Jack Ryan Season 1 Review: Better Than Expected With Some Room For Improvement
Dislcaimer: This review contains minor — though not dealbreaking — spoilers for Season 1 of Jack Ryan.
Jack Ryan has been called America’s more cerebral answer to James Bond, the character has been the focus of most stories in the career of author Tom Clancy. Clancy who sadly passed away in 2013, had written 14 novels since 1984 starring Jack Ryan, his last novel being Dead or Alive in 2010. The book universe carries on with Mark Greaney and Grant Blackwood taking over duties on the Jack Ryan Jr. novels, however, both of these writers have now been replaced by Mark Cameron and Mike Madden.
The majority of the Jack Ryan novels center on CIA analyst Jack Ryan during the Cold War between NATO and the USSR. Obviously, after the collapse of the USSR, the novels took a turn in some different directions, with the most recent novels focussing on terror groups. Hollywood has adapted several of these Jack Ryan novels into movies, the first being the Alec Baldwin led The Hunt for Red October. This was then followed by Patriot Games, which was written afterward but acts as a prequel to that movie/novel. The decision was made to recast Ryan with Harrison Ford replacing Alec Baldwin, a decision that didn’t go down too well with author Tom Clancy. Clancy felt Ford was too old to play the role, and whilst I am a fan of Ford as Ryan, I agree that Patriot Games should not have been his first outing.
That being said I think that The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger are the best Jack Ryan movies. They rebooted the series and the cast in The Sum of All Fears starring Ben Affleck as Ryan, but again they picked the wrong story to do this with. The Sum of All Fears is one of Clancy’s best novels, but the decision to go younger for Ryan and the rest of the cast for this particular story didn’t make any sense given the events of that story. The Sum of All Fears story required a very senior version of Jack Ryan that had the power to go up against the POTUS in the movie and as such it’s a shame it wasn’t Harrisons Ford’s final Jack Ryan movie. I won’t say much about Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit other than, ignore it, miss it, it’s awful and it has nothing to do with the Jack Ryan universe, but as that movie bombed hard, it has allowed Amazon to pick up the rights and create a TV show from the license.
Jack Ryan from Amazon released on August 31, and as a huge fan of the source novels, I was extremely skeptical about this show. The main concern was the decision to modernize the setting to be set in current day. The reason I say this is because by doing so the showrunners immediately lock-out being able to use any of Clancy’s actual work on the early life of Jack Ryan, and there are some excellent novels in there. Instead, the decision was made to bring Jack Ryan into the 21st Century and start again effectively, this decision puts a lot of extra pressure on the writer’s room to create stories that are as interesting as the Novels which made Jack Ryan big in the first place.
The Good!
I figured I would watch the first couple of episodes to get a feel for the show late last week and I ended up finishing the whole of Season 1 by last night. That in itself should read as a good sign, because I tend to move through shows much slower when I am less engaged with them. The best thing I can say about Jack Ryan is that it feels like a Clancy book, even though it’s not perfect ( I will get to that), the story drew me in and had me excited to see what happens next like I would with a good book. This show, if nothing else, proves how stories like Jack Ryan are far better served on streaming platforms than as Hollywood movies. Jack Ryan does a good job of telling one story across eight hour-long episodes, and that length of time really allows the secondary characters to develop in ways they simply don’t have time for in the movies. I really enjoyed that it came across like a Clancy book in the slow build up, escalating events and also viewing events from the bad guy’s point of view.
There are some big wins in Season 1 of this show, most of the cast was excellent with a few exceptions. John Krasinski proved to be a great Jack Ryan and I enjoyed the relationship between Krasinski and Wendell Pierce as Ryan’s mentor Jim Greer. Both of these characters are the central focus of the story other than the protagonist role played fantastically by Ali Suliman as Suleiman (I didn’t make a mistake here, that’s the villain’s name). The show is also well-paced, it’s not slow at all and yet the level of threat and the stakes are escalating throughout the first season to the climax. If I had one criticism of the overarching plot it would be that the finale was a little too predictable and standard, but I feel that’s a small gripe for an entire season of a show.
Honestly, I was very engaged from start to finish and actually fairly pleased with how they handled the main roles of Ryan and Greer. Here they have given Jim Greer a far bigger role than he played in the novels, Greer is not as senior as he was in the books, but it allows the relationship to begin between Ryan and Greer in a more timely fashion. My one concern about Jim Greer was the decision to make him a Muslim, whilst I have nothing against that in principle (why would I?), it didn’t feel like it had any real purpose within the show itself other than 1-2 throwaway scenes. I was expecting something far less structured and far more clichéd that we got here and for that reason alone I heartily recommend Season 1 of Jack Ryan to anyone out there with Amazon Prime.
Click over to Page 2, for some criticisms and suggestions for the future!
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The Criticisms
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The Bad!
I don’t like to single out one particular actor for criticism, but then at the same time, if I feel someone was cast and not performing at the same standard as their colleagues, I have to talk about it. In this case I am referring to Abbie Cornish who plays Cathy Mueller, the love interest and eventual wife of Jack Ryan. Season 1 takes us to the very beginning of Cathy and Jack’s relationship and for the most part stays fairly faithful to the source novels. Cathy is the daughter of Joe Mueller, Ryan’s ex-boss in Wall Street. Joe thinks Ryan is naïve and stupid for not using the immense talent he has for finances to make a killing in the markets. Ryan however, feels that making money is not as important as using his skill set to help people and this gets further complicated as Ryan then falls for his daughter Cathy.
