Jon Crunch: TV Review: Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” Season 2 is a Successful Mission

“Jack Ryan” is back.

When I reviewed the first season of Amazon Prime Video’s refresh of Tom Clancy’s venerable Jack Ryan franchise, I wrote: “Amazon’s new entry in the ‘Ryanverse’ is a mixed bag. The first half of the 8-episode season feels uneven and (at times) awkward.”

As a result, it was with some trepidation that I went into the second season of “Jack Ryan.”

This time out, Jack Ryan (John Krasinski) is working as a legislative fellow to Sen. Jim Moreno (Benito Martinez) and looking into “hinky” transactions involving Venezuela and Russia.

The backgrounder on Venezuela’s geopolitical importance is provided via Ryan lecturing an auditorium full of students on a college campus.

I must say, Krasinski looks comfortable as a wonkish academic, something unexplored in the first season of Amazon’s reboot (Clancy’s original novels saw the character serving as a history professor at the U.S. Naval Academy).

Ryan is curious about a cargo ship called the Almeta. The suspicious ship is in a port outside Caracas. Containers from the Almeta (and other Cypriot ships) have been moved into Venezuelan jungles — kept under guard by government soldiers.

Ryan and Sen. Moreno (who was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela) head down to Caracas on an official visit to see if they can learn more about the country’s ambitions. Venezuela is in the midst of a presidential campaign that sees President Nicolas Reyes (Jordi Molla) facing a tougher-than-expected challenge from protest candidate Gloria Bonalde (Christina Umana).

Ryan’s former T-FAD boss Jim Greer (Wendell Pierce) is on a similar trajectory. At the start of the second season, Greer is in Moscow serving as the CIA D.C.O.S. (Deputy Chief of Station). He is attempting to determine if the Venezuelan shipments on the Almeta are tied to the launch of unregistered satellites in the South China Sea.

A heart condition allows Greer to get reassigned to Venezuela. Ryan and Greer’s paths eventually cross at a hotel bar in Caracas.

Converging plot points were a signature of Tom Clancy’s novels during his heyday in the 1980s and 90s. He was a master at juggling parallel story lines in his doorstop-size thrillers (an astounding skill considering the author didn’t outline his books).

I like that the creators behind “Jack Ryan” have attempted to bring an authentic Clancy feel to the series.

The first crisis point of the second season kicks into gear when a convoy of SUVs (transporting Ryan and Moreno to the airport) is attacked on the streets of Caracas (in a sequence echoing a similar ambush from the 1994 movie “Clear and Present Danger.”)

What ensues over the next seven episodes is a multi-threaded story that has Ryan/Greer investigating the true nature of the cargo from the Almeta, watching a chess match unfold in the Venezuelan presidential election, and dealing with a mysterious German assassin named Max Schenkel (Tom Wlaschiha).

Noticeably absent from the second season of “Jack Ryan” is Dr. Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish), an epidemiologist (eye surgeon in the novels) who served as Ryan’s love interest during the first season (the character was Ryan’s wife in Clancy’s novels).

The character isn’t referenced at all during the 8-episode run. Furthermore, Ryan has a one-night stand with a woman (who refers to herself in their initial encounter as Lina) named Harriet Baumann (Noomi Rapace).

While the story arc involving Baumann and Ryan develops a certain amount of intrigue (and has moments that feel like they stepped out of a “Jason Bourne” movie), the notion of a "boy scout" like Ryan sleeping with a random woman seems antithetical to Clancy’s source material for the character.

It will be interesting to see if Cathy Mueller reappears in a future season, or if producers will be content with Ryan staying a bachelor.

A story thread I particularly enjoyed involved CIA Special Activities Division (SAD) black ops operative Matice (John Hoogenakker). The character also appeared in the first season.

Matice recruits a former Navy SWCC (Special Warfare Combat-Craft Crewman) named Marcus Bishop (Jovan Adepo) to drive a team up the Orinoco River (in Venezuela) on an ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) mission. One of the other team members — code-named “Coyote” (Allan Hawco) — gives Bishop the unwanted moniker “Uber.”

The four operatives are there to assist in the investigation of the mysterious cargo containers.

Matice eventually meets up with Ryan and Greer and quips, “I sincerely hoped I would not see you motherf*ckers again.”

This particular plot line felt like it stepped off the pages of a Clancy novel. I really enjoyed how the team’s exploits meshed with overarching plot.

In this iteration of the “Clancyverse,” Matice serves the narrative in a manner similar to the John Clark character in the books.

(I figure we won’t see Clark in the Amazon series since Michael B. Jordan is playing the character in an upcoming “Without Remorse” movie for Paramount Pictures — slated for release Sept. 2020.)

One of the new characters I enjoyed was CIA Station Chief Mike November (Michael Kelly).

November lended a certain amount of gravitas to the second season, and proved a solid ally for Ryan and Greer as they maneuvered around Venezuela.

Moreover, the fact that November was divorced (twice) from the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Lisa Calabrese (Susan Misner) added an interesting dimension to the character.

Overall, I found the second season of “Jack Ryan” to be much stronger than the first. I thought the storylines were more compelling this time out, and I appreciated seeing a political thriller in a unique locale (since so many espionage stories involve the Middle East).

The season had an attractive production value (it looked like they had a bigger budget this time out). In addition, the 4K UHD version of the series (that Amazon provides to Prime members) looked lovely streaming on my 50-inch Vizio D50-E1 via an Apple TV 4K.