Reacher and Democrats Are Boring

 

I just finished the “Reacher” series on Amazon Prime, and I was reminded of why I don’t watch television.  I have become so sensitized to the relentless politicization of previously non-political things (like weather, sports, and now mystery / thriller novels) that I’m annoyed by the fact that I know what’s coming before I turn on the TV.  In fact, I’m going to skip the typical spoiler alert here.  Because there are no spoilers, because everyone knows what’s going to happen already.

Which brings up my first complaint about this movie (actually an eight episode TV series) – the good guys are so good and the bad guys are so bad.  I’ve never met anyone so good, or so bad, as they are presented in this movie.  Which makes it oddly foreign and disconcerting, and less enjoyable than you might expect – like a porn star with ridiculously enormous fake boobs.  It should be wonderful, but it’s difficult to enjoy, for some reason.  But anyway, a quick summary of the movie:

The protagonist is Jack Reacher – an ex-military police investigator.  He’s like a cartoon character.  He’s the tallest, most athletic, most brilliant, most muscular, most virtuous, most handsome, most likable, most honest, most everything man anyone has ever met.  Which, like the porn star above, can feel sort of foreign and disconcerting.  Difficult to connect with emotionally.  Even difficult to root for, at times, for some reason.

In my view, the genius of Shakespeare is that every person you’ve ever met appears somewhere in a Shakespeare play.  Strengths, weaknesses, tragic flaws – all on full display.  Jack Reacher is not a Shakespearian character.  He’s not supposed to be, of course.  But it’s hard to root for a being that is so unlike anyone I’ve ever met.

The complex reality of the characters is what makes Shakespeare so engaging and edifying.  You understand the struggles of the characters, because you recognize their strengths and flaws.  Sometimes the good guys do bad things, and sometimes the bad guys do good things.  There is a lot of grey in a Shakespeare play.

Reacher is black and white.  Black is all good.  White is all bad.  And that’s it.  There are reasons to write books like that, I suppose.  But one of those reasons is not to be engaging or edifying.

Mr. Reacher is played by Alan Ritchson.  At 6’2”, he is shorter than Mr. Reacher’s 6’5”, but they fill the supporting cast with shorter actors to make Reacher look enormous.  My wife is a big fan of this actor:

Me:  Reacher is supposed to be huge.

Wife:  C’mon – Alan Ritchson is incredibly muscular!  Wow!  He should take his shirt off more!

Me:  He’s supposed to be 6’5”.

Wife:  In a movie, 6’2” is enough, if everyone else is short.

Me:  A leading role like this requires a phenomenally talented actor.

Wife:  C’mon – Alan Ritchson is incredibly muscular!  Wow!  He should take his shirt off more!

Me:  Ah.  Right.

And since Reacher is supposed to be a stoic man of few words, an understated actor is sort of appropriate here.  So, fine.  Plus, my wife enjoys him enough that she watches the show with me.  So, fine.  I can deal with her shouting from her end of the couch, “Take your shirt off!!!”  Apparently, he does his best acting with no shirt on.  All actors have their strengths and weaknesses, I suppose.  So, fine.

The love interest is Willa Fitzgerald.  She’s a good actress with a bad southern accent, who meets the modern standard of beauty:  an unpleasant scowl and the body of an adolescent boy.  Following modern feminism’s goal of becoming more feminine by being more like men, she is a no-nonsense cop with a man’s name:  Roscoe Conklin.

Roscoe is the only character in the movie who is never scared of anything.  She is also sensitive, and brutal, and intelligent, and sensual, and vindictive, and honest, and compassionate, and absolutely everything else that you could possibly imagine.

How do you fall in love with someone who has no faults?  I didn’t realize that it was so difficult.  Ouch!!!  Oh, right.  Sorry.  Um, except in the case of my wife, of course.

Anyway, Reacher did manage to fall in love with someone who has no faults, but he has no faults either.  So there you go.  But myself, with all my faults – I struggled.  I found Roscoe hard to love.  Which made an uninteresting movie even less interesting.

Another interesting feature of this uninteresting movie was the lack of uncertainty about who the good guys and bad guys are.  And the fact that no one is anywhere in between.  Besides our two protagonists, Reacher and Roscoe, there are only good guys and bad guys in this movie:  The good guys are all black, and the bad guys are all white.  And again, the good guys are all good, and the bad guys are all bad.  No exceptions.

The movie takes place in fictional Margrave, Georgia.  It is a small town in the American South with almost no black people.  Which, if you’ve ever been south of, say, Harrisburg, that may seem a bit odd.  But the very few black people in this town are the only beacons of virtue in the entire region.

