Chris Pratt’s MAGA Fever Dream Show Is Laughably Awful

Marni Grossman/Prime A tormented military veteran who’s traumatized by wartime losses and betrayals, hunted by the government, and an unkillable murder machine, Chris Pratt’s ex-US Navy SEAL James Reece is a modern-day Rambo envisioned in Call of Duty terms, and The Terminal List lionizes him with a lustiness that’s borderline laughable.

Red meat for the red-state crowd, David DiGilio’s Prime Video series peddled a one-note, gung-ho vengeance fantasy in its first season, and it does much the same in its sophomore outing (Oct.

21).

Its conservative bent, however, isn’t its problem.

Rather, the show’s real shortcoming (this time based on Jack Carr’s second franchise novel, True Believer ) is its crude conventionality.

Generic and simplistic in every respect, it’s a by-the-books dadcore effort exemplified by Pratt’s performance of scowls, stronger scowls, and no-really-I’m-very-upset super scowls.

Rugged country music ballads, bible passages, and a shot of James sharing a profoundly knowing look with an African lion are all elements of The Terminal List ’s second go-round, whose story picks up with a scruffy James sailing in the Indian Ocean following the completion of his “terminal list”—a rundown of villains responsible for eliminating his squadron that included, most painfully, his best friend Ben (Taylor Kitsch).

James is still dying from a brain tumor, and on his wayward journey, he’s frequently visited by hallucinations of Ben that stoke his guilt and aren’t alleviated by his dwindling supply of pills.

While Ben roams the high seas as a fugitive—because he’s (wrongly) believed to have killed the Secretary of Defense during his revenge mission—terrorist Amin Al-Nawaz (Shadi Janho) orchestrates a deadly attack on a London Christmas market.

Amin leads a new version of Al-Qaeda that’s tech-savvy, with its chief posting regularly on social media (“Making terrors into TikToks”).

No one likes these monsters, who claim to be out for retribution for American crimes, but on Real Time with Bill Maher , the host suggests that James is not that different from them, thereby giving guest Katie Buranek (Constance Wu), James’ journalist pal, an opportunity to publicly defend his “true believer” honor.

The Terminal List gathers steam slowly, with James spending its first episode alone on his boat and its second at an African gaming reserve owned by Mr.

Hastings (Arnold Vosloo), the father of James’ former comrade Raife (Tom Hopper).

There, he reconnects with his special-ops side (by fighting poachers), shares the aforementioned meaningful moment with a big cat, and Pratt’s brooding is aggravatingly monotonous.