But I didn’t guess it, and so was blindsided when Reece, alerted to possible danger when he’s attacked while getting an MRI, races home to find Lauren and Lucy lying between the island and the counter in their beautiful kitchen, both shot to death. I watched the show before reading the book, but I should have known from the fact that those flashbacks also feature a bird fatally slamming into their window that something bad was going to happen to these two. We get some sweet family flashbacks, with Reece on the couch strumming a guitar while the three hang out on a rainy day. The two, brunette and beautiful-the wife, a professional runner and running coach the daughter, an avid artist-welcome Reece home partway through the first episode. I’m here to talk about the deaths of Lauren and Lucy, Reece’s wife and elementary-school-aged daughter, played on the show by Riley Keough and Arlo Mertz. Carr tells you right off the bat that his book is about a “consolidation of power at the federal level” that he sees as a danger to “freedom.” He writes Reece’s main antagonist inside the military command structure as a general with “liberal leanings” who “was clearly more concerned with force diversity and the push to open the SEAL teams to females than he was with crushing America’s enemies.” Reece’s ally in journalism is trustworthy because of her work “exposing the lies and cover-ups that followed the Benghazi fiasco.” Reece even drinks Black Rifle Coffee in the morning, “tempered with some honey and cream.” (That last part sounds good, and I’m going to try it.)īut I’m not here to critique those aspects of the show’s worldview. Pratt and showrunner David Digilio toned this thing way down for (Amazon) Prime time. And if you think the show is bad, the book, which is fast-paced and bloody and replete with descriptions of weaponry and gear, is worse. Yes, this is, as the Daily Beast’s review’s headline called the show, “an unhinged right-wing revenge fantasy.” Yes, it’s yet another invitation to worship at the altar of the Navy SEALs, who have become, in the decades after 9/11, our culture industries’ warrior saints, which isn’t good. The conspiracy that killed his team gets revealed by bloodshed, and plenty of it. As James Reece’s creator Jack Carr-himself a former SEAL with just the kind of bearded, gun-slinging author photo that you’d expect-described the story in the preface to the first book in his Terminal List series: “It is about what could happen when societal norms, laws, regulations, morals, and ethics give way for a man of extraordinary capability, hardened by war, and set on a course of reckoning a man who is, for all practical purposes, already dead.” The answer to that question will not surprise you: That man, played drawn and weary by a grey-faced Pratt, travels far and wide, a motley crew of allies in tow, to interrogate and then murder gang members, lawyers, financiers, and military personnel in a variety of creative ways. The Terminal List, starring Chris Pratt as James Reece, a badass SEAL with a recently-diagnosed brain tumor whose entire team was just killed in a suspicious operation gone wrong, is a visually murky, exceedingly grim revenge story, catnip for people who like to see these kinds of operators let loose on the world. This article contains spoilers for The Terminal List.
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