‘Reacher’ (The Show) and ‘Reacher (The Book Series) Approach Their Female Characters Very Differently

Reacher’s show runners have girl problems (son). As we have seen over the first two seasons of his TV show, TV Reacher has no trouble with the ladies when it comes to romance. However, Reacher, the show itself, does have a lady situation it will need to resolve when the show continues for Season 3. 

Jack Reacher — just call him Reacher, like his mom did — is a character created by a Brit named Lee Child that takes a very American spirit of masculine wanderlust to an extreme. An ex military cop, Reacher wanders around the US on buses, with no phone, no mortgage, no baggage, and nothing but a toothbrush to his name. After a lifetime of being told where to be and when by his superiors, Reacher decides to spend his post military life as unfettered as possible. He is Huck Finn lighting out for the territory to avoid getting civilized by his aunt. He is the embodiment of the type of dude escaping from responsibility — and smothering women — that Nina Baym details in her legendary essay “Melodramas of Beset Manhood.” If you prefer, Reacher is Pee Wee Herman telling Dottie that “You don’t wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel. So long, Dott,” only Reacher is as serious about this life as one of his own headbutts. 

For the most part, the baggage Reacher avoids is both the kind you put under the bus as well as the kind that sits next to you in a seat on a bus. His only living relative dies in the first novel. He meets women and has romances with them in most of the novels, but either the relationship or the person usually expires by the end of the book. (I have not run the numbers, but it seems like your chances of surviving an affair with Reacher are better than they are for surviving an affair with James Bond.)

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One of the major differences between the two seasons of Reacher, the show, and the two dozen-odd Reacher novels, novellas, and short stories, is that the creators of the show are better at creating compelling female characters on the screen than Lee Child ever was on the page. As Officer Roscoe Conklin, Willa Fitzgerald is the pint-sized dynamo who is willing and able to call Reacher on his nonsense. By the end of season one, there was a clamor for a spinoff featuring Roscoe holding it down in her hometown of Margrave, GA. 

Roscoe does not appear in Season 2 of Reacher. (Sad!) Season 2 is based on Bad Luck and Trouble, a novel that is a departure from the usual format for a Reacher novel. Several members of Reacher’s old MP unit, the 110th Special Investigators, die or disappear. Neagley and Reacher get the surviving crew together, and get to the bottom of the situation, which includes shooting a chopper full of bad guys out of the sky, as it happens.  Roscoe’s  name does come up when Reacher and his crew are looking for a safe place to stash a family. His trusted and ultra competent fellow officer Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) is the one making the suggestion. She may be sincere, or she may be taking a little dig at Reacher because Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), his current love interest, is in the room. Dixon is easy on the eyes, but not one of the more interesting members of the 110th. 

Instead, Neagley, who showed up in a few Season 1 episodes, takes a major role in Season 2. After leaving the 110th,  Neagley becomes a successful PI, and is a an adult in all the ways that Reacher is not. She is fiercely loyal to Reacher and the Special Investigators, and arguably the best thing about Season 2. She also hates being touched, so a romance with her BFF Reacher is off the table. In an (in)famous exchange from Season 2, one of Reacher’s team suggests he might like video games. Reacher scoffs, and Neagley suggests he might like a first-person shooter. Reacher retorts “I am a first person shooter.” It’s a funny line, but it points to both the appeal and the limits of Reacher’s character. A first-person shooter can be fun to play (or not!) but not much fun to watch. For the TV show to work, Reacher needs foils. Over the first two seasons, the writers of the show have created two memorable ones in Roscoe and Neagley.

For most shows, developing compelling secondary characters would not be a problem — consider Justified for instance, but the premise of the Reacher novels is that he is a solitary drifter. There will be a Reacher Season 3, and the show runners have promised it will return to the classic lone wolf format. Fans of the novel seem to be happy about this, but what does this mean for Roscoe and Neagley? Reacher’s writers are facing a dilemma, as the choices they make are likely to make either fans of the TV show or fans of the novel unhappy. In the meantime, we can root for an In The Heat of the Night reboot starring Willa Fitzgerald. 

Jonathan Beecher Field was born in New England, educated in the Midwest, and teaches in the South. He Tweets professionally as @ThatJBF, and unprofessionally as @TheGurglingCod. He also writes for Avidly and Common-Place when the mood strikes.