Jack’s perfection makes for an inert protagonist; he is presented as a flawless hero from the moment we first see him, moodily rowing down the Potomac before virtuously biking to work. The show makes much of the fact that he doesn’t appear to be an alpha male; love interest Abbie Cornish says, with sideways insinuation, that he’s more of a Type B or Type C guy. But again, right from the start, there are numerous moments where Jack courageously stands up to defend his position in a meeting, takes his shirt off to casually display his pecs, or spins charm in the direction of a seemingly sexually available female—all clearly intended to indicate, quite firmly, that Jack is all man. So the question of his struggle to advance from behind a desk carries no weight, and his arc through the series carries no stakes.

As any fan of The Office could tell you, Krasinski’s charm also lies less in heightening drama than in offhandedly defusing it. An internal, contained role suits him better, as indicated by his own cerebral thriller A Quiet Place. But in Jack Ryan, we’re told that Jack Ryan is the rightest, truest, and bravest, over and over again. It’s not only insufferable but boring, because he doesn’t even have the decency to be conflicted. During a tense situation-room scene, where Jack confirms that Hanin has fled Suleiman, his boss (Wendell Pierce, in a cartoonishly macho role) yells out, “There’s a woman,” as if it’s exceptional and unusual for a terrorist to have an intimate life. “It’s her,” Jack replies, curling his left hand into a loose fist—the loose fist of benevolent American imperialism. “Then find her,” says another suit in the room, with urgent, unearned intensity. I have no idea if this scene is intended to be comic or not, but I laughed.

The show is less funny when Jack Ryan tries to portray extremism—and the quantifiable human toll of the largely unsuccessful war on terror. The show not-so-subtly frames this conflict as a clash of civilizations, one that reaches its climax when four Muslim terrorists attack a Catholic church in Paris as mass is being sung. American and French forces, mostly comprising white people, team up to take down a global network of Muslims—including both bloodthirsty outlaws in the Syrian desert and mild-mannered doctors in Paris, just in case you thought anywhere, or anyone, could be counted on to be safe. The only exception is Hanin, sort of: in her attempt to separate herself from her husband’s affairs, she is immediately victimized by him and his colleagues. One tries to rape her, before a (white American male) drone pilot disobeys orders to bomb her attacker. It’s lurid schlock, stoking convenient and uncomplicated ideas about who is the enemy, and who are the good guys. Undoubtedly, that is what makes material like Jack Ryan so marketable.

There are scattered moments when Jack Ryan approaches nuance: in scenes that explore the relationship between Suleiman and his brother Ali (Haaz Sleiman), Hanin’s desperation, and the conflicted conscience of that drone pilot (John Magaro). Midseason, the pilot tries to apologize to the bereaved family of a Syrian civilian. It’s a painful scene, and contains poignant moments. But ultimately, what’s striking is the implication that it’s even possible for a person to apologize when he’s anonymously and unjustly killed a man’s son. It’s staggering, how benevolent Jack Ryan believes its soldiers to be. Questioning overseas military intervention isn’t even a partisan issue, necessarily—but Jack Ryan is all in on the fantasy.

It is normal for television to dramatize events—to fudge the dull details of a medical procedure, or heighten the drama of a courtroom. But at this moment in time, Jack Ryan’s anvil-dropping approach is grotesque. With mainstream rhetoric about Muslims being what it is, it’s not possible to engage with storytelling about the “war on terror” as pure entertainment. But Jack Ryan tries to do this anyway. It is grueling to attempt to see any of this as fun, when the subject matter feels so painfully insensitive—even more so than it did years ago, when Homeland debuted. This is a show selling a false narrative that many people would prefer to believe as truth, and it appears to have no qualms about that.

Jack Ryan feels like a machine designed to turn us all into the sort of viewers who disappear smiling down jingