Wendell Pierce is a bit.... young... isn't he? I mean he does a great job, but after James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman you would expect someone that at least looks a bit older. Someone not so Gen-X.
But then John Krasinski doesn't really look like someone that would have "Ryan" as a last name.... and, like Wendell, he does a good enough job too.
John Hoogenakker, however, looks like the role he's playing, but that's really because we all expected him to be Clark. At least the people that read the books expected him to be Clark. So, in my mind, he's playing Clark and not... whatever his name is in whatever episode.
But, Ali Suliman... he does a GREAT job so you get hooked despite the complaints from those of us who really wanted to see, well, the novels.
This isn't really about the novels. It's kind of true to them as in you can see it all fitting into the Ryanverse, but it's also a lot more straight out of the headlines for the W and Obama era presidencies and made in the Trump era where.... it seems more like a show from the past.
Either way, it works and it takes a little to get used to it if you are a fan of the books, or at least the Ford movies (which also took a little bit).
However, once you get passed it, the show is entertaining as all get out and.... for a streaming show, perfectly short in it's seasons, which is FANTASTIC given that shows like The Handmaiden's Tale, The Man in the High Tower, and so many other direct-to-streaming fair have more episodes than story.
Jack Ryan just enough where the filler isn't extreme and you can rest assured that the episodes are used to push the plot along and not just be filler.
AND THEN SEASON 2 HITS....
... and suddenly it's like they have forgotten how to write a suspenseful spy yarn, in fact, for the most part, they stop acting like spies altogether.
It was almost like they said, OK, we got viewers, the writers can be lazy now.
And all the tension and imagination that made Season 1 so much fun vanished in a puff of smoke.
