Reacher looks like he's constantly dirty / smeared with browner on his face is annoying. Or maybe another side effect of the steroids?
I think they're trying their best to make him look different between the flashback scenes and the present-day scenes since a lot of time is supposed to have passed. Basically just stubble and dirt though.
 
I'm always down for some wholesome violence, but the rationale for the scene at the end of episode 4 seemed so silly, esp. after the end of episode 3. Everything in this show is gratuitous, but you have to do something to obscure it.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
I am loving this second season! The team is smart and they work well together! "You don't mess with the Special Investigators!"

Also episode 4... Neighley in that dress .... and also with her hair down in the flashback .... DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!!!!
 

Tams

Member
I'm always down for some wholesome violence, but the rationale for the scene at the end of episode 4 seemed so silly, esp. after the end of episode 3. Everything in this show is gratuitous, but you have to do something to obscure it.

Eh, it was incredibly cliché anyway, so it being OTT hardly made it worse.
 
Eh, it was incredibly cliché anyway, so it being OTT hardly made it worse.
Good thing I didn't say anything at all about the violence's being OTT then. I said the reason for the show gives (the noise of gunfire) is contradicted by the end of the previous episode, where they use a pipe bomb in a residential area and then have a protracted shootout. And this makes the viewer conscious of how gratuitous the violence is, because they are changing the rules of the fictional world each episode. Your audience should be immersed in the work while they're watching it, not thinking about the writers' room.
 

Tams

Member
Good thing I didn't say anything at all about the violence's being OTT then. I said the reason for the show gives (the noise of gunfire) is contradicted by the end of the previous episode, where they use a pipe bomb in a residential area and then have a protracted shootout. And this makes the viewer conscious of how gratuitous the violence is, because they are changing the rules of the fictional world each episode. Your audience should be immersed in the work while they're watching it, not thinking about the writers' room.

I wasn't complaining about you complaining (or not) about the level of violence.

I was pointing out that Reacher is already pretty stupid, so illogical stuff that breaks the narrative is just par for the course.

Or do you really think that's how bullet'proof' vests work?

It's just good dumb fun.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Good thing I didn't say anything at all about the violence's being OTT then. I said the reason for the show gives (the noise of gunfire) is contradicted by the end of the previous episode, where they use a pipe bomb in a residential area and then have a protracted shootout. And this makes the viewer conscious of how gratuitous the violence is, because they are changing the rules of the fictional world each episode. Your audience should be immersed in the work while they're watching it, not thinking about the writers' room.
Huh? He’s saying the guys attacking him want to avoid gunfire not that he personally gives a shit about gunfire.

I love this season and find the nit picking in this thread kind of hilarious.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Ironically me and the wife's parents watched the 4 episodes from Season 2 and proceeded to watch the first 6 episodes of season 1. They enjoyed it that much.

Is his episodic or will there only be 4 episodes for season 2?
 

Trogdor1123

Member
Watched the first 3 and it’s been pretty fun. The team stuff is kind of not in line with the story but it’s fun as a whole. I’m enjoying the season, not as much as 1 but still good. Also, is the numbers girl getting more attractive as the show goes or is it me?
 
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