Review: “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” Season 2 (Amazon)
As a huge fan of the Jack Ryan novels — primarily those written only by Tom Clancy himself, though I don’t mind some of the collaboration and posthumous novels — I was hesitant to watch the first season of this show. Patriot Games was fantastic, both as a movie in its own right and an adaptation, and Clear and Present Danger was solid, though with significant departures from the novel, in my recollection. What stood out to me in those versions was that Harrison Ford (and the script in general) did an excellent job of bringing the character to life in a faithful manner. I’ve heard similar praise for The Hunt for Red October, but unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to watch a substantial amount of it.
Conversely, The Sum of All Fears failed just as surely as those succeeded; it’s a nightmare combination of Ben Affleck (who I can’t stand as an actor) ruining the character and the plot bastardizing my favorite novel in the series. It doesn’t even work as a stand alone movie, completely disregarding the source text.
The less said about Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the better.
So forgive me for being wary when new material comes out trying to “modernize” Jack Ryan and his attendant mythology.
I finally got around to seeing the first season a few months ago, knowing that the second season was around the corner, and I was pleasantly surprised. The first season was really good, and while I don’t want to do a full review here, I’d like to quickly highlight what made it work, because it informs my thoughts on Season 2.
*Spoilers for Season 1 & 2 follow*
At a fundamental level, Jack Ryan is a smart and decent guy. You can agree or disagree with him, but he’s smarter than your average person, and he endeavors towards basic human empathy — a quality whose interpretation has, of course, evolved over time. That intelligence can lead to his being headstrong and sarcastic at times, but he’s generally not an ass or a wisecracking stand-up comedian. He’s also typically not bombastic. John Krasinski did an excellent job of fitting the intelligence and basic decency into a relatable character, one who can be taken seriously by his colleagues on screen, and the audience watching him.
In the same way, the main villain, Suleiman, was a three dimensional character in Season 1. Cruel and genocidal, sure, but a character who’s motivations we could understand, while simultaneously condemning them. He was given a full character arc, from start to end of the season, delivered just as much through what we were shown, as what we were told.
The rest of the cast performed ably, and those with more than a few lines were all given legitimate reasons to be there; even auxiliary characters in the CIA offices showed aspects of forethought personality by the writers, that organically reveal themselves through interactions with Jack.
Finally, the overall plot of Season 1 was fairly tight and self contained. Across 8 episodes, the show introduces a handful of important characters, a main and several secondary storylines, and finds a way to adequately service each. It’s by turns exhilarating and contemplative, dipping into character study and plot driven investigations, action sequences and quiet, intimate moments. It set out to tell a story of subterfuge and it was handled deftly. In all, it was a really solid first season of a show, with a pilot that felt inextricably tied into what ensued, rather than tacked on to something written later.
Contrast all of this with the second season, which is meandering and totally generic, with a first episode that feels like a pilot for a totally new show, before the rest of the season kicks in, straining like an old truck 100,000 miles past its prime. Oh, and some of the character and plot points are bat shit crazy, but more on that later.
Cast
Season 2 completely clears the decks on the cast, outside of Jack, his begrudging mentor Jim Greer (Wendell Pierce), and special operative Matice (John Hoogenakker). Gone are recurring characters in the CIA, such as Deputy Director of Operations Nathan Singer (Timothy Hutton), and Jack’s fellow analysts — including pre-Aladdin breakout star Mena Massoud. Gone are the entire Suleiman clan, for obvious reasons. Most importantly, gone is Cathy Mueller (Abby Cornish), Jack’s love interest in Season 1, and Jack Ryan’s WIFE AND MOTHER OF ALL HIS CHILDREN in the novels.