There is a black barber in town, who is the only citizen of this town who has not been bought off by the corporate villain.  The entire police force is comprised of overweight white males with southern accents, except for the 85-pound tough-guy lady cop Roscoe and a black man from Boston with a Harvard education and a tweed suit.  Neither of them fit in with the locals, and thus are intelligent, honest, and virtuous.

Another striking feature of the good guys in this movie is that their every thought and every act is absolutely selfless.  Their only consideration is for the good of the community, and their own self-interest never – and I mean never – enters their mind.  Again, I’ve not encountered such people during my life.

Meanwhile, the villain is an evil greedy selfish corporation made up of all white evil greedy selfish men, who (I swear I’m not making this up) are sexist, racist homophobes who destroy the environment, are mean to dogs, and cheat on their taxes.  I swear.

This is why I don’t like James Bond movies.  The villains are more absurd than Mr. Bond.  “Ha ha!  I will destroy the world!!!”  I mean, I just don’t get it.  Why?

So I don’t understand purely evil people, because I’ve never met one.  Everyone I’ve ever met is a combination of good and bad.

Margrave, Georgia is a town of 1,700 overweight rural simpletons who enthusiastically promote an evil, murderous corporation because it keeps their town square mowed neatly.  I wish I were exaggerating.  Where does one find 1,700 such people?

The author Lee Child apparently thinks you find such people in rural Georgia.  But I’ve been to rural Georgia, and the people I’ve met give more thought to things than Mr. Child apparently does.  They are more prone to fact-finding and analysis, and less prone to presumptions and stereotypes.  But whatever.  It makes for an entertaining read, right?

Right.  I guess.  Or at least, it should make for an entertaining read, I suppose…

But that is the central problem for our intrepid author.  How does one write a mystery / thriller when everyone knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are before they even start the book?  If all the black people are good, and all the white people are bad, where is the mystery?  How do you keep people interested in a thriller in which you know what is going to happen?

Mr. Child attempts to keep his readers interested by adding torture and other shocking elements along the way, and by concealing the central crime committed until the end.  The other crimes the villain commits (sexism, torture, dog abuse, racism, obesity, murder, poor fashion sense, and so on) are just tricks to keep his readers engaged.  But the full scope of the villain’s crimes is a mystery, sort of.  You know they’re very bad.  But what bad things precisely are they doing?  That’s the hook.  Such as it is.

Margrave’s version of Boss Hogg is competently played by Bruce McGill.  But even though he is probably the chief villain, he’s only a bit part, because we all know how white and overweight and Southern he really is.  So why spend time on such a character?

Once he is presented as white and overweight and Southern, he is obviously pure evil, and there is no need to develop his character any further.  Which is boring.

Once we all agree that certain people are good, and other people are bad, and that’s it – at that point, nothing is interesting anymore.


I watched the last three episodes of Reacher tonight with my wife and a few glasses of bourbon.  Then she started channel surfing, trying to decide if she wanted to watch some nice rural people renovate a house for a biracial lesbian couple who need an office upstairs to run their charitable foundation for social justice causes, or whether she wanted to watch figure skating in the Chinese Communist games.

That would have been a funny sentence if I had made it up.  Sadly, it’s true, so it’s not funny at all.

Anyway, I decided I’d had enough TV, so Jim Beam and I sat down to jot down a few thoughts.  Which turned into this enormous treatise.

But as I sit here, it occurs to me that this is why the Democratic Party is so joyless, so ruthless, so humorless, so irrational, so vicious, and so boring.

I couldn’t stay interested in Reacher because I don’t see the world that way.  I don’t see people as purely good or purely evil.  I don’t think all black people are all good, and all white people are all bad.  I don’t think all corporations are purely evil.  I don’t think that bad people are purely selfish, and that good people are purely selfless.

I don’t see the world that way, so it was difficult for me to suspend my disbelief adequately to become interested in what these uninteresting characters were doing.

But this is how Democrats see the world.  All people are purely good or purely evil.  All black people are good, and all white people are bad.  Corporations are evil, bad people are selfish, and good people are selfless.  Imagine the implications of such a worldview:

If the bad people are that bad, why would you listen to their opinions?  Why would you be interested in their votes on anything?  Why would you even allow them to be heard?  If your adversary is pure evil, what are the limits on your efforts to defeat them?

Any of your colleagues who even allow such evil to be heard must be evil as well.  In a binary system, there is no room for compromise.

