Holding Out For a Hero

Democrats don't need a Trump, but we sure could use a Reacher.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Not Christmas. Not spring solstice, or graduation day. No, it’s better than all of those things because today is the day that a new season of “Reacher” premieres on Amazon Prime.

Reacher

For those who don’t know, “Reacher,” based on the books by Lee Childs, tells the story of Jack Reacher, an outlandishly musclebound, refrigerator-shaped man who roams the earth with just a passport, an ATM card and a toothbrush, defending the weak, righting wrongs, exposing corruption and, occasionally, refreshing his wardrobe at a local thrift store (we love a sustainable king!).

Reacher is a vigilante, unbound by both the laws of the land, and of physics. He’s retired army; a soldier who commanded a special investigations unit of the military police. He can kill with a bicycle wheel or a tie or his bare hands.

I love this show. Even though I am not, on paper, what a “Reacher” fan should look like.

Reacher, in his bruising, macho, tossing-his-enemies-through-a-wall glory, seems lab-built to appeal to men. Peak Dad TV. I’m not a man….but men aren’t immune to this show’s charm.

Critics have written reams about Reacher’s cross-gender appeal, and the siren song of freedom. Reacher is a man unbound, by relations or possessions. He owns nothing – he has no house, no car, no permanent address. He’s beholden to no one – no spouse, no kids. And who among us hasn’t dreamed about slipping free from the demands of adulthood, ditching the schedule and the obligations and the stuff and just walking off into the woods (or onto a Greyhound bus?)

Best of all, “Reacher” is funny.

Season One begins with Reacher getting off a bus and walking past green fields into a small Georgia town. He strolls toward a diner, where a baseball-hatted redneck is menacing his girlfriend for leaving too large a tip. “How am I supposed to get ahead when you keep wasting my goddamn money?” he shouts. He gets in her face, yells at her, slams his hand right next to her head against his van. Then he sees Reacher watching.

“What the hell you want, asshole?” he demands.

Reacher says nothing.

“I’m talkin’ to you, stupid,” he says.

Reacher says nothing.

The silence stretches out. The camera pans around Reacher’s torso, caressing his bulging biceps and tensed jaw. It takes a long time.

“Listen, man,” says the redneck, his tone meek, his posture apologetic. “I’m just havin’ a bad day.”

Reacher. Says. Nothing.

“Won’t happen again,” the guy mutters, and scurries away.

It took about thirty minutes before my husband and I decided that this was our new favorite show.

“Reacher” has no theme song: just a brief rumble of thunder. When we hear it, my husband and I turn to each other and say, “Reacher.”

Reacher

Then, during the show, Reacher will say something inadvertently hilarious; something that manages to be both laconic and absurdly over the top – like “I’m not a vagrant. I’m a hobo,” or, “Think real hard before you finish that sentence. It’ll determine how well your jaw works for the rest of your life,” and, again, my husband and I would turn to each other and say, together, “Reacher.”

When Season Two was over, we’d sometimes stare at the blank, glassy black rectangle of the TV screen and say, sadly, “Reacher.” We started referring to our TV set as “the Reacher box.”

And, as soon as we learned that there was a new season of the show, we put it on the calendar.

“Reacher” is gloriously silly, in the manner of a cartoon or a comic book. There’s violence, and plenty of beautifully choreographed fighting, but no one really gets hurt. You know who the bad guys are because they arrive practically twirling their mustaches, or caressing their silver-headed cane. Also, they mistreat dogs and women. You know who the good guys are because they stand up to bullies, and for dogs.

“Reacher” is a delightful escape.

It also, I think, explains what people see in Donald Trump.

Stay with me here.

My husband’s mom didn’t vote for Trump, but she’s still kind of a fan. “He’s so strong!” she will say.

My husband and I want to explain to her that Donald Trump is not actually strong; that he is, rather, an approximation of a strong man. We’d try to her it’s an illusion: makeup and hair dye to give a patina of youth and vigor; yelling and insults to telegraph fortitude and resolve.

Trump is not actually strong. He’s not really a smart businessman. He doesn’t truly make good deals.

But it doesn’t matter, because he fakes it with enough bluster and conviction and he’s done it over and over and over, and, for years, with the help of a prime-time network TV show.

Trump convinced his voters that they were victims: not of billionaires, which would actually be true, but, instead, of immigrants, of feminists, of DEI set-asides and critical race theory and trans women set on invading the ladies’ rooms and stealing their daughters’ sports scholarships. Then he convinced them that he alone could save them, that he’d be their retribution for all the wrongs the world has done to them.

He is the golem that fear and entitlement built. And now, the thinking is, the Democrats need their own monster to counter him: an outsider, a disruptor.

This week, Jay Caspian Kang wrote an essay in the New Yorker and threw Stephen A. Smith’s name into the hat.

Stephen A. Smith is a professional sports commentator who works for ESPN. He’s a professional bloviator. He’s currently in the headlines for asserting that, should any wife of his take the stage to perform in a song about her ex, that theoretical woman should “go back to his ass.” Also, he once turned Jay Caspian Kang on to some free pizza years ago, when JCK was a blogger at Grantland. I guess the way to a man’s heart truly is through his stomach.

I couldn’t tell if the piece was meant to be satire, because Kang seems to truly believe he’s onto something. “If the Democratic Party has a problem drawing young men who believe that the excesses of wokeness have left them behind, could there be a more appealing figure than the guy they’ve been watching arguing about sports for the past decade?” he writes.

I vote that we worry less about misguided residents of the manosphere. Let Joe Rogan and the Nelk Brothers have them.

If those young men are so deep into their own victimhood that they think the “excesses of wokeness” are what’s keeping them down, how much time should we spend deprogramming them?

How much of an investment should we make in guys who believe women owe them sex, that every restroom and playing field is being menaced by men dressed as women, who retweet stuff like “Your body, my choice?”

If we counter Donald Trump with Stephen A. Smith, we’ve missed the point. We’ve been just as bamboozled as Trump’s voters.

You don’t answer a performance with a performance. You don’t see their unqualified reality TV star and raise them an unqualified sports commentator.

We don’t need our own Trump. We need what Trump pretends to be.

We need a Reacher.

We need someone who’s genuinely strong, not just giving the impression of strength with mean tweets and self-tanner. Someone who stands up for the little guy, not for the privileged men who’ve been convinced that they’re the little guy.

Maybe our Reacher comes from somewhere outside the traditional political power structure. Maybe he’s a billionaire. Maybe he is a she.

Maybe our Reacher is brash and unfiltered, or maybe our Reacher’s a little less of a yapper, preferring to let his or her actions do the talking.

Strong but kind. Implacable but righteous. A single-minded, relentless brute, but a brute defending the defenseless; afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, while traveling lightly on the earth and wearing secondhand clothes.

Reacher for President. Here’s hoping we can find him, her, or them.

Keep those writing questions coming! If you’re wondering about process, or finding an agent, or surviving publication, drop your questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Am watching: “Reacher!” And “White Lotus,” too.

Am reading: Scott Turow’s Presumed Guilty, Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body, Jonathan Kellerman’s Open Season, Sarina Bowen’s The Last Guy on Earth (m/m second-chance hockey romance, delightful)

Am Eating: All the Girl Scout cookies I ordered.

Am Getting Ready: to ride my bike for three days, from Bethlehem to New Hope and back to Philadelphia again. I love winter riding, and I haven’t done enough of it this year. Watch my Instagram for updates from the road!