Hello and welcome back to The nerd shelf!
Todays post is going to be on my first impression on the pilot episode of Amazons new show Jack Ryan.
If you haven't seen the show or the trailer, the show is about a CIA analyst, Jack Ryan (John Krasinski), who is wrenched from the security of his desk job and into the field after he discovers a string of dubious bank transfers. His search for answers leads him across Europe and the Middle East as he uncovers a growing terrorist threat bent on carrying out an attack on the United States.
It's an action political thriller that will keep you on your toes and make you want to watch more.
My first impression:
So I just finished watching the pilot episode and it's not one of my favorite pilots but it's definitely up there. It felt a bit slow in the beginning but that's very common with pilot episode since the writer wants to introduce you to the characters and the world that they're trying to build. There were many twists that I saw coming right before they happened. John Krasinski was amazing, he is showing everyone just how versatile of an actor he can be.
So the show opens up in Lebanon in 1983 with two young boys who are dancing to The safety dance by Men without hats when their mother comes in and tells them to go outside and do their chores. I loved the choice of the song, it just set the scene so well. These are just two young boys who are having a good time. When they're outside feeding the chickens they see a bunch of planes flying over the city dropping bombs, and the scene ends with the boys being presumably bombed. Right away I presumed that this was foreshadowing and that the bombing was going to come back in some way as maybe a revenge plot.
Next we meet Jack Ryan. As he's on his bike to work he almost gets in an accident with multiple cars. In one of the cars is James Greer (Wendell Pierce), and as soon as I saw him I knew that he was probably going to be involved Ryans job. Pierce is such a great actor, I especially love him in Suits at the moment, that I knew we were going to see more of him. And of course when Ryan gets to work, Greer is there as his new boss. We get hints to some interesting things about Greer, it seems like he was forced to go on leave because of something he did, but we don't know what yet. His marriage is falling apart and he just seems like he's miserable and angry all the time. It seems like he gets demoted to be the new group chief of T-FAD (Terror, Finance and Arms Divison), and we see this throughout the whole episode as he's interacting with other people and how they are reacting to his new job.
Right away he starts to question Ryan a little bit more than the others. He questions him about what he has found and kind of makes fun of him as Ryan mentions that he thinks there's a guy named Suleiman who is going to be a high-level target.
We go to Syria where we see a mom and her kids playing football (yes it's football not soccer) surrounded by guards with guns. Since the family seemed so happy and kind of care free I didn't think they were prisoners. Also it wouldn't make sense that they would just let them outside to play football. We see cars approaching and we meet colonel Al Radwan (Jameel Khoury). When he finds out that the womans husband is not there he leaves a man that he claims her husband has requested to stay with them. She doesn't seem happy about it but doesn't argue.
We go back to Ryan as he comes home with his dinner. As he's eating he's watching jeopardy and I feel like the writers are trying to show us how smart he is by having him know all the answers to the questions. As he's eating he gets a phone call from his former boss, Joe Mueller (Victor Slezak), who says he wants to talk to him about something but doesn't want to do it over the phone. So he instead convinces Ryan to come to his birthday party. I had no clue what this was about and thought that maybe he had been Ryans boss in the military but as we see later I was wrong.
We then see a scene of Ryan not being able to sleep and he seems to have some PTSD. We find out that he was in the military. The flashes we see of his PTSD hints to have something to do with a helicopter and we find out later when Greer looks into his file, that he was the sole survivor of a helicopter crash.
Since he can't sleep he goes into work. He comes to believe that $9 million of aberrant financial transactions are connected to a new Yemeni terrorist leader, Suleiman (Ali Suliman). He goes to Greer to show what he has found and wants him to order a demarche and freeze the account. Greer does not go for this and Ryan is very frustrated, but as Ryan leaves his office Greer picks up the phone and we're left to believe that he's doing something anyways.
We go back to Syria again where the woman is making tea and goes in to offer it to this new man that is staying with them. We see them doing something in a weapons room but I have no idea what, we later see them loading something with fragile written on it onto a car. This is obviously some kind of weapon but I can't figure out what yet.
We go back to Ryan and he's talking to one of his coworkers, Layla Navarro (Victoria Sanchez), about Greer not agreeing to the demarcahe. She hints that he can't go over Greers head but treasury can. So he goes to Teresa (Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez), who obviously has a crush on him, and he uses that to convince her to order the demarche for him. I felt a little bad for her, she gets taken advantage of because she has a crush and I don't like that.
We then see Greer getting a phone call from Pete Cortwright (Andreas Apergis) who tells Greer about the demarche. Greer hangs up the phone and calls Ryan into his office. They get into a huge fight that everyone else in the office is watching (of course, who wouldn't?). We find out that Greer had a different plan on how to take down the whole network but Ryan of course doesn't see it his way.
We cut to Yemen where a CIA team is watching a bank. They follow the bank manager to a meeting with two men, one in a grey suit and the other in a brown leather jacket. From the start Suleiman is so smart making someone else do all the talking, making the other guy look like he's the boss so that they won't go after him if he gets taken. When the meeting is over they apprehend the two men. We then see Greer getting a phone call from Pete again telling him that he has some information for him.
Next we see Ryan arriving to Joes birthday party. It's at this beautiful house by the water, and we find out that Joe works at Wall Street. This came from nowhere in my opinion. Ryan worked at Wall Street?! What the fuck?!
Joe thinks that Ryan works at the state department and wants to know if he should go into business with North Korea. When Ryan has no answer for him he gets pissed of and walks away. Ryan goes to the bar and meets a woman who we find out is Joes daughter, Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish). There's some obvious flirting but in the middle of their conversation a coast guard helicopter lands on the lawn and gets Ryan before he can ask her out. They fly to the airport where Greer is waiting. Greer tells Ryan that S.A.D. and Yemeni PSO picked up what they think are two couriers. This is where e find out what the phone call that Greer made was about, he ordered surveillance on the bank. Greer also tells Ryan that he threw him out of his office, not because he was wrong, but because he doesn't know him. He obviously has some trust issues, and it made me even more curious about his back story. Greer explains that the Yemenis are going to run the interrogation but since Ryan is the one who knows all about the financial stuff he wants him to come so that they'll know what questions to ask.
We land in Yemen and we meet Matice (John Hoogenakker), a black ops operative for the CIA. Matice introduces us to Captain Achmed (Mohamed Marouazi) who is going to lead the interrogation. They walk into what I assume is the prison. It's quite obvious that Ryan is uncomfortable and doesn't like the torture. Matice leads them to the prisoners and introduces the man in the grey suit as Omar, the man in charge, and the other guy as the bodyguard, Soufan. Right away something felt wrong. Omar seemed to nervous and distraught while Soufan seemed to calm. It just didn't feel right.
When they are interrogating Omar Ryan walks out, seemingly not into the interrogation. He looks at another door and then he asks a soldier where he can get some food.
Outside, a few cars comes up to the gate of the compound. The soldiers goes out to greet them, and it turns out they have bodies for them. I guess that these are terrorists that the army wants dead and that they have a deal with local groups to kill these people. When they wheeled the bodies into the compound I got really nervous. Something, again, felt wrong, because why the hell would they show this scene otherwise?! When the camera stayed with the bodies as the soldiers left I knew that one of the bodies wasn't dead. And of course that thought came into my head right before one of them pulled his face off.
We then see a scene with Ryan and Soufan. Ryan gets them both food and water. They start to talk, Ryan questioning him a little, trying to get him to trust him. Ryan asks Soufan about some scars that he has on his hands. When he answered that they were wounds from from his childhood I knew he was one of the kids from the opening scene. And I knew that he was the boss and not Omar, it just made sense. Ryan asks him if he's ever heard the name Suleiman and when he asked him it just fell into place for me that of course this guy is probably Suleiman.