Which might make sense, I suppose, except that people are not that simple.  That’s what makes Shakespeare and The Bible so interesting.  They don’t ignore the good qualities of bad people, or the bad qualities of good people.  In fact, they focus on such things.  That’s what makes life interesting.  There is much to be learned there.

If you intentionally ignore the complex contradictions inherent in all people, then you can’t learn anything.  You also can’t find humor in anything.  You forget how to think – how to consider positives and negatives – how to balance risks and rewards – how to make rational decisions in complex situations.  And you can’t forgive anyone for anything – not even yourself.  So your contempt for others inevitably devolves to self-loathing.  You can’t find joy in life.  You can’t even experience life – all you can see is a dreary spreadsheet.

Autotune has killed modern music.  It’s so perfect, that it has no soul.  Music doesn’t even sound like music anymore.  It sounds phony.  It’s no longer interesting.

Leftism has killed entertainment.  It’s so perfect, that it has no soul.  People don’t even act like people anymore.  It sounds phony.  It’s no longer interesting.

Leftists are boring.  No wonder they’re miserable.  I would be, too.  What a boring, dreary world they live in.

I resent being forced to live in their world.  What an awful place.

I miss America.  What a wonderful place.  What a crazy, disorganized, fascinating, amazing, stimulating, wonderful place.

I’d love to go back.

I hope we all can, one day.

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  1. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Dr. Bastiat: Margrave’s version of Boss Hogg is competently played by Bruce McGill.

    Well he also had Roscoe Coltrane, er Conklin.

    • #1
  2. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    Great essay.

    Trivia:  Bruce McGill is rarely recognized as having played “D-Day“ in Animal House. 

    • #2
  3. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    You had me at the big, fake boob analogy.  BTW, I’m white.  I’m fat.  I live below the Mason-Dixon line.  So I’m bad, right?

    Baaaddd man!

    But I feel good.

    What’s up with that?

    • #3
  4. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    Dr. Bastiat: Wife:  C’mon – Alan Ritchson is incredibly muscular!  Wow!  He should take his shirt off more!

    I never read the books and don’t even have Amazon Prime, so I can’t comment on the character, but my wife saw a trailer and yes, I have heard that comment as well.

    • #4
  5. Chuck Coolidge
    Chuck
    @Chuckles

    Is this a colorized version of a photo taken around 1932 in Germany?

    • #5
  6. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    Lee Child may be an unreflective lefty, but I have always found the Reacher books to be light fun. If I want Shakespeare, well, there’s Shakespeare. But sometimes I’m in the mood for an omnicompetent hero that just gets things done. The books’ trope of “Reacher said nothing” probably doesn’t translate so well to TV but is deployed to great effect across the series. I haven’t seen the last episode, but Reacher-the-series is so much less offensive than almost anything else today t earns a thumb’s up from me. I knew you wanted to know. 

    • #6
  7. John H. Member
    John H.
    @JohnH

    Oh, I don’t know…naming anyone or anything Roscoe Conkling or similar is pretty daring.  I doubt the name was chosen at random. America certainly was a more interesting place when the guy was active. Well, I’m probably overthinking this. The name could’ve been chosen merely because somebody once heard it in high school and liked its funny sound, and not because ardent abolitionists who were mayors of Utica NY and also declined to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court even after being confirmed to it are in any way notable nowadays.

    • #7
  8. Nohaaj Coolidge
    Nohaaj
    @Nohaaj

    There was a previous Rico review of Reacher, that I didn’t comment on, because it seemed so unlike my experience.  Your description really matched mine. It was sooo predictable, especially the fight scenes.  You also have a gift of correlating your observations to Democrats, which in general, appear to me to not have any of the nuanced behaviors or morals that Shakespeare imbued into his characters.  They are like the bad guys in Reacher.  All bad, all self-serving.  Shame for them, and scary for America. 

    • #8
  9. WiesbadenJake Coolidge
    WiesbadenJake
    @WiesbadenJake

    Stereotypes of southerners, especially whites, are always interesting to me. Other than south Texas, I have always lived in the north or west. Several years ago, during a hurricane evacuation from the Savannah area, my brother’s motor home lost its brakes. He pulled off the highway and within minutes a man stopped, looked at his brakes and told him to drive slowly to the next off-ramp, that he had a metal fabrication business just off the ramp. My brother did; the man replaced his brake lines–for free. Whenever I see stereotypical portrayals of white southerners I think of this quote by Flannery O’Connor:

    “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”
    ― Flannery O’Connor

    My experiences in traveling through the south is that the people we have encountered, regardless of race , have been friendly and helpful. 