Say what you will for Cathy occasionally being given short shrift in the novels, but her character is a mainstay from start to finish. I understand this TV version of Jack Ryan is charting its own course from the source material — an economics expert who worked on Wall Street before working as a CIA analyst, and was a Marine injured in a helicopter crash before that, born to a Baltimore cop, that falls in love with Dr. Cathy Mueller, is very much by the book, but I digress — but it’s incredibly callous and short sighted to dump Cathy after introducing her in Act 1. In fact, while all the other characters left behind in the writing room don’t really matter, the entire first season was essentially wiped from their memories, other than the Suleiman mission. This shared amnesia is not subtly delivered:
Jack? Anything to say?
It’s a microcosm of everything wrong with the second season. Jack’s budding romance with Cathy had major plot and character implications, both humanizing Jack and Cathy — experts in their field who could be described as intimidating in their own ways — and dovetailing their independent storylines in the barn burning finale that peaks at Cathy’s hospital.
Plot
To be clear: it’s fine. It’s a perfectly adequate spy/action show now, with solid action sequences, and credibly, if broadly, written characters. The problem is that’s not the show that was presented to us in Season 1: a well written spy thriller, that wasn’t groundbreaking, but was intriguing.
This isn’t Jack Ryan anymore. It’s Jack Bauer-lite.
Circling back to the first episode, somehow it was even more clunky than the actual S1 pilot. It’s so obviously trying to reset the focus entirely, but trying to act like it isn’t; what’s more obvious than someone furiously trying to be something they’re not? We’re thrown into the mix with Jack and his longtime best friend — conveniently party to his helicopter crash origin story that we’ve never heard of before — Senator Jim Moreno (Benito Martinez), who’s made him his right hand man, as an attaché to the Senate from the CIA. After a touching birthday celebration for Jack, thrown by Moreno’s family, who we all know and lov-… wait what? Screw it, we’re just cruising along here, no questions at this time, please. Oh, right, after Jack’s birthday, it’s off to Venezuela, for…reasons. The fact that I had to go look up why after watching the first episode three days ago says it all.
From there, our super team of Senator and elite CIA analyst-turned-Senatorial Attache are granted an immediate audience with the president of Venezuela (what?) to accuse him and his government of chicanery in the jungle. Then Senator Moreno is assassinated in the middle of Caracas the next day.
Let’s pause there for a second, before we go fully off the rails, as the show itself very much does at times.
The Moreno assassination plot involves a hit man paying off the top Venezuelan Federal Police liaison in charge of Moreno’s motorcade, Filiberto Ramos (Gustavo Angarita), tasked with leading the American convoy (consisting of the Senator, the American Ambassador to Venezuela, and Jack Ryan, and the American DSS agents protecting them) back to the embassy.
Jingoistic undertones aside, that’s par for the course for this kind of set-up; it’s certainly the most believable part of what’s to come.
The motorcade features three black SUV’s holding the Americans, a police car with 2 Venezuelan police officers (Ramos is in the passenger seat), and 2 Venezuelan motorcycle police officers. All the Venezuelan officers are in front of the motorcade, with no rear guard provided.
All three American VIP’s are in one vehicle, with a driver, in the front of the 3 SUV column.
This is idiotic. When Ramos directs the motorcade to peel off from the motorcycle officers, it’s all too easy to block their access and trap them in hit man Max Schenkel’s (Tom Wlaschiha) kill zone, consisting of hidden IED’s beneath the concrete, a car to block off both ends of the column, and Schenkel sniping from a roof top.
Credit is due to Schenkel’s plan, given the opposition facing him, but what kind of plan is this for the protection of an American Senator in a foreign city deemed unstable by our government — real life politics aside, that’s the stance presented in the show. It’s a laughable situation, yet it passes muster when measured against the response from the American government after Moreno’s assassination (which is accompanied by Ambassador Lisa Calabrese (Susan Misner) being badly wounded as well.
