So many reasons for you all to not bother reading this post. I'm venting my spleen from disappointment. It's a personal catharsis.

I watched the first season of Amazon's Jack Ryan, and found it entertaining, occasionally even riveting writing. And this season... well, let me first declare: spoilers ahead.

Sure, TV writing is full of inaccuracies, short cuts, wishful thinking, projectionism, idealism, and plain ignoring reality. But this particular TV show was supposed to be for me to enjoy. And as a crotchety middle aged man I couldn't stand it. The writing of the political situation in Venezuela was tolerable at first from a: okay, don't describe the "real" people perspective. But the writing of replacement characters for the president, general, enforcer, political opponent, and even the mercenary was beyond disappointing. I found it unrealistic. Unbelievable is perhaps a better description. No way would any of the personal interactions between the various characters have played out that way. And then the foolish one-man-island Jack Ryan doing things repeatedly on his own... it didn't fit the character I once knew and loved. I don't blame the acting, it was exactly what one would expect with the dialog. But the dialog often didn't make sense or at least seem remotely likely.

My boys watched bits and pieces of the last episode with me. They cringed at the constant F bombs. They made the comment was that "F" wasn't like salt, which when spread around makes things better. It just felt like high school without any adults in the room, and added no value at all to the story or the believability of the anger of the characters. (Particularly the ambassador).

I know writers target the almighty dollar and viewer eyeballs. But if you watched the first season of "Jack Ryan" and found it intriguing, I hate to suggest it but I think you'll be severely disappointed in the direction they took with EVERY SINGLE character.

And don't get me started on satellite-based Flash-LIDAR. This started as an interesting premise of mystery, and they wasted it. The satellite launch became unimportant in the end. Instead it turned into an opportunity for the writers to:

1. Pay lip-service to American meddling in South American elections
2. Pretend the 'good guy' Americans were NOT meddling in the election
3. Actually set up the Americans to completely meddle
... and particularly by the main character. As an act of vindictive 'justice', sort of.
4. Show that the writers think that American politicians are the source of evil. Because they partnered with the 'evil-bad' man president to make money from a venture-capital move into mining? That has no moral good or bad attached to it? What????

The last episode projected it's ending a long way out. And it was painful watching to get there. I'm so disappointed, kept hoping for a twist in character development that would make things okay. I'm not watching anything these writers put out again. Someone at Amazon thought it was good and green-lit the production. They ought to be reprimanded. That was abysmal.

vent over. My apologies.