    • #9
  10. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    There was a previous Rico review of Reacher, that I didn’t comment on, because it seemed so unlike my experience. Your description really matched mine. It was sooo predictable, especially the fight scenes. You also have a gift of correlating your observations to Democrats, which in general, appear to me to not have any of the nuanced behaviors or morals that Shakespeare imbued into his characters. They are like the bad guys in Reacher. All bad, all self-serving. Shame for them, and scary for America.

    Yeah, well, he’s pretty much shown him to be the simpleton he is, so not surprising.

    • #10
  11. sawatdeeka Member
    sawatdeeka
    @sawatdeeka

    OP: Margrave, Georgia is a town of 1,700 overweight rural simpletons. 

    Ha, ha. Funny line. 

     

    • #11
  12. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    I was an avid reader of the Reacher books until the one where he encountered an army deserter and left him alone because the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan were bad wars.  I dropped them like a hot potato after that.  Besides being an annoying leftie trope, it wasn’t even true to the character. I always assumed Child was a Brit since he uses the word “Perspex” in the first book of the series.  (Turns out he’s Anglo-Irish).  I should have known better than to have accepted that a non-veteran foreigner could write books about such a character but he fooled me for a while. 

    • #12
  13. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    I was disappointed that the portrayal of Venezuelan hitmen was so one-dimensional: where was the exploration of the anomie caused by the betrayal of the Chavez revolution? Or the complex interactions of their diverse and mixed ethnicities, religions and cultures? If only this thriller has less action and more sociological nuance…

    • #13
  14. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Drek.  I won’t get into criticizing young(ish) actors today, but didn’t Nora Desmond say, “The eyes!

    Gary Marshall once said that stars, unlike normal people, are always thinking.  That may be true or not, but his point was that you could always see them thinking, and what they were thinking, through their eyes.  I don’t get amazon but I watched all the promos a few times on youtube and I’ve got to say that when Reacher was staring down the guy who was threatening his girlfriend, I watched and watched (several times) and I couldn’t see one thought other than “I’ve got to keep this stern expression for 30, 29, 28… more seconds.”

    I accidentally watched a Tom Cruz’s Reacher just crouching and looking up, and I saw more going on in his head in those three seconds than in all of the TV Reacher’s scenes combined.

    How bad was the smell of that peach pie?  10, 9, 8…

    • #14
  15. DonG (Keep on Truckin) Coolidge
    DonG (Keep on Truckin)
    @DonG

    I have read almost all the Reacher books and I enjoyed the series.  Sure, the actor is too “yoked”, but he is a better fit than Tom Cruise.   I guess Dolph Lundgren was unavailable:)  I found the series to be mostly true to the books.  Reacher was motivated by revenge, which is not a “purely good” thing.  Same with his “kill them all” plan.  I think the biggest flaw was they had Reacher sit with his back to the window. 

    • #15
  16. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    DonG (Keep on Truckin) (View Comment):
    Reacher was motivated by revenge, which is not a “purely good” thing. 

    Unless his adversary was purely evil.  Then, Reacher’s actions are purely good, regardless of how vicious they are.

    I mean, c’mon – what would you not do to selflessly free these helpless provincial rubes from the evil that oppresses them?

    If your adversary is evil, you can do whatever you want.  Just ask Black Lives Matter.

    • #16
  17. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    They apparently decided to start at the beginning–perhaps to form a narrative base for later books.  The downside to that is we get early Reacher and early Lee Child.  I did not think the adapted book was a particularly strong entry in the series.

    • #17
  18. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    I liked the books.

    I liked the series.

    • #18
  19. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    I quite thoroughly enjoyed it.  I loved how every time he walked up to the police station, another cop car was driving off siren wailing.  “Theres been another body.”

    That being said after the third cop killing the FBI and national media would be all over that town.  There is no way the Mayor could have kept that covered up.  

    I feel this show is set in the same universe as Road House.

    • #19
  20. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    If you wanna restore your faith in humanity, Dr Bastiat, head over to youtube and play white Canadian rapper Tom McDonald for a while.

    He is over the top in calling out all the various perfidies that have cancelled so much from our culture, including Donald Trump, economic heights of 2017 to early 2020, white people, ability to debate unless you wanna be called racist.

    I never knew I could really dig a rapper. But he is prankster, comedian, truth teller all rapped in one.

