Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Season 2: Venezuela
February 18, 2020 10:15 PM - Season 2 (Full Season) - Subscribe

After tracking a potentially suspicious shipment of illegal arms in the Venezuelan jungle, CIA Officer Jack Ryan heads to South America to investigate. Jack’s actions threaten to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy, leading him on a mission spanning the globe.

That’s Amazon’s description. The globe-spanning is mostly Venezuela, a little bit in London, and a tiny bit in Moscow and the US.

Many spoilers follow.

Greer has a heart condition. Jack is immediately seduced by a German spy. A US senator gets blown up. A bunch of stuff happens, much of it pretty predictable. The whole thing ends with a raid on the Venezuelan presidential palace and somehow it is okay for them to just mow through the security staff but a bridge too far for them to kill the president. And oh yeah, the US senator that was supporting Jack’s adventures turns out to have been a bad guy.

The not-John-Clark character dies. There’s no mention of Cathy.

Nothing more about Victor, either. Maybe next season.
posted by jimw (8 comments total)
 
Got a few episodes in, it's ok, but just haven't continued. Kind of an anti-thriller. Er unthrilling thriller. A bit confusing which corrupt south american politician is the most corrupt politician. Needs more nukes and more german spies ;-)
posted by sammyo at 10:15 AM on February 19, 2020


Yeah this was... okay. Not as good as the first season, I thought, and Cathy being memory holed was kind of weird.
posted by Justinian at 4:51 PM on February 19, 2020


that said I watch almost anything with noomi rapace.
posted by Justinian at 4:51 PM on February 19, 2020


The politics don't make any goddamned sense. They swapped out the actual government of Venezuela for a right-wing nationalist government but kept the US sanctions, which were put into place to coerce Venezuelans to kick out the Chavez-Maduro government in favor of the right-wing nationalists currently being led by Juan Guaido.Weirdly lazy writing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:37 PM on February 22, 2020


Coming to this quite late, but not as late as Tom Clancy, who would obviously deserve a "based on characters by" credit for creating Ryan in the first place, but is somehow also credited as an Executive Producer despite being dead for nearly 10 years now.

For those of you who've always wondered just what an executive producer does, turns out "just decompose" is apparently enough.
posted by Naberius at 2:56 PM on August 7, 2022


Well that was sure mediocre. I think what I like least is the shift of Jack Ryan from being bumbling awkward desk jockey to bad ass field operative. With no explanation. In the last episode where they shoot up the presidential palace of Venezuela (WTF?) Ryan raises his specops fantasy gun like 12 times and shoots someone cold. Single hip fire perfect head shot, then just moves on like it's no big thing. Maybe he plays a lot of Rainbow Six.
posted by Nelson at 6:19 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]


Ha Nelson and I must be on the same schedule of catching up on old shows.


So, the CIA finds out about what turns out to be a legitimate satellite launch and equipment imports by a sovereign nation, goes in to to investigate which results in a US Senator being killed to protect the payday from the (maybe corruptly approved by Reyes? But otherwise) fairly normal mining operation, and then while sorting all that out violently rescue political prisoners and then shoot up a civilian party at the palace to rescue a guy who was arrested for being a spy?

This entire season is due to our main characters not being able to sort out that Venezuela wanted to mine that technobabble mineral. I don’t even know that there was anything to shutdown if Ryan and Senator Jimmy had uncovered the full story - the worst that had happened was maybe bypassing Reyes bypassing environmental protections in his own country?

Also Michael O’Neill was always going to have surprising hidden allegiances. If you’re gonna have a plot twist don’t typecast it.

Points for rescuing prisoners maybe but I don’t know why I’m supposed to cheer for Ryan here 🤷‍♂️
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:34 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]


This show was deeply problematic in a number of areas.

Assassination of sitting U.S. Senator in Venezuela was played off somehow as not being a massive international incident.

So wait they just flew the helicopter right over central Caracas and on to the palace grounds, started shooting everyone on multiple floors, and the party on the first floor were oblivious to the entire thing. Erm, sure.

The sort-of romance bond between Ryan and Harriet was god-awful. At least in Season 1 the female lead was a reasonable offset to Ryan (also, where the hell did she go? just wrote her off with out a mention?)

Jack Ryan and co. clearly will eagerly kill shitloads of people to get "his guy" out, and I think we're supposed to be okay with this because...'merica or something?

They mentioned Reyes being dead in one of their wrap-it-up-with-a-bow final scenes. I don't think Reyes died?

The first season at least did a little service to some of the diversity within Islam. This one felt very jingoistic pro-American. I think Kraczinski should be ashamed to have his name on this one, as well as Wendell Pierce.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2023


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