In the ensuing episodes, the U.S. response to this is — wait for it —
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
There is precisely ZERO response. Zero follow up. No investigation, no sanctions, no additional American agents on the ground. In what world is that possible? There ends up being a tertiary storyline involving the local law enforcement investigation (See: a stereotypical frame job of a minor league political foe of Venezuelan President Nicolás Reyes (Jordi Mollà)), used to vindicate Jack’s continued suspicion of the Venezuelan government’s complicity in the murder of his friend, and nothing at all from the U.S. government. In fact, the only official acknowledgment by the U.S. is a couple scenes of people in the embassy watching the local coverage of unconvincing press conferences where they parade the “leftist militia” members that “confessed” to the assassination.
This is an affront to me as a Clancy fan. The prevailing aspect of what made the Ryanverse so great was Clancy’s attention to detail, and skill as a researcher, that lead to vivid, yet credible, thriller writing. I remember being floored when I learned that he did that despite not having any special access to the supposed secrets he sussed out; this story, on the original iteration of The Escapist, reaffirmed the truth that he was not secretly a former government operative.
But let’s leave behind my bias as a fan of the original material; it’s fundamentally unbelievable — as in I literally don’t believe it — writing. This is immersion breaking of the highest order, a cardinal sin of entertainment.
The rest of the season has a ton of this crap: let’s traipse into the jungle camp where our investigation has led us, get into a wild firefight, and just leave the only member of the group who wasn’t trained for this or even officially in the country. Like, why the hell did Marcus “Uber” Bishop (Jovan Adepo) even get out of the damn boat and wander off into God knows what direction of the woods? Seriously, I can’t just let that go. He’s tasked with guarding the boat and just wanders off aimlessly into the woods when he here’s the mercenaries they’re investigating searching way up the hill. If he had gone out to join the rest of the team caught up in the firefight — a misguided but heroically-intentioned goal —I could have at least justified that, but the firefight starts AFTER he goes missing.
Then, he’s just left to wander the jungle for a couple episodes, with Matice, Coyote (Allan Hawko), and Disco (Victor Rasuk) transporting Jack and Greer all the way back to Caracas before going to wander the jungle looking for Uber. Their hunt eventually leads to them finding him, but being stalked by Venezuelan forces, and on the run in another firefight. To be fair, these sequences are actually shot in a compelling fashion — they damn well better be if that’s what the show is selling its soul to be. But just when things start to make a modicum of sense here — Uber finds his fighting spirit and helps his own rescue, the group is reunited with a new mission (transporting a key McGuffin to Greer), they level the playing field — the whole storyline is upended again.
Matice volunteers to lead their pursuers away while Coyote and Disco escort the overmatched Uber to safety with the device. He orders them to make for the boat without him, where they would ultimately reconvene after he ditches his tail. They agree, and head out, while Matice makes a big show of shooting and running the other way, effectively distracting the Venezuelan forces. He proceeds to lay a series of traps in his wake, showing off his bad ass skills, and having a bit of fun in his element. The booby trap explosive he, successfully, deploys against his pursuers attracts Uber’s attention, and he insists on turning back to rescue him; Coyote and Disco provide minimal resistance, despite being well trained to follow orders, Matice’s in particular.
This is mind boggling. Now, sure, this could lead to a cliched rescue of Matice, where Uber further proves his mettle to the rest, gaining the respect he so obviously craves — on top of being brutally obvious, Matice take the mantle of Basil Exposition to literally spell it out in an earlier episode. But instead, they don’t make it, and Matice is killed (now we’re down to two continuing characters from S1).
RIP Matice. You’re off to the great Bud Light commercial in the sky.
I would be inclined to give the writers props for this subversion of the cliche, except the story doesn’t go anywhere from here. Matice is dead. The surviving trio of operatives don’t get captured, providing an opportunity to feel guilt for wasting Matice’s heroic sacrifice or prove their worth by escaping capture. They don’t save him, justifying the recidivism. They don’t use their learning of the location of a prison camp nearby to further the plot; that information comes to Jack and CIA Chief of Station Mike November (Michael Kelly) by other means. It just ends up being a boondoggle that leads to the death of Matice as a plot point; it’s all textbook filler.
