Whores and Ale

I just wanted to kill an hour before bedtime and had kinda run out of things I wanted to watch so I finally checked out Amazon’s newish Reacher series and was frankly surprised that it is pretty entertaining so far through the first four episodes.

I’m not gonna write an in depth review, just give some general impressions. My overall take is that it is worth checking out (so far) and is almost a throw back to the old 80’s action series some of remember for being fun, if not great, television.

My favorite thing about the show is when Reacher says “No.” Being able to say “No” is what differentiates free men from slaves. He gets to say “No” a lot.

The story has some significant plot holes, but it definitely takes a backseat to just having fun watching Reacher do his thing. And he does his thing really well. I thought Cavill did a pretty good job playing the Witcher in Seaon One. Alan Ritchson does him at least one better in this show, but maybe I just think that because Witcher Season Two mostly sucked. Anyway, Ritchson is good in the role and you like him pretty quickly.

The rest of the cast is also pretty good, but Reacher really is the focus of every scene he’s in and the scenes he’s not in seem to be missing something.

The girl playing the female lead/love interest is doing a good job. It’s almost amazing how she transforms from being a mostly meh “5” when in her ponytail and cop uniform to being a solid “7” with her hair down and a little makeup on. Seeing how she is 5’5″ and Reacher/Ritchson is 6’4-5″, they must have her standing on a box when her and Reacher get face-to-face in some scenes. She pretty much falls for Reacher right away and it’s not that unbelievable. Yeah, she’s supposed to be a SIW, but she’s more like a Lois Lane with a gun compared to Reacher’s Superman.

It’s nice to see Kristen Kreuk again, even in a small role. She looks good. Better than what I’ve seen in some other fairly recent pics.

I’m hoping they can make the Detective Finlay character more interesting. The actor seems to be pretty good, but his character’s backstory just doesn’t really make any sense to me.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. It’s nice to see a non-comic book type hero duking it out with bad guys and generally winning. He’s in as much danger as a guy playing the title character can be in and it still feels like there’s actual risk involved. I’ll give it three out of four stars for now. Hope it doesn’t fall apart on the back end.

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