• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 13, 2023

Jack Reacher is a bit of a mechanic -- when he confronts bad guys, he tunes them up.

It’s great to have him back this week for a second season after a 22-month absence.

The eight-episode first season of “Reacher” dropped in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video on February 4, 2022 and emerged as the TV Blog’s favorite show of 2022.

The new season is therefore highly anticipated around here. Also consisting of eight episodes, it drops in stages starting Friday with the first three episodes. Single episodes will then be added every Friday through January 19, 2024.

After watching the first episode of the second season, there is no reason to believe the new “Reacher” will be any less entertaining than the first.

One big reason for this is the man who plays him: Alan Ritchson. I had never seen him nor heard of him before “Reacher” came around almost two years ago. But if he has become a star from this show, then he richly deserves it.

The enigmatic, wandering tough guy of the title is still a man of few words as the show opens on a quiet street in a small Tennessee town.

There, Reacher stumbles upon a crime in progress and gets punchy (as seen on the above photo). The results of this encounter are predictable, and also thrilling.

But the town is only a brief stop in his travels. Before we know it, he’s headed to New York for a reunion with fellow members of a special, Army investigative team that he commanded that was disbanded a few years previously.

The reunion is a business trip. The surviving team members are on a sad mission to learn who is killing them off one by one. When (not “if”) they find them, expect Reacher to bring the pain.

With its focus on the Army team that Reacher headed when he was still on active duty, the second season of “Reacher” lets us in on his back story a little more than the first season did.

It may also shed more light on how he came to adopt his minimalist, wandering lifestyle in which he seems to walk from place to place without an itinerary, living off a military pension deposited directly into a bank account, and drawing his wardrobe from thrift stores.

But hey, it seems like he is perfectly happy with this way of life. And besides, who’s going to go up to him and suggest that he change his ways?

To his friends and colleagues, there is no more loyal person to have around than Reacher. To his enemies, he is hard to kill and out for justice.

The second season of “Reacher” starts Friday, December 15, on Amazon Prime Video.