Then theres a car that comes racing towards the gate, and the soldiers have to shoot the driver to make him stop. When the car stopped and the soldiers stood there just watching the car and catching their breath I literally screamed "IT'S A FUCKING BOMB YOU IDIOTS" at my tv. And then the car blew up. All hell breaks loose as other cars comes to the gate and they start shooting. Greer, Matice and the captain goes out to see what's happening and Greer tells Ryan to stay put.
We get to see the guy who came in with the dead bodies just getting himself through the compound, killing all the guards who doesn't see him coming because they are distracted with what's going on outside. He holds a gun to one of the guards heads and asks "Where is he?". The guard, thinking that Omar is the boss, leads the guy to him and the guy shoots Omar and says "No, the other one." He gets to the room with Ryan and Soufan, a fight ensues and Ryan being ex military really comes in handy here. Ryan ends up on the ground with a grenade in his hand and a gun trained at his head. He figures out that Soufan is Suleiman as the two guys walks away.
Suleiman and the guy ends up in one of the cars as they escape and they hold each other. This was when I figured that the other guy probably is his brother. And then we get to see the aftermath of the explosion in the opening.
We see young Suleiman getting up as he hears his brother screaming. He finds him with his legs stuck under a burning beam and Suleiman grabs the beam and pushes it off of him even though his hands are burning, hence the scars on his hands that Ryan asked him about. The boys hold each other the same way that the men are holding each other to indicate to the audience that these are the same people. I think the writers are trying to tell the audience that the brothers bond is extremely strong. It made me think of my sister and what I would do for her. Would I grab a burning beam that she's stuck under? Probably. A sibling bond can be one of the strongest.
And thats where we leave the first episode. As I said in the beginning I felt like the first half of the episode was a little slow, but it didn't surprise me either since it's a pilot episode. The second half I loved. It made my heart beat fast with anticipation and when it ended it made me want to watch more. It made me exited to see what comes next. I have a rule of giving a tv show at least six episodes if I don't hate it right away, but this already has me convinced that it's going to be amazing, I don't need to give it six episodes, I'm already in!
/Johanna
Todays post is going to be on my first impression on the pilot episode of Amazons new show Jack Ryan.
If you haven't seen the show or the trailer, the show is about a CIA analyst, Jack Ryan (John Krasinski), who is wrenched from the security of his desk job and into the field after he discovers a string of dubious bank transfers. His search for answers leads him across Europe and the Middle East as he uncovers a growing terrorist threat bent on carrying out an attack on the United States.
It's an action political thriller that will keep you on your toes and make you want to watch more.
Watch the Jack Ryan season 1 trailer:
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
My first impression:
So I just finished watching the pilot episode and it's not one of my favorite pilots but it's definitely up there. It felt a bit slow in the beginning but that's very common with pilot episode since the writer wants to introduce you to the characters and the world that they're trying to build. There were many twists that I saw coming right before they happened. John Krasinski was amazing, he is showing everyone just how versatile of an actor he can be.
So the show opens up in Lebanon in 1983 with two young boys who are dancing to The safety dance by Men without hats when their mother comes in and tells them to go outside and do their chores. I loved the choice of the song, it just set the scene so well. These are just two young boys who are having a good time. When they're outside feeding the chickens they see a bunch of planes flying over the city dropping bombs, and the scene ends with the boys being presumably bombed. Right away I presumed that this was foreshadowing and that the bombing was going to come back in some way as maybe a revenge plot.
Next we meet Jack Ryan. As he's on his bike to work he almost gets in an accident with multiple cars. In one of the cars is James Greer (Wendell Pierce), and as soon as I saw him I knew that he was probably going to be involved Ryans job. Pierce is such a great actor, I especially love him in Suits at the moment, that I knew we were going to see more of him. And of course when Ryan gets to work, Greer is there as his new boss. We get hints to some interesting things about Greer, it seems like he was forced to go on leave because of something he did, but we don't know what yet. His marriage is falling apart and he just seems like he's miserable and angry all the time. It seems like he gets demoted to be the new group chief of T-FAD (Terror, Finance and Arms Divison), and we see this throughout the whole episode as he's interacting with other people and how they are reacting to his new job.
