Awix is the expert. For ridiculous opinions on cinema, you get me.

Okay, what is 'cinema' these days? What is 'television'? What do you call these serialised streaming stories that proliferate on Amazon and Netflix and Hulu and whatever? Me, I call them visual novels. Mostly, I like them. But I've just had a truly horrifying experience. Judging from the Tomatometer rating, I'm nearly alone in my opinion. I care not. That was a waste of two evenings.

To begin with, detective stories, whether written down or acted out, reflect the cultural ideal of the audience they are intended to entertain. Basically, a detective story goes like this:

1. A 'normal' world is disrupted by a crime – some act which destroys the ordinary balance of society.
2. A detective arrives to save the day. The detective uncovers the mechanism of the crime and exposes the perpetrators, who are punished in a manner satisfactory to the audience.
3. The world is now back to 'normal'.

I put 'normal' in quotes because the definition of normality varies from detective story to detective story. So do the qualifications of the detective, not to mention what the readership regards as a condign punishment.

Think of your favourite detectives.

Sherlock Holmes lives in Victorian London. To be qualified as a detective he only has to be smarter than the local police. As far as the Victorian reader is concerned, it's just fine to hang the perps. The reader would probably not be in favour of cooking and eating them, however.

Poirot lives in a trendier London of the 20s-40s. He still only has to be smarter than the local police, who frankly haven't learned much. Readers are fine with hanging the perps as long as they aren't members of high society. Members of high society should be allowed to commit suicide in order to spare their relatives' feelings.

Any noir detective lives in a grungy, dog-eat-dog world in a US city. He doesn't have to be smarter than the police, although that wouldn't take much. He just has to be willing to stay up late nights and get beaten up a lot. If the police take the perps in, they'll probably electrocute them, which is fine by the reader. The perps may also fall off Boulder Dam, or into the path of an oncoming train, or get crushed in a trash compacter, all of which will please the reader as long as the detective can get back to his whiskey and his girlfriend.

Modern readers tend to be more finicky. Fans of Jonathan Kellerman, Rita Mae Brown, Harry Kemelman, et al., demand top-quality snob trivia from their detectives. Jim Butcher's fans want exotic occult factoids. None of these writers are much in favour of capital punishment, though Harry Dresden is definitely allowed to turn the perp into a newt. Kellerman's yuppie detective would probably psychoanalyse him.

And then there's Reacher. I have never attempted to read any of the pseudonymous novels of Mr Jim Grant, who I understand is an English person. This surprises me because the stories are set in the US – at least, a fictional version thereof. The streaming series, of which I endured all 8 episodes, is set in a fictional Georgia. One which looks like Ontario. This probably fools people who have never been to Georgia. I understand that it's cheaper to film in Ontario than Georgia. I have no idea what river they tried to pass off as the Mississippi, either. I hate to tell these people, but that man standing on that dock by the alleged Big Muddy with a fishing pole wasn't going to catch no crawdads that way. Nor was he in any way, shape, or form equipped to handle a Channel catfish.

A recurring gag in this series involves a diner that serves peach pie. I'd like to know whether no one in Ontario has ever eaten a peach pie? Seriously. In the first place, you do not make pie with peaches: you make cobbler. The failure to understand this is bad but forgiveable (barely). But the closeup of this alleged 'pie' crosses the line into international crime. Who told the Prop Department they could use canned peaches? No wonder the main character spit it out. I would, too. Just imagining the taste of what was on that plate made me gag. Can you not google a recipe, people? Y'all did the same thing with a pecan pie in Tru Blood once. I swan. . .

Now to the more serious problem.

A detective story's flow chart is a lot like that of a horror story. The difference, usually, is body count and believability of premise. In a horror story, as with a detective story, you start with a state of affairs that is, if not wholly desirable, at least 'normal'. In the case of the horror story, the 'crime' is one against the fabric of reality itself. The perps are the monsters, whom the heroes defeat in order to restore 'normality'.

So, audience, I have questions.

Is Reacher a detective story or a horror story? Think of the body count. Think of the ways in which the bodies pile up – whether killed by the endlessly spawning minions of the South American cartel or, in equal numbers, by the alleged hero.

If Reacher is a horror story – which, to me, it is – why are we rooting for one of the monsters? I certainly will not call a character a hero who throws the villain into a blazing fire and calmly watches him burn, because – you know, revenge. Or whose incompetence causes as much collateral damage as his does.

I've run across this kind of 'hero' before – ridiculously overendowed physically, can't be bested in a fight, always has the exact snappy comeback to make the punters giggle. The kind who has to be trusted by the pitiful peasants he protects because he's the most. . . well, the most, actually. He's practically a demigod. Besides, the villains are so evil that anything he does to them is justified up to and including throwing nukes, which we fully believe he could do, probably with his bare hands. After all, he can open a beer bottle with his biceps.

Yes, I've seen this kind of hero before. Herakles. There was an altar to him in Rome. Beowulf tended that way, too.

So was I thrilled? In a word, no.

I can only hope the next series will go on to insult another part of the country. Not Pennsylvania, please: go West, I beg of you. Or – bear with me here – how about setting it in Canada?

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

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