It’s still arguably a “man’s world,” but I thought we had established that women live in it, too, and that they also like many of the same things that men do. I guess I was wrong. If we had in fact sorted all that out, there would be no need for The New York Times to run an article about the fact that (shocker!) not just men are watching Amazon Prime’s TV show Reacher.
And I want to be grateful to the article for pointing out the obvious, but even it gets things wrong. In attempting to dispel assumptions about who watches the show and why, it makes its own equally wrong assumptions. “Common wisdom when it comes to Jack Reacher’s popularity is that men want to be him and women want to be with him. But I’ll venture that some women want to be him, too. Or at least, they want some of his freedom,” writes the article’s author.
So there are only two possible reasons why a person might want to watch the show, either to be him or to be with him? Geez. Use some imagination. I can think of a lot of reasons why a person might want to watch the show, not the least of which is “it’s there and it doesn’t suck.”
But let’s stick to the ones that I know best: my own. Neither Reacher’s beefiness nor his lifestyle appeal to me. I was drawn to the TV show initially because of the character’s originator, author Lee Child. Child publish his first novel when he was in his 40s, and I find that sort of “late bloomer” story to be both interesting and reassuring. I was also curious how the show compared to the 2012 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise.
Those were the things that got me into Season 1. In Season 2, I particularly like the found-family aspect. I also enjoy watching good guys kick bad guys’ asses. The characters in this season do what’s right because it’s right and to avenge their fallen comrades, and if they get a little murdery sometimes, well, the bad guys have it coming. Moral clarity is appealing, even (or perhaps especially) when it’s drenched in blood. Ironically, if anyone had asked me why Reacher Season 2 is so popular, I would have told them that it was that, and apparently I would have been wrong.
So I wrote this post as a reminder to myself (though you’re welcome to it, too) that assumptions are bad. When it comes to a TV show, it’s no big deal. But there are times when making assumptions can do real harm. We should never assume that we see the world in the same way that other people do, or that we understand anyone else’s motives except our own.