Jack Ryan Be Nimble, Jack Ryan Be Quick

I finished a rewatch of "Jack Ryan" on Amazon Prime last night, which I started in anticipation of season 3 coming next month. The show, if you haven't seen it, is immensely entertaining, engaging, thrilling and exciting. And rewatchable. I stayed up way too late to finish season 2, opting to sacrifice a precious 90 minutes of sleep to see how it all plays out (even though I'd seen it before). 

John Krasinski is a top-tier choice for the show's version of Jack Ryan. He's got the chops, the emotions, the humor and seriousness, the whole package.

That said, he's not really Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan.* Nodding to this post's title, Book Jack is neither nimble nor quick.

The show does a really good job of creating a political thriller of a plausible kind, which is something Clancy excelled at. The scenarios in his books felt real, felt possible, and - years later - feel rather prescient.

One example: at the end of Debt of Honor, a disgruntled pilot flies a 747 into the U.S. Capitol building, killing a large part of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It wasn't a terrorist attack, just one angry man who had the motive and means. The book was published in 1994, seven years before September 11, but I remember one of the news networks bringing him in to talk about it after 9/11.

The show doesn't directly adapt any one or two or three Clancy stories so far, but the DNA from the books is there. Season 1 has elements that hearken back to Executive Orders, while season 2 reminds us of Clear and Present Danger.

There's plenty of action and excitement in the Clancy novels - most of them start rather slowly, but the last third of just about every book makes each one very difficult to put down.

But very little of the action actually involves Jack Ryan. Jack gets his moments of adrenaline - The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Bear and the Dragon, etc. - but they're few and far between. 

Jack is at his absolute best when he's in his role as an analyst. That's the idea - he's a desk jockey; a very smart suit, who reluctantly participates in the action when he's essentially forced to, whether by circumstance (Patriot Games) or by moral code (Clear and Present Danger).

And Amazon's Jack Ryan starts out that way in season 1, not wanting to be on the front line. When he is, when he has to, he performs and does it well. Season 2 turns him into almost a James Bond-style character, making very questionable decisions that do yield good results but really feel like choices Book Jack wouldn't make, and wouldn't even have to in the first place.

I say this all in critique, but I also feel like I get why the show does this. It's called "Jack Ryan," so you have to have your main character in it as much as possible. And while it's been proven that you don't need guns and explosions and fights to make compelling and engaging TV, it is fun to watch and looks cool. 

It's just really not what Book Jack is like or all about. That's why, in the books, we have John Clark and Domingo Chavez and other minor characters to be out in the field, doing the dangerous stuff and the cloak-and-dagger stuff. 

I may sound like I'm slamming the show, but I'm not. I genuinely love the show, I enjoy it a lot, I'm super excited for the next season. I'm mostly just musing on how adaptations don't always end up being as much like their source material as fans might want.

And that's okay!!!!

It's cool to like Book Jack and TV Jack. I do! TV Jack is so well done for the quicker, shorter TV show format, while Book Jack is perfect for the slower, longer burns of the novels.** And heck, TV Jack is way better, in every way, than Chris Pine's version in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which was the first time we got a more 007-style Jack. Seriously, that movie is just a train wreck and it's better to just not even bring it into the conversation.

I guess what I'm saying is it's okay for something to be different than what came before. And that applies to so many things in entertainment, far too much to discuss in this post. Maybe later.

One final note: my biggest complaint about the show is the character of Jim Greer. Wendell Pierce is a terrific actor, and plays his role well, but TV Greer is nothing at all like Book Greer. In short, Greer is one of Jack's primary mentors and helps him as he navigates the twin mazes of politics and intelligence matters. He's almost like a father figure to Jack (who lost his parents early in life) and their relationship is so impactful.

TV Greer is an a**hole. There's no way around it. He's skilled, he cares about the mission and the goals, and he gets results, sure. But he's demeaning and gruff and dismissive, not just to Jack but to others. The only positive change I found with TV Greer is the choice to have him be Muslim, which makes for some good moments in season 1 where the antagonists are Islamist extremists. But other than that, I really don't like at all how the writers changed Greer.

Okay, to wrap this up, just for fun, some rankings!!

BEST ACTOR TO PLAY JACK RYAN IN MOVIES OR ON TV

1) Alec Baldwin - really the gold standard for me

2) Harrison Ford - only an eyelash behind Baldwin

3) John Krasinski - not the best version of Book Jack but an exceptionally well-portrayed character

4) Ben Affleck - doesn't get nearly enough appreciation for how good his Jack was, all things considered

5) Chris Pine - I mean, it's Chris Pine, so he's okay, but again, the movie is just so forgettable

FAVORITE RYANVERSE NOVELS THAT I'VE READ (non-collaboration entries)

1) The Hunt for Red October

2) Debt of Honor/Executive Orders (really a two-parter)

3) The Cardinal of the Kremlin

4) Rainbow Six

5) Patriot Games

6) Clear and Present Danger

8) The Bear and the Dragon

9) The Sum of All Fears

10) Without Remorse

11) The Teeth of the Tiger (really more of the introduction vehicle for Jack Ryan, Jr.)

12) Red Rabbit

*I feel comfortable saying this, having read Clancy's Jack Ryan-centered novels at least two or three times each. The "Ryanverse," as it's called, continued even as Clancy eased off on writing and later passed away. He published a number of novels with Jack Ryan and other ongoing characters in collaboration with other writers, who also took it all on after Clancy died. I have not read all of these, but I have read many.

**One major lamentation I have is how the show treated Jack and Cathy Mueller, who novel readers know is later Jack's wife. Their relationship is treated as budding in season 1, but disappears in season 2 completely. The reason this bothers me is that Cathy is so essential to understanding Jack's character and motivations and morals in the novels. Looking at IMDB it does look like she may be back in season 4, so I guess we'll see.