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Comment by melvinram | Hacker News Reader

Jack Ryan and Reacher are pretty good.

Reacher's first season was good. Second season turned into a bad action movie. Bad writing, little time spent on characters/development while adding six new characters we were given no reason to know or care about.

It is legitimately too bad, they really had something with S1.

Reacher is based on the books. The ‘new’ characters were in the book (they were part of Reacher’s team and were being killed off).

That is very authentic to the books.

eh, both had great 1st season and then they were terrible in the following seasons.

"Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn. Its moral turpitude is only exceeded by the risible "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" that somehow wants me to like protagonists who kill and hurt strangers without any justification. I've loved everything Donald Glover was in, until now. Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn that utterly disrespects everything Tolkien made. Above all, Amazon's blatant anti-labor practices and monopolistic size makes it an important company to avoid. There are many smaller, better companies that specialize in different markets and offer better deals and support, and if they do err at least they will do so at a much smaller scale (personally I like alibris for books, discogs for music, b&h photo for electronics, the local dollar store for supplies like toothpaste and detergent, and the local thrift store for everything else).

> "Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn.

> Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn

You are aware not everything needs to be political, right? Sometimes bad television is just bad television...

I think it's an accurate description that successfully conveys the manipulative, puerile, and harmful nature of these shows in a compact way. My description isn't political in the "right vs left" sense although I admit it may be political in the "extremism vs moderate" sense. Personally, I think that the information we consume cannot help but shape our world-view, so identifying how it shapes our world-view is valid criticism. Reacher and Galadriel are, in my view, icons of their respective flavors of extremism, and I think Amazon does poorly to produce such content.

Have you actually watched Reacher? There is no politics in it at all. It's reminiscent of poorly written 80's action flicks, disguised as a noir mystery.

Again, sometimes bad television is simply bad television. Not everything needs political coloring.

"Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder" is an inherently political framework for a story. It is as politically tainted as the old show "24", where any and all ethical frameworks were shredded on the altar of the ticking bomb scenario.

Please explain the politics of "Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder". Specifically, what is the political message being pushed?

That the maintenance of the rule of law requires One True Man to stand outside the law and protect us through extrajudicial killing and torture. It is a statement on the core concept of law and justice.

Ok, and what are the politics of that statement, if any?

You seem to have some definition of politics that differs from the one I use. Politics is discourse and debate about the form of government and the exercise of power. As such, the political statement of "Reacher" or "24" is exactly what I described above: the implication that it is necessary to have someone who breaks all the laws, in order to maintain the system of laws.

Note that in the past we have had pop culture artifacts that argue the opposite, that stand for the triumph of the rule of law over individuals who arrogate extrajudicial powers to themselves. "A Few Good Men" was such a statement.

In the books, Reacher was violent when he needed to be. The author made him ‘huge/large’ and his size enabled his act of violence/ability to mete out justice to the bad guys. Reacher’s size in the books is why folks complained when Tom Cruise starred as Reacher in the movies

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