YMMV / Reacher

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• Anti-Climax Boss: Both A.M. and Langston's demises in season two are massive anti-climaxes. Langston at least gets in a fight with Reacher, Dixon, and David while aboard the helicopter, but it's still over pretty quickly and Reacher simply yeets him from the helicopter. A.M's demise is the much more disappointing of the two. The show slowly showed his movements cross-country interacting with people (and being a sociopath and killing anyone who got in his way) until the finale where the crew surrounds him and then blows him away with their handguns. He never even gets to throw a punch or fire a gun at the heroes, making it a very weird anti-climactic end for a secondary character we've seen in pretty much every episode of season two and who seemed to at least be fairly formidable given how he uses a blade. Then again, the 110th has him dead to rights from the moment he reaches the farm, and no matter how good someone is with a knife, they're never going to be a threat to four people holding them at gunpoint.
• Ass Pull: Many fans feel that after having established Reacher as a formidable, near superhuman tank, especially having shown him take down a group of hardened thugs in prison all by himself (where even a shank got involved), having him struggle against Kliner's much shorter and smaller nephew Dawson to the point where Dawson nearly successfully killed him (and would've successfully killed him if it weren't for the gun Roscoe gave him) made no sense, crowbar or no crowbar, as Reacher should've been able to make quick work of Dawson in the matter of seconds like he did so many others before him, especially since Dawson was never established as having any sort of fighting or martial arts skills or strength (Dawson had even literally kicked Reacher straight in the chest with absolutely no effect earlier in the season), which made his all-of-a sudden serious challenge to Reacher one-on-one seem like it was pulled out of thin air rather than a fight with closeness that made any sense.
• Complete Monster:
  • Season 1: KJ Kliner is the son of mogul Kliner in the town of Margrave. The eventual head of the counterfeiting operation, KJ is a sadistic brat who loves to hurt others and murders Joe Reacher to keep him from exposing the operation. Possessing a love of torture, KJ murders everyone else in his way, including a police officer and his pregnant wife. One unfortunate man, Paul Hubble, is forced to work with the counterfeiters after KJ had a man crucified and castrated in front of him with promises Hubble would suffer the same fate, as well as having his wife and children threatened. Murdering his own father in a painful manner when he decides that his father lacks the spine to do the necessary dirty work, KJ attempts to kill Reacher and all his allies for the sport of it, and displays a psychotic relish at the thought of killing Roscoe and Hubble's family in horrific ways.
  • Season 2:
    • Shane Langston is the chief of security for New Age, who seeks to use his position to exploit the company's new technology for profit, no matter how many lives are lost. Langston plans to sell 650 "Little Wing" missile microchips to the weapons dealer A.M., indifferent that the tech will be used by terrorists to bring down civilian airplanes and kill thousands. When members of Reacher's old unit, the 110th, accidentally stumble across the scheme, Langston has them kidnapped, brutally tortured, then murdered by being thrown out of a helicopter, threatening the woman who hired them with a similar fate for herself and her young daughter. Langston dispatches a variety of trigger-happy thugs to kill the rest of the 110th with no concern for the collateral body count they rack up, and after a failed attempt to torture and kill the rest of his enemies, Langston ditches his allies to die to save his own skin, and promises to later target the loved ones of the 110th to finish them off.
    • A.M. is the middleman in Langston's plan to sell Little Wing to terrorists, uncaring about the amount of lives they'll take. An infamous arms dealer and complete blank wanted by Homeland Security for selling weapons to terrorist organizations, A.M. makes a habit of killing people to ensure zero traces of his identity are left behind. This includes killing two men he bought fake passports from; murdering a plastic surgeon to steal his identity, then killing his secretary for good measure; and murdering a cop for giving him a warning ticket.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Reacher gives off the impression of being on the spectrum more than once. His very blunt manner makes it appear he lacks understanding of social cues and his encyclopedic knowledge of many topics hints at hyperfixation, never mind the fact he'd decided on a whim to just visit a town that was maybe the death site of a musician he was a fan of. At the same time, he reads people far too well for most forms of autism, and he has the insight to not break bad news to people if he can help it, so this is clearly not a matter of not realising this isn't appropriate and more a lack of care for it in most cases.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lazy yet competent and concerned medical examiner Jasper is only in about half of the episodes and only has a few scenes per episode, but fans like him and his expanded role.
