So I watched the first episode of Reacher on Thursday. On Friday I watched five in two shifts and on Saturday I finished the last two. Now, I’m almost sorry Amazon didn’t do to Reacher what they did for the sixth season of The Expanse because I have no will power.
For The Expanse‘s first 5 seasons the episodes were dropped all at once, but for the 6th, they released one episode each week, kind of like old school TV. So, because of that lack of will power, I have churned through all 6-1/2 hours of Reacher and now I will have to wait another year or so for more, that is, if they do decide to make more.
Anyway, I enjoyed the series and if you like that sort of tough guy takes on the world with lots of fighting, shooting, blowing things up sort of thing, you should watch it. If you have read the books, the plot of the first book is almost all there and for the most part follows right along with the novel. Almost all of the changes, except for maybe a couple of head scratchers for me anyway, are there for TV purposes, like too expensive to film or nearly impossible to recreate.
Because this was more or less an origin story for our hero, they did give us some flashbacks, that came from a short story called Second Son, to sort of explain Reacher to folks who may not be book readers. And because this is 2022 and the book was written in 1997, some of the supporting characters get some different beats to make it feel up to date. They also introduce a reoccurring character from several other Reacher books, but is not in the Killing Floor that this based is on. But that is fine and probably was done as a carrot for the actor, so she knows that there is more work coming her way.
As with the Tom Cruise movies, and I was unaware of this because of my steadfast refusal to watch them, the author Lee Child has a cameo in the show in the very last episode:
