heroes without iron

In the latest season of Jack Ryan, an entertaining holiday series, a time when we live best with clichés, a divorced father (James Greer) goes to see his son’s game for the first time. The boy, who is on the bench waiting for his opportunity, suddenly gets excited; his face changes, he smiles: the whole scene is embarrassing. Then the man (the great Wendell Pierce, by the way) gets a phone call. It is the president of the United States asking, in good spirits, that Greer go to his office. Greer takes one last look at the boy, who hopes to come out and play sometime, then gets in the car and drives away. His son looks at him with infinite sorrow. The man doesn’t even come close to saying “excuse me”. In fact, when she talks to him on the phone, she tells him “you can’t even imagine who called me.” The boy regains a certain illusion for a moment (“maybe Margot Robbie called dad, I would have left too”), and the father says, after thinking about it: “Well, nobody”. He had already sunk him by leaving the game, but it seemed little to the writers: the cruelty continued and he didn’t seem to stop until the boy walked head down to the garage with a rope and a chair. “Junior”, the good Greer failed to say, “we offered you up for adoption years ago and nobody wanted you, so let’s make an effort to make this coexistence something bearable. And hey, I didn’t know you were a substitute.”

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