The only real change from the novels is that Cathy was an eye doctor and instead here is a specialist in infectious diseases, it’s not a major change, but it allows the writers to force a situation into the plot, which was, in my opinion, unnecessary. However, the actual problem with Cathy is not what kind of doctor she is, the problem is the performance of Abbie Cornish just didn’t quite come up to the level of her co-stars . This became so noticeable for me, that I started turning off emotionally and intelligently in any Cathy scenes towards the end of the Season. I am not saying they miscast the role as I have never seen Cornish in anything else, but whatever the reason, they really need to work on this in Season 2. Right now I feel like you could have replaced Cornish with a cardboard cut-out and still gotten the same emotional range. I am not saying Abbie Cornish cannot act, I just didn’t like the actor in this role.
There was also a couple more decisions that bothered me about the story and one other piece of casting, I’ll start with the other casting issue. Where is John Clark?
Now, if anyone has read a Jack Ryan novel, then you will have heard of John Clark. Ryan is not a field agent, or a great warrior, he is the brains. The muscle of the novels was always John Clark, who is probably my favourite secondary character in the books, even though he does not appear in them all. Clark is a soldier, Clancy even wrote a prequel book showing how Clark went from being a Vietnam Vet into a wet work agent for the CIA. Clark also started the Rainbow Six squad (You may have heard of the video games based on this team), and over the years becomes a trusted ally of Jack Ryan and a mentor for his son Jack Jr.
However, there was no mention of John Clark in Season 1 of Jack Ryan. There was however, a very similar character called Matice, played by John Hoogenakker who I just assumed was Clark at first. Now it is possible that this character will be revealed to be really John Clark some time in later seasons as the character even tells Ryan he chooses a different name for each country he visits. All I will say is, please Amazon, don’t remove Clark, have this guy be John Clark and build up the relationship between the two men through Jim Greer like they do in the novels.
Plot-wise, whilst overall the main story was pretty good, there were a couple of subplots that seemed to come out of nowhere and then disappear without any real consequences. One of these I mentioned above was the decision to have Jim Greer be a Muslim, but there was a far worse offender. There is a subplot that at first seems right out of one of Clancy’s books, but just goes nowhere. It revolves around a pilot who, instead of flying planes like he always wanted, sits in a trailer and pilots drones. The pilot begins to feel a sense of detachment from his actions as he just pushes a button in safety and watches people die.
This pilot then has an encounter at a Casino with a strange couple and he ends up sleeping with the wife while her husband watches. The husband then proceeds to beat on the pilot afterwards and then leaves him and is never seen again. It really doesn’t fit with any other part of the story and served zero purpose. What I thought was going to happen was that this pilot was going to get compromised and used by clandestine agents to abuse his power in some way, as that’s how Clancy would have written it. Instead, it just fizzles out and ends with the pilot visiting a man in Syria whose son he accidentally killed. It literally does not connect in any way to the rest of the story in this season, in fact if you cut this entire plot out, you’d probably have seven instead of eight episodes and we wouldn’t know the difference.
And The Future!
Amazon, use the novels as a guide, even if you don’t follow the dated plots. Notice how Clancy develops Ryan as he gets older until the point Ryan ends up as the POTUS in later novels. Also, don’t have every season be a terrorist plot. Sure, it’s relevant to today’s CIA, but it has the risk of becoming quite stale and repetitive. Jack finds a terrorist planning an attack, Jack stops attack, move onto next season. If Amazon go down that route for all future season then the show will get dry and stale and I will stop watching it. One of the things Clancy did really well in the books was to explore the intelligence game at super state level.
There is a Jack Ryan book called The Bear and the Dragon, and this book revolves around a new Chinese hard-line Government who are trying to start a war with Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The stakes and risks seem to be heightened when you are fighting against an enemy that has as good resources as you do. My worry is that Amazon will shy away from portraying other big nations in a negative light, but I implore you Amazon, this kind of content is needed to allow this show to progress beyond being a copy of 24. Season 1 ends with Jim Greer moving to a new post and I sincerely hope this instigates a change of plot and scenery in Season 2.
Conclusions!
Overall, this was much better than I expected it be and it engaged me from episode 1 right through to the finale. A few criticism aside I think anyone who has a passing interest in serious spy thrillers or is a fan of the Jack Ryan novels will get a kick out of this show. My only worry is that they won’t progress the story enough over succeeding seasons to keep the viewers engaged time and time again, I hope I am wrong. Amazon, whatever you do for Season 2, please do not have the protagonists be Islamic terrorists. Feel free to use that again where needed, but Season 2 needs a change of pace, which most studios would be reluctant to make, unfortunately.
I really enjoyed Jack Ryan, but there was also a few minor wrinkles, which I hope they smooth out. Give the show a shot and let us know what you thought of Jack Ryan Season 1 in the comments below, along with anything else Jack Ryan related.
Grade: A –
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Strengths
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