  • Officer Stevenson is kept out of most of the action due to the characters not knowing whether they can trust him, but he is well-liked for being a Nice Guy who is helpful when he has a chance to be. His Death by Adaptation is one of the few sore spots for many fans of the original book.
  • Russo, the NYPD detective who has a Face of a Thug and gets some Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with Reacher in season 2, is almost as well-liked as Reacher and his special investigators. Fans were not happy when he appears to succumb to a bullet wound in episode 6.
  • Sheep in Sheep's Clothing casino security chief Wright, a friend of Reacher's friends Sanchez and Orozco, makes a strong impression despite only being in one episode.
• Fight Scene Failure: The fight Reacher and Kliner's nephew Dawson have had some viewers turned off due to Reacher's seeming superhuman durability from the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown Dawson subjected him to (taking multiple crowbar blows to the arms, torso and head should've killed and maimed Reacher two times over). Reacher doesn't even show any signs of bruising or damage afterwards, walking the whole fight off as though it were nothing, which is made all the more egregious by how well Ritchson sold Reacher getting his ass kicked.
• Franchise Original Sin: The season 2 Reacher/Dixon romance hasn't been well-received for feeling tacked on and needless for the story, even though its following the same seasonal Girl of the Week trend the first season had with Reacher/Roscoe. The big difference ultimately that while Roscoe and Reacher had a relatively chill, casual romance that builds up from spending time together working on the case, Dixon is introduced as a New Old Flame who we're informed her and Reacher were obviously into one-another before she even appeared, and Neagley is clearly playing Shipper on Deck before they've had a scene together. When they finally do, the attraction feels far less organic, like its meant to be much more important despite minimally affecting the story meaningfully, and results in a feeling of being tacked on and forced. Not helping matters is Roscoe received significant development as a character, even getting her own archenemy in the story and a separate subplot with her late mentor, while Dixon has had little development as a character outside of the core "avenge Franz" story and her only personal drama is mostly to establish her as newly single.
• Friendly Fandoms: With fans of DC Comics, due to Alan Ritchson's history with working in live action DC works like Smallville and Titans (2018) and general popularity within the online nerdsphere. Due to his improved bulk for the role of Reacher, Ritchson became the fan-favourite choice to play Batman in James Gunn's rebooted DCU film slate, something Ritchson's acknowledged and expressed interest in.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Even after the reveal that signs Tony Swan might be alive in season 2 were due to a Borrowed Byometric Bypass, some fans still hope that he survived the experience.
  • It's mentioned that two bodies were recovered from the helicopter in the season 2 finale, but given how the dead body of Langston's right-hand man was still onboard the last time the interior of the chopper was seen, either the pilot or the engineer may have survived.
• Improved Second Attempt: So far, the series is considered a better Jack Reacher adaptation than the Tom Cruise films with the character being Truer to the Text both physically and in behavior and the plot being given more time to develop over a season compared to a two-hour film.
• Love to Hate: KJ Kliner is a positively loathsome piece of work who gets a thrill from hurting others, including children and his own father, and every scene he is in makes clear what a smug, bratty, sadistic little bastard he is. But Chris Webster gives him enough charisma and smarmy charm and the writing does a good job of showing that being an insufferable brat doesn't mean he also isn't incredibly dangerous and he has enough nerves to never back down from facing Reacher or be intimidated by him that he's hard not to enjoy, even as you're waiting for Reacher to give him his well-deserved comeuppance.
• Narm:
  • The sheer amount of times characters, even total strangers, comment on and reference Reacher's size borders on this, as though the writers can't trust the audience to see it for themselves and are desperate to remind everyone that they aren't repeating the films' controversial casting of Tom Cruise in the role.
    • Somewhat related, but the way a lot of characters still try to physically intimidate Reacher, despite his towering size and bulk, and particularly when they know what he's capable of, with special mention going to Russo repeatedly declaring with absolute confidence he would win a fight with Reacher despite being half his size, out of shape, and knowing full well who Reacher is and his military history. It can be hard to take seriously when its so reminiscent of the "Undercover Nerd" bit from The Simpsons.
  • It's regularly claimed that Jack and his brother Joe look and sound nearly identical, to the point of those who knew Joe being shocked by the similarities and saying they'd have known who Jack was based solely on the similarities. Then we finally see Joe as an adult in a flashback...and he's played by Christopher Russell, who doesn't look or sound a thing like Alan Ritchson and has nothing physically in common with him but similar height.
  • In flashbacks Joe keeps telling Reacher not to cry, but when he finally gives Reacher permission to do so (in itself narm-y), it's done in such a dull way that it detracts from the scene's tragedy (the brother's had just said one last good-bye to their dying mother). What makes it worse is that Alan Ritchson's eyes really do well up, but someone decided to CGI a Single Tear onto the actor and the end result looks like a stream of melted plastic.
  • While it is taken directly from the books, the 110th's catchphrase, "You do not mess with the Special Investigators", has been derided as awkward and clunky. It's especially hard to take seriously when Season 2 sees heavy use of the line despite beginning with half of the 110th dropping like flies. One such deceased member's (newly fatherless) son even says it, making it seem far more like denial than any form of Badass Boast.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Nothing about the attraction between Dixon and Reacher in season two has any relevance. It doesn't affect either of them personally nor does it affect the plot. It seems rather gratuitous.
• Signature Scene: The prison shower scene where Reacher effortlessly and brutally demolishes numerous opponents in seconds has been lauded by many for being an exceptionally well made and brutal fight scene that perfectly shows Reacher's incredible fighting skills, his shockingly fast moves and extremely ruthless fighting style. It was even used in numerous promos for the show and praised by Lee Child as being what won him over to the series.
• Special Effects Failure: The digital flames used in the warehouse fire during season one's climax don't look particularly realistic, though of course real fire couldn't be used at that scale on an enclosed set for safety reasons. Note that when KJ is set on fire and killed the flames on the firesuited stuntman are noticeably different because they're, well, real.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Fans of the books already mourn how Special Investigator Stan Lowrey died in a random accident before working with Reacher (and only has a minor role in his one flashback appearance in later books) despite being a street-smart investigator with Call to Agriculture Hidden Depths. His meeting the same fate in the show is even more frustrating, though, given how this version of him is also established as being the best marksman of the group and is decades older than his peers, which could have given him an interesting place in their team dynamics.
  • Sanchez and Orozco, to an extent, once we find out they were Killed Offscreen sometime around the same time as Franz. Given it was already personal for Reacher and the Special Investigators with the murder of Franz, their deaths end up feeling a little unneeded and border on Forgotten Fallen Friend given Franz's murder remains the most prominent on their minds. We don't even really know much about them as characters (especially in comparison to their book counterparts), or how they contributed to the unit, while their deaths are ultimately unnecessary as by the time we find out they're dead, we've already found out Franz' murder wasn't connected to the 110th.
  • After all of the build up of watching the middle man A.M moving through the country to eventually meet up with Langston... He walks into a trap and is blown away by the Special Investigations unit. He never so much as throws a punch or fires a gun at them. He just stands there talking until Reacher shoots him and then they all proceed to wipe him out with extreme prejudice. Why spend so much time with him leading up to the finale if he's just going to get blown away without a confrontation or anything to justify why so much time was spent on his travel to make the deal for Little Wing?
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While it makes sense not to adapt One Shot after it was already the basis of the movie and there are plenty of other books, it can be disappointing that the entire story is casually and seemingly definitively eliminated as a plot line in a much later potential season by a quick line of dialogue when the book had so many interesting characters and plot twists which could have gotten a second chance somewhere down the road after being cut from the movie.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Both the Helicopter pilot and The Engineer getting blown up by Neagley is seen as this by some. While the Pilot’s morality was questionable with his Just Following Orders excuse, the Engineer however showed no signs of being anything more than a simple guy who was just hired by the wrong people. What makes it worse is the fact this is nothing like the book where Book Reacher spares the engineer once he realizes he’s being forced to comply while he executes the helicopter pilot after confirming he flew his comrades to their deaths. But because the Engineer was hired by A.M, that is enough reason to be gleefully blown up.
  • Despite how he Would Hurt a Child and kills fan favorite Russo, Grant can inspire some sympathy among fans for the Cold-Blooded Torture Reacher puts him through after he was shown viewing his work as Dirty Business more than most of the other villains in the season.
• The Un Twist: Season 2 makes such a point of Swan possibly being dirty that it would have been a genuine twist if had actually turned out to be true, rather than a misdirect. Given how, despite these hints, he remained entirely offscreen, almost felt like confirmation of it being a misdirect, as it made it clear they were deliberately avoiding outright confirming Swan being part of the badguys.

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