USA’s Shooter returns with a bang. Make that many bangs.
The action adventure thriller wastes no time when it returns Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET. It does, however, waste several characters.
Ryan Phillippe (top) returns as Bob Lee Swagger, a former Marine sniper who can’t seem to escape the past and settle down to a nice quiet West Texas life with his wife Julie (Shantel VanSanten, below) and their young daughter.
Last season, for instance, he agreed to do some preventative surveillance as a favor to an old colleague. He ended up being framed for trying to murder the president, which temporarily made him the most hated man in America.
Goodbye, nice quiet life.
It took him a while – most of the first season, in fact – to sort all that out, as some very bad guys turned out to be involved. Also, his former Marine commander, Capt. Isaac Johnson (Omar Epps) was the one who tried to frame him.
Semper Fi, huh?
As this season starts, Bob Lee is trying for the quiet life again. Only he agrees to go to Germany for a reunion of his old Marine unit and wouldn’t you know it, another very bad guy starts trying to pick them off.
“We’re being hunted” is how Bob Lee puts it, establishing the rather somber premise for at least the early part of this second season.
Despite referencing politics and incorporating international intrigue, Shooter doesn’t aim to be another Homeland. The drama focuses almost entirely on our one main guy and what he feels he must do to protect himself and his family, plus sometimes his friends.
First indications are that this may be a broader-based, more intense and faster-paced challenge in the second season.
Bob Lee does have some allies in his quest, including FBI agent Nadine Memphis (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). She was assigned to bust him for the assassination attempt last season, then found herself believing his story and ultimately helping him sort things out, which sometimes countering the directives of the bureau.
Her reward for this is that the FBI has basically killed her career. So she may have a different role this time around.
Bob Lee also has a new pal in Angela Tio (Jaina Lee Ortiz, right), whom he knew from their days together in the Marines. She’s tough here, as Ortiz has been in Rosewood.
Isaac Johnson, meanwhile, is off in Bangkok, trying to sort his own things out. That gets harder when it turns out that he too may be quarry for whoever crashed the Germany reunion.
Then, just to compound things a little further, Julie Swagger may be suffering from PTSD after getting a little too close to the dangerous situations aimed at her husband.
While wives and girlfriends tend to be subordinate in most male action dramas, VanSanten has made Julie into an interesting, multidimensional character on her own. She’s worth watching.
Shooter isn’t the most profound drama on TV and doesn’t try to be. It wants to be a lively adventure story, a kind of contemporary Western, and it hits that target.