    The actors and actresses he has in the video have the exact nuance of “smirk” that we retro white people have come to expect as the refrain to our simply   trying to keep it together.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxJtX081jj4The

    • #20
  21. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    I quite thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how every time he walked up to the police station, another cop car was driving off siren wailing. “Theres been another body.”

    That being said after the third cop killing the FBI and national media would be all over that town. There is no way the Mayor could have kept that covered up.

    I feel this show is set in the same universe as Road House.

    But at least Swayze was a tortured soul forced by circumstances to face his demons and prevail.

    • #21
  22. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Flicker (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    I quite thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how every time he walked up to the police station, another cop car was driving off siren wailing. “Theres been another body.”

    That being said after the third cop killing the FBI and national media would be all over that town. There is no way the Mayor could have kept that covered up.

    I feel this show is set in the same universe as Road House.

    But at least Swayze was a tortured soul forced by circumstances to face his demons and prevail.

    Aided and abetted by a hot MD.

    • #22
  23. The Other Diane Coolidge
    The Other Diane
    @TheOtherDiane

    I haven’t read the books, and hubby and I are partway through the series and agree that we are B-O-R-E-D so far.  We loved Jack Ryan (especially the first season) so we keep watching hoping that it will improve.  Shirtless Reacher helps, I admit, and hubby didn’t have any objection to seeing Roscoe shirtless either.  

    I thought of Boss Mongo during the scene where Reacher came up behind the Latin American bad guys and shot them.  Sheesh.  Clearly nobody with military experience was working on the set that night.  Reacher came out of the covering tall grass and walked boldly toward the guys in the middle of a field and then shot them from behind.  Really??  The bad guys wouldn’t have been looking around for the mysteriously missing man?  They wouldn’t have heard him walking up behind them?  He couldn’t have just shot them from cover, or at least crouched as he approached to give them less of a target to shoot at?

    Ok, rant over.  Thanks for posting, @drbastiat.  It helps to know we aren’t alone in our disappointment with the series so far.  Hopefully it will improve in the second season because, like, you know, Reacher does look pretty darn good when he takes that shirt off.

    • #23
  24. Al Sparks Coolidge
    Al Sparks
    @AlSparks

    I made it through two episodes, before I dropped it.

    I’ve already commented on it on another post thread, but this OP better reflects my thoughts on it.  That being said, a review of Reacher isn’t worth that much time. 

    • #24
  25. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Dr. Bastiat: How do you fall in love with someone who has no faults?  I didn’t realize that it was so difficult.  Ouch!!!  Oh, right.  Sorry.  Um, except in the case of my wife, of course.

    That’s what you get for letting her watch you post . . .

    • #25
  26. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Nohaaj (View Comment):

    There was a previous Rico review of Reacher, that I didn’t comment on, because it seemed so unlike my experience. Your description really matched mine. It was sooo predictable, especially the fight scenes. You also have a gift of correlating your observations to Democrats, which in general, appear to me to not have any of the nuanced behaviors or morals that Shakespeare imbued into his characters. They are like the bad guys in Reacher. All bad, all self-serving. Shame for them, and scary for America.

    I though this review shed considerable light on the other reviewer.

    • #26
  27. Andy Perkins Member
    Andy Perkins
    @TAPerkLaw

    Reacher could be titled Have Fists Will Travel.  I’ve always enjoyed the formula of the loner who helps those in need and then breezes out of town. (The Fugitive, Quantum Leap, etc.)

    You’re right, the characters are not complex. But with Reacher’s outsized skills, the “Will the protagonist will prevail?” tension takes a back seat to the spectacle of how he gets there–and to asking the reader, “Would you do this if you could?”  

     

    • #27
  28. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Related to what I said above, the Reacher books are very much tied to the villains.  Not only do the bad guys provide justification for Reacher’s “violent tendencies,” but the evil portrayed is often sufficiently interesting to drive the plot out of the realm of cliche.   This book doesn’t really do that, but Child improves the technique as the series moves along.

    • #28
  29. navyjag Coolidge
    navyjag
    @navyjag

    Doc. first time I will take Gary R’s opinion over yours. Best TV I have seen since the mini series about the 101 Airborne in Europe over 15 years ago.  Just pretend the bad guys are Anitfa. But making counterfeit money. Which goes to drugs.  Will now stay off TV now until football starts again. Unless I hear of another Reacher series. About 12 books to go. 

    • #29
  30. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Al Sparks (View Comment):
    a review of Reacher isn’t worth that much time

    That very thought crossed my mind about halfway through.  But I was trying to get to my comparison with leftism, so I persevered…

    • #30
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