I happen to be watching it now, so I can cover this through episode 6 of 8 off the top of my head. It definitely has woke moments. The black detective getting beat up by the racist white police who then basically admit "We did it because he was black, not because we thought he was breaking in" to make sure the audience knows how racist they are. The black female PI who goes to a strip club and beats up a white male patron for touching a stripper (I haven't conducted an extensive strip club survey, but surely they all have bouncers that are on top this?). The detective and the barber talking about how much they're hated there because they're black. But it's mostly that if you do a count of how many of the "bad guys" are white vs. black, compared to how many "good guys" are white vs. black, or do the same thing for male vs. female, you'll find a remarkably unbalanced count. The standouts for believability are definitely the harvard-schooled black detective living in a small southern town and the black female private investigator who also fought with Reacher in the army.
On the protagonist's side:
Reacher: White male.
Main detective guy: Black male.
Main police woman: White female.
FBI guy who protects family of banker guy: Black male.
Barber who assists investigation and had the chest from the dead mentor, basically the only friendly townperson: Black male
PI who helps extensively: Black female.
Brother's partner in the secret service who gets killed: White female
Professor who helps: White female
On the antagonist's side:
Kleiner, the main bad guy for most of the series: White male.
That guy's asshole son who basically exists to fulfill the 'bully' caricature: White male
That guy's stupid friend he drives around with for backup: White man
Thugs in prison who were going to rape banker guy: Black men
Thugs in prison who were going to kill banker guy: White men
Dirty cops at police station: All white men
The mayor, who's dirty and killed white cop girl's mentor: White male
Police chief who gets killed early on, who iirc is dirty: white male
Dirty prison guard who sets up Reacher to be killed: White male
Various Venezuelan hitmen: All hispanic men. So these guys aren't white. You could argue that they have to be hispanic to remind the audience they're from South America, though, so it would take a rewrite of the plot to replace Venezuela with Russia or something to make them white.
Dirty cop who kills his black partner in the cop car for cooperating with Reacher: White male
The white banker guy and his family are white, and he was working for the antagonists, but they spend some time on showing how he was manipulated, so I'll leave him out of either category.
So yeah, definitely somewhat woke. Really it's the MC Reacher who most people saying it isn't woke are probably hanging their hat on, and yeah, he's definitely white and male, and smart and extremely capable, and he does receive the most screen time of any character. But the rest of the cast is pretty standard "White male = bad guy, not white male = good persxn".
But as for whether it's good or not with the wokeness left aside: It's okay. I can't comment too much or give it a final recommendation since I have two episodes left. Aside from the whole plot being resolved, I'm still waiting to see if some of the issues I have in terms of characters acting irrationally are explained by the end. Reacher is sometimes a little ridiculous, like how he can identify where in the world a guy is from based on how he head butts, or that the way a guy had his throat cut was specifically a south american thing. His behaviour is also sometimes the stupid kind of violent: like how he goes into the restaurant to punch the guy's son, when he explicitly knows that that's exactly what the other guy wants. I guess it's supposed to be partially related to the secret service woman who was killed and the emotional state that put him in, but that doesn't work too well with how extremely rationally and unemotional he behaves otherwise, almost to the point of being autistic. There's also the way that people tend to come at him with exactly the level of force he can handle at the time to make the fight scenes interesting... except for the one time he should totally get shot, and is saved by police woman, in the interest of showing how she doesn't need him to help her. But in general the fight scenes seem good and the protagonists don't get outrageously lucky too often.
Well, whatever. It's woke, but definitely not as woke as, for instance, Star Wars or something, and I'm not going to put too much effort into assessing it's overall quality given that I'm not all the way through.
I happen to be watching it now, so I can cover this through episode 6 of 8 off the top of my head. It definitely has woke moments. The black detective getting beat up by the racist white police who then basically admit "We did it because he was black, not because we thought he was breaking in" to make sure the audience knows how racist they are. The black female PI who goes to a strip club and beats up a white male patron for touching a stripper (I haven't conducted an extensive strip club survey, but surely they all have bouncers that are on top this?). The detective and the barber talking about how much they're hated there because they're black. But it's mostly that if you do a count of how many of the "bad guys" are white vs. black, compared to how many "good guys" are white vs. black, or do the same thing for male vs. female, you'll find a remarkably unbalanced count. The standouts for believability are definitely the harvard-schooled black detective living in a small southern town and the black female private investigator who also fought with Reacher in the army.
On the protagonist's side:
Reacher: White male.
Main detective guy: Black male.
Main police woman: White female.
FBI guy who protects family of banker guy: Black male.
Barber who assists investigation and had the chest from the dead mentor, basically the only friendly townperson: Black male
PI who helps extensively: Black female.
Brother's partner in the secret service who gets killed: White female
Professor who helps: White female
On the antagonist's side:
Kleiner, the main bad guy for most of the series: White male.
That guy's asshole son who basically exists to fulfill the 'bully' caricature: White male
That guy's stupid friend he drives around with for backup: White man
Thugs in prison who were going to rape banker guy: Black men
Thugs in prison who were going to kill banker guy: White men
Dirty cops at police station: All white men
The mayor, who's dirty and killed white cop girl's mentor: White male
Police chief who gets killed early on, who iirc is dirty: white male
Dirty prison guard who sets up Reacher to be killed: White male
Various Venezuelan hitmen: All hispanic men. So these guys aren't white. You could argue that they have to be hispanic to remind the audience they're from South America, though, so it would take a rewrite of the plot to replace Venezuela with Russia or something to make them white.
Dirty cop who kills his black partner in the cop car for cooperating with Reacher: White male
The white banker guy and his family are white, and he was working for the antagonists, but they spend some time on showing how he was manipulated, so I'll leave him out of either category.
So yeah, definitely somewhat woke. Really it's the MC Reacher who most people saying it isn't woke are probably hanging their hat on, and yeah, he's definitely white and male, and smart and extremely capable, and he does receive the most screen time of any character. But the rest of the cast is pretty standard "White male = bad guy, not white male = good persxn".