While Amazon’s new Reacher series may not have enjoyed the support of any of the usual suspects in the state-sponsored schlock genre, it contains many of the same tropes and values familiar to fans of statist entertainment. In this piece I outline why that is – virtually all the major creative minds behind Reacher have CVs littered with CIA and DOD credits – this is basically the same crew that brought us Jack Ryan. For what it’s worth, I kind of enjoyed the show but hated its politics. Venezuela really needs a Mario t-shirt asking ‘why always me?’.