Krasinski and Pierce as Ryan and Greer. Image: Amazon Prime Video
While cycling to work in the pilot of the Amazon Prime series Jack Ryan, the eponymous character nearly runs into a car. The car’s driver curses at Jack and roars away in his Chevy; in return, Jack swears under his breath and pedals on. My husband, referring to the driver, said, “That actor is too well-known for that to have been a throwaway line.”
I agreed. “Yeah, you’re right. That was the meet cute.” My husband asked what I meant. I explained that in romances, the two main characters often meet under comical or otherwise less-than-ideal circumstances, setting up obstacles to their eventual pairing. This is the meet cute, a term coined in Hollywood in the 1930s. Writers fill the meet cute with as much embarrassment and overt antagonism as they possibly can. Why? Because the more conflict romantic leads overcome, the more satisfying the happily ever after.
Was I right about Jack Ryan’s near collision? Sure enough, moments later, the driver turns out to be James Greer, Jack’s new boss at T-FAD, a division of the CIA’s counterterrorism department. Awkwardness ensues as Ryan and Greer begin their relationship arc. Spoiler alert: these two will not go on to become lovers, but they do develop a close working relationship — a bromance, if you will — after they overcome their mutual mistrust.
Ryan and Greer’s meet cute sets up many tense scenes to come, but not much further into the episode, the audience gets yet another meet cute — this time of the classic sort. An ex-boss invites Jack to a garden party, hoping for some insider tips that will help him with his investments. Jack politely refuses. The boss angrily snubs him, then walks away. A beautiful woman has overheard the embarrassing exchange, and in the ensuing conversation with Ryan, reveals herself to be Cathy Mueller, the ex-boss’s daughter.
Abbie Cornish and John Krasinski. Photo: Amazon Prime Video
Jack is intrigued, but cautious; no matter how attractive he finds Cathy, it’s clear that there’s some unpleasant history with her father that might complicate a future relationship. He gives his customary modest answer when Cathy asks what he does for a living: “I’m an analyst.” But when a Coast Guard Jayhawk lands on the lawn and Jack is whisked away for an emergency meeting, Cathy suspects that there’s more to Jack and his work than he’s admitting.
Jack Ryan’s clever pilot writers have even more trouble up their sleeves. That dramatic helicopter scene eventually leads to Jack’s meet cute with the series’ pleasingly complex villain, Mousa bin Suleiman. What makes it a meet cute? The way the two stumble through their chance encounter. While the rest of the CIA surveillance team interrogate a suspected terrorist, on a hunch, Jack questions a forgotten bodyguard — who, Jack soon realizes, is the mastermind behind a potentially deadly global threat. As the two interact, they each inadvertently reveal vulnerabilities that will later bear fruit as their protagonist-antagonist relationship progresses.
Krasinski and Ali Suliman. Photo: Amazon Prime Video
All stories are built on conflict. In a political thriller like Jack Ryan, audiences expect a lot of external conflict: espionage, shady deals, corrupt politicians, and terrorists with guns and bombs. What hooks audiences into any story, however, is the internal conflict, both within characters themselves and in their relationships. This conflict is ideally seeded in initial scenes (like the meet cute) and then sprouts and flowers as the story unfolds. The three meets cute in Jack Ryan — each hinted at in turn in the trailer, by the way — generate internal conflict in the form of assumptions, prejudices, secrets, and lies — all of which are mirrored in the series’ subplots.
Assumptions: Jack and Greer each assume the other is a jerk in that first scene, and that first impression colors their relationship for episodes to come. Bin Suleiman assumes his wife is unthinkingly loyal to his increasingly radicalized cause, temporarily blinding him to what’s really going on in his household. Timothy Hutton’s Nathan Singer assumes that Jack is as much of an ambitious climber as he is; he soon finds he’s sadly mistaken.
Prejudices: Greer converted to Islam when he married Jasmine, his ex-wife; Jack is a former Marine who was gravely wounded in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The audience, alert to possible sources of bias, can safely expect prejudice to rear its head more fully, especially after a clumsy interchange between a bigoted French detective and Greer.
Secrets: Greer was drastically demoted from being station chief in Karachi to his new position running Jack’s backwater office. But why? “Tell me about what happened in Karachi,” Jack demands at one point. “Tell me about Afghanistan,” Greer rifles back. Neither is willing to divulge uncomfortable parts of his past, increasing suspense for each other and the audience.
“I’m an analyst” becomes Jack’s polite wall between him and closeness to others. He has at least three pasts that lesser men would trot out and brag about at cocktail parties: his stint on Wall Street; his years pursuing an Economics Ph.D. at Boston College; and his tours of duty as a Marine (including his recovery from debilitating injury). Cathy seems to know none of this by the time she invites Jack to come up to her apartment after their first date — but how long will a brilliant doctor be put off with vague excuses once she sees his battle scars? And does she in turn have secrets of her own?
Lies: On their first date, Jack complains to Cathy about his boring job at the State Department. We know he’s trying to discourage her curiosity, since he actually works for the CIA. While he‘s required to lie about his work to most people, how long will he have to continue the deception with Cathy?
Hanin bin Suleiman secretly plans to escape Syria with her children while working to maintain the illusion of a submissive wife. Alert to the threat of grave punishment, the audience is on edge as her dishonesty is revealed. And on all sides of the story, the lies continue.
Throughout the first season, the internal conflicts — set up in those three meets cute and underscored by interactions with secondary characters — kept us watching. Afterward, as I worked on my own fiction, I was newly alert to the chances for ratcheting up tension through seeds planted in my characters’ initial encounters. Whether you’re a writer or not, keep an eye open for the meet cute in novels, movies, and TV shows—and see what conflicts arise as a result.