I have to confess to having read way too many Tom Clancy novels in my life, and all of them before college, so one may surmise that the psychological damage is too great to reckon.

Needless to say, I was equal parts excited and trepidatious when Amazon Prime dropped a trailer for a series titled “Jack Ryan.” On the one hand, the first 3 Ryan movies are all very well done; on the other, neither Ben Affleck nor Chris Pine could do anything with the role.

Let’s skip ahead to what you want to know: It is a well done, exciting, entertaining show. If you want to be entertained, this will do it for you. Good performances all around, too.

If you’re looking for fidelity to any Clancy source material, sorry, there’s none. In fact, I was wondering if the only reason this series needed to be titled Jack Ryan was so it got greenlit.

The changes they took to Greer (see endnote), and Cathy, and Jack that Ryanverse aficianados will recognize - I personally don’t have a problem with. I think it’s fine to define themselves on their own terms, in their own way.

But after 25 years of reading and watching the Ryanverse, I think it’s a fair question to ask: what does Jack Ryan really stand for, and who do we want our heroes to be?

In the Hunt For Red October, there’s two things that stand out about Alec Baldwin’s performance: the first is that Jack is decidedly not confident about much. The second is that Jack is a voice of reason and humanity in an inhumane environment. It’s this latter one that ultimately proves pivotal; Jack guessing which way Ramius will clear his baffles prevents the U.S.S. Dallas from blowing Ramius out of the water.

The value of ‘give the man a chance’ sounds awfully American to me. We’re going to fast forward past Patriot Games , because it’s so tonally different than all the other Ryan stories. In A Clear and Present Danger, while Harrison Ford embodies the older Ryan with confidence and gravitas, he’s never been to the White House, let alone briefed the President when the story begins. Its a story of retaining one’s integrity and faithfulness of duty, even as everything is put in to jeopardy.

In all three films, there’s a clear morality play at hand: Jack is forced to make a moral choice, and I think many of us admire Jack because he makes the choices we wish we would make in the same heightened scenario. They are interesting precisely because they are not clear choices.

Which is why the latter two movies The Sum of All Fears and* Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit* fall so flat. There’s nothing interesting at all about the Ryans or the choices that they make.

The advantage to a series format like this is that gives us a chance to present characters with a lot of choices. And we do see John Krasinski wrestle with them. But mostly Jack’s “genius” in this new show is cold and analytical; we’re led to believe that he’s the smartest guy in the room primarily on the impression that when he talks forcefully people listen. Krasinski’s moral outrage is reserved for a Turkish pimp. That episode in particular comes off as naive and patronizing. But I’m still left with a question about what Ryan stands for, and what that says about us.

You’d think after 17 years in Afghanistan and 15 in Iraq and with US forces deployed to every corner of the globe, we’d have a better handle on who our heroes are and what they are fighting for, but I don’t think anyone has really answered that with a degree of clarity befitting the American public. Even the source character doesn’t reflect the people fighting or many of the people analyzing intelligence.

Perhaps a better answer is offered by the show, in an interesting subplot. An American Drone Pilot is depressed for his role in combat operations, killing by remote control. He comes into some money, and realizing he’s killed at least one completely innocent man, flies over there on his own, finds the family of the man he’s killed, has a cup of tea with them, and leaves the rest of the money as a token of apology. He doesn’t find eloquent words to justify what he did. He doesn’t cower behind walls or platitudes, he accepts responsibility for his actions, knowing full well that he does so at risk.

It’s an over the top plot, I’ll grant you; but I’ll tell you that seeing an American take some measure of responsibility for their actions in the world and not merely asserting their moral superiority over it was refreshing, and perhaps the thing we know we need but can not express.

At his best, Jack Ryan is not simply a self righteous boy scout lecturing others how he’s right and they are wrong. Jack Ryan is not, often, the smartest in the room. He’s certainly not the most powerful or the most lethal, at least not before the book Executive Orders. Jack Ryan is the best when he is put in to morally challenging positions and shows us what Americans have done with remarkable frequency in our history - how to choose humanity and integrity over expediency.

That’s a hero I can root for.

Endnote: Greer

three quick things: first, I love James Earl Jones and I love Wendell Pierce. Second, I think it was very wise to make the Pierce Greer very different than Jones’ Greer, because, how do you compete with James Earl Jones? Third: This Greer is different. The way I’ve characterized Greer before is as “the boss everyone wishes they had”. Greer is more than a boss, he’s Jack’s mentor and rabbi. This Greer doesn’t quite hit there, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad either.