Right away he starts to question Ryan a little bit more than the others. He questions him about what he has found and kind of makes fun of him as Ryan mentions that he thinks there's a guy named Suleiman who is going to be a high-level target.
We go to Syria where we see a mom and her kids playing football (yes it's football not soccer) surrounded by guards with guns. Since the family seemed so happy and kind of care free I didn't think they were prisoners. Also it wouldn't make sense that they would just let them outside to play football. We see cars approaching and we meet colonel Al Radwan (Jameel Khoury). When he finds out that the womans husband is not there he leaves a man that he claims her husband has requested to stay with them. She doesn't seem happy about it but doesn't argue.
We go back to Ryan as he comes home with his dinner. As he's eating he's watching jeopardy and I feel like the writers are trying to show us how smart he is by having him know all the answers to the questions. As he's eating he gets a phone call from his former boss, Joe Mueller (Victor Slezak), who says he wants to talk to him about something but doesn't want to do it over the phone. So he instead convinces Ryan to come to his birthday party. I had no clue what this was about and thought that maybe he had been Ryans boss in the military but as we see later I was wrong.
We then see a scene of Ryan not being able to sleep and he seems to have some PTSD. We find out that he was in the military. The flashes we see of his PTSD hints to have something to do with a helicopter and we find out later when Greer looks into his file, that he was the sole survivor of a helicopter crash.
Since he can't sleep he goes into work. He comes to believe that $9 million of aberrant financial transactions are connected to a new Yemeni terrorist leader, Suleiman (Ali Suliman). He goes to Greer to show what he has found and wants him to order a demarche and freeze the account. Greer does not go for this and Ryan is very frustrated, but as Ryan leaves his office Greer picks up the phone and we're left to believe that he's doing something anyways.
We go back to Syria again where the woman is making tea and goes in to offer it to this new man that is staying with them. We see them doing something in a weapons room but I have no idea what, we later see them loading something with fragile written on it onto a car. This is obviously some kind of weapon but I can't figure out what yet.
We go back to Ryan and he's talking to one of his coworkers, Layla Navarro (Victoria Sanchez), about Greer not agreeing to the demarcahe. She hints that he can't go over Greers head but treasury can. So he goes to Teresa (Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez), who obviously has a crush on him, and he uses that to convince her to order the demarche for him. I felt a little bad for her, she gets taken advantage of because she has a crush and I don't like that.
We then see Greer getting a phone call from Pete Cortwright (Andreas Apergis) who tells Greer about the demarche. Greer hangs up the phone and calls Ryan into his office. They get into a huge fight that everyone else in the office is watching (of course, who wouldn't?). We find out that Greer had a different plan on how to take down the whole network but Ryan of course doesn't see it his way.
We cut to Yemen where a CIA team is watching a bank. They follow the bank manager to a meeting with two men, one in a grey suit and the other in a brown leather jacket. From the start Suleiman is so smart making someone else do all the talking, making the other guy look like he's the boss so that they won't go after him if he gets taken. When the meeting is over they apprehend the two men. We then see Greer getting a phone call from Pete again telling him that he has some information for him.
Next we see Ryan arriving to Joes birthday party. It's at this beautiful house by the water, and we find out that Joe works at Wall Street. This came from nowhere in my opinion. Ryan worked at Wall Street?! What the fuck?!
Joe thinks that Ryan works at the state department and wants to know if he should go into business with North Korea. When Ryan has no answer for him he gets pissed of and walks away. Ryan goes to the bar and meets a woman who we find out is Joes daughter, Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish). There's some obvious flirting but in the middle of their conversation a coast guard helicopter lands on the lawn and gets Ryan before he can ask her out. They fly to the airport where Greer is waiting. Greer tells Ryan that S.A.D. and Yemeni PSO picked up what they think are two couriers. This is where e find out what the phone call that Greer made was about, he ordered surveillance on the bank. Greer also tells Ryan that he threw him out of his office, not because he was wrong, but because he doesn't know him. He obviously has some trust issues, and it made me even more curious about his back story. Greer explains that the Yemenis are going to run the interrogation but since Ryan is the one who knows all about the financial stuff he wants him to come so that they'll know what questions to ask.