That’s not to say that it’s all bad, but this is a story we’ve seen in some form or another in a billion different shows and movies. The investigative plots ended up dissatisfying, if that’s your thing, which obviously it is mine. The little bit of cloak and dagger stuff that Jack gets into is a fine diversion, but nothing special; his and Harriet Baumann’s (Noomi Rapace, underutilized in the role) trip to London is fine, yielding some intrigue and a solid chase sequence. There’s not much else worth mentioning here. The main plot ends up resolving itself fairly predictably, and idiotically, from here; if you have seen Triple Frontier (we discussed that here on Flix & a Six), any of the Expendables movies, or any action movie since the mid 1980’s for that matter, you know how this all ends.
Oh, wait, back to that whole thing about this not being Jack Ryan anymore
That’s Jack Ryan on the edge, after storming the Presidential Palace in the finale, holding a gun to the head of the President of Venezuela. This is bat shit crazy. Let’s count the ways:
- Jack has been informed multiple times that he can’t assassinate a head of state, by Mike November and by President Reyes himself, though he doesn’t need to be told that because, again, he’s really, really smart. Also, he’s not a piece of shit.
- Set aside the insanity of his becoming a deadly special operator out of nowhere (his exploits in S1 were much more realistic than in this sequence, where they storm the palace in the middle of the capital, with 5 guys of varying qualifications) there’s no way anyone should have been considering diverting from their rescue mission to save the captured Greer for some simple revenge
- Finally, just for you other Clancy fans like myself, yes I find possibly rogue CIA analyst Jack Ryan murdering a head of state for killing his friend (albeit a U.S. Senator) rather than extraditing him, to be very different than President Jack Ryan ordering the death of a head of state who has perpetrated a horrendous biological attack against U.S. citizens and armed forces, in addition to acts of war, and assorted terrorist actions
Whichever version of Ryan you subscribe to — book, Season 1, or even most of Season 2 — that’s just not him. This is lowest common denominator shit.
Bonus: The Twist
*Serious Spoilers Here*
OK, raise your hand if you were able to guess that Senator Chapin was secretly the bad guy all along. Be honest now. I mean did you know before they telegraphed it in the final scene as the conversation got to its point — slowly.
Come on now.
This was, and please forgive me the profanity, fucking lazy as hell. At no point did they lay the groundwork for this twist. A good twist is one that surprises you, but then you look back and see all the clues that were pointing to it.
What clues?
A single line item on the London executive’s computer showing a Philadelphia phone number?
Come on.
It’s not like we made a big deal about Chapin being from Philadelphia. Did we ever even see a hint to that (This show hasn’t earned my effort to go back and look)? I’m as attentive a viewer as anyone, which is why I usually figure out most twists ahead of time, but even if I do, I love it if it’s well executed. Now, I’ll admit that I probably lost some brain cells on this season, but there’s not a single connection I can recall, other that Chapin being the only significant American left who COULD have been the connection.
That’s excessively lazy.
Of course, I could be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I should have been psychic and realized the writers watched a ton of Rush Hour 2 while writing this season.
You know what, shame on me, I take it back. The answer was right there in front of me all along.
Verdict
I can’t in good conscience recommend the new season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. I really enjoyed the first season, but Season 2 traded quality writing and compelling characters for brainless plotting and action. My initial reaction at the end was one of disappointment, but not dislike. I likely would have given the first season like a 7.5/10, and my first inclination for this season was something like a 6.5.
The more I think about Season 2, the more it frustrates and irritates me.
Final Score: 5.5/10
If you enjoyed this, read more from me here at The Spinchoon, and follow us on Twitter @TheSpinchoon & @AlessandroB1187. My most recent reviews were on Amazon’s The Boys, and my first Retro Review: Mass Effect. We post three times weekly, on Sports, TV, Video Games, Movies, and more. We have a movie and beer podcast too: Flix & a Six.
