Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season One
Lauren and I saw that a new series was available to watch on Amazon Prime called "Tom Cancy's Jack Ryan". I remember reading several Tom Clancy Novels and enjoying the movies.
We're not movie watchers, we don't even own a TV. We don't go to the theatre and we don't have Netflix. We do have Amazon Prime (for free shipping) and when things get quiet around here, we sometimes choose a documentary or series to watch.
We gave Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan a chance.
When we finished the series (only 8 episodes) we were a little shocked it ended so quickly. It probably went by so quickly since there were some episodes that we skipped 1/4 of them due to gratuitous and unneeded scenes.
After the last episode Lauren and I discussed the series and Lauren wrote this review.
The Review by 
3-STARS
First of all, though I'd like to recommend this series, I really can't. There are too many skip scenes and I would have to spend too much time telling my friends all the landmines to avoid. The "mature" rating could easily come from several very violent scenes, which would be appropriate in a spy thriller; but in this case the rating really comes in through a lot of scenes that should've just been left out. This unfortunately seems to be a characteristic of the Amazon Originals. I find that I usually don't watch more than the first five minutes of many of their shows because there is just too much junk. Jack Ryan is unusual in that I did watch the whole show because there was enough there to make it better than some others.
"Jack Ryan" is a good staple thriller in many respects, thought it felt as though the writers intended to have a few more episodes and did some crazy editing to cut chunks out of their intended storyline. One character in particular seems to ultimately have little reason to even be part of the show but is given a lot of time in the middle of the series.
Plot holes aside, the biggest issue for me was the same problem many others have commented on: the gratuitous bedroom scenes and the equally pointless amount of f-bomb usage.
It's not even completely the language or the scenes but the jarring way they were just inserted into the show - "Here, let's add a colorful metaphor to keep this real!" The actor for Jim Greer seemed uneasy with it as well, since he seemed to be wishing he could skim over the swearing in his script and get on with what really needed to be said.
If the writers could take some of the constructive criticism, there is a chance they could turn out a much better second season. There are a lot of things that could make for ultimately a good series here...but there also needs to be a lot of thought given to the reasons why you might include language, the real necessity of random nudity and some attention paid to not wrapping the storyline up too quickly and neatly.
Because that last is a lot more unrealistic than a cleaner version of the script excluding the obnoxious f-bombs.
I would also warn that given the political sentiment being slipped into Season 1...if you guys over at Amazon try to make Season 2 about Russians interfering in the election, it's not going to be a great move. We're getting Russians-as-fall-guys-for-everything exhaustion out here.
I'm giving it 3 stars because I did like the story...in between exercising my "ten second skip" privileges.
Conclusion
This concludes our review of "Jack Ryan Season One". This really was a missed opportunity for a good non-preachy, morally righteous action thriller, but instead we get a lot of moral equivocation and political narrative supporting.
Politics ruin movies.
Benjamin Turner: God fearer. Rooted in Messiah. Husband of
Bless the Most High!
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