We land in Yemen and we meet Matice (John Hoogenakker), a black ops operative for the CIA. Matice introduces us to Captain Achmed (Mohamed Marouazi) who is going to lead the interrogation. They walk into what I assume is the prison. It's quite obvious that Ryan is uncomfortable and doesn't like the torture. Matice leads them to the prisoners and introduces the man in the grey suit as Omar, the man in charge, and the other guy as the bodyguard, Soufan. Right away something felt wrong. Omar seemed to nervous and distraught while Soufan seemed to calm. It just didn't feel right.
When they are interrogating Omar Ryan walks out, seemingly not into the interrogation. He looks at another door and then he asks a soldier where he can get some food.
Outside, a few cars comes up to the gate of the compound. The soldiers goes out to greet them, and it turns out they have bodies for them. I guess that these are terrorists that the army wants dead and that they have a deal with local groups to kill these people. When they wheeled the bodies into the compound I got really nervous. Something, again, felt wrong, because why the hell would they show this scene otherwise?! When the camera stayed with the bodies as the soldiers left I knew that one of the bodies wasn't dead. And of course that thought came into my head right before one of them pulled his face off.
We then see a scene with Ryan and Soufan. Ryan gets them both food and water. They start to talk, Ryan questioning him a little, trying to get him to trust him. Ryan asks Soufan about some scars that he has on his hands. When he answered that they were wounds from from his childhood I knew he was one of the kids from the opening scene. And I knew that he was the boss and not Omar, it just made sense. Ryan asks him if he's ever heard the name Suleiman and when he asked him it just fell into place for me that of course this guy is probably Suleiman.
Then theres a car that comes racing towards the gate, and the soldiers have to shoot the driver to make him stop. When the car stopped and the soldiers stood there just watching the car and catching their breath I literally screamed "IT'S A FUCKING BOMB YOU IDIOTS" at my tv. And then the car blew up. All hell breaks loose as other cars comes to the gate and they start shooting. Greer, Matice and the captain goes out to see what's happening and Greer tells Ryan to stay put.
We get to see the guy who came in with the dead bodies just getting himself through the compound, killing all the guards who doesn't see him coming because they are distracted with what's going on outside. He holds a gun to one of the guards heads and asks "Where is he?". The guard, thinking that Omar is the boss, leads the guy to him and the guy shoots Omar and says "No, the other one." He gets to the room with Ryan and Soufan, a fight ensues and Ryan being ex military really comes in handy here. Ryan ends up on the ground with a grenade in his hand and a gun trained at his head. He figures out that Soufan is Suleiman as the two guys walks away.
Suleiman and the guy ends up in one of the cars as they escape and they hold each other. This was when I figured that the other guy probably is his brother. And then we get to see the aftermath of the explosion in the opening.
We see young Suleiman getting up as he hears his brother screaming. He finds him with his legs stuck under a burning beam and Suleiman grabs the beam and pushes it off of him even though his hands are burning, hence the scars on his hands that Ryan asked him about. The boys hold each other the same way that the men are holding each other to indicate to the audience that these are the same people. I think the writers are trying to tell the audience that the brothers bond is extremely strong. It made me think of my sister and what I would do for her. Would I grab a burning beam that she's stuck under? Probably. A sibling bond can be one of the strongest.
And thats where we leave the first episode. As I said in the beginning I felt like the first half of the episode was a little slow, but it didn't surprise me either since it's a pilot episode. The second half I loved. It made my heart beat fast with anticipation and when it ended it made me want to watch more. It made me exited to see what comes next. I have a rule of giving a tv show at least six episodes if I don't hate it right away, but this already has me convinced that it's going to be amazing, I don't need to give it six episodes, I'm already in!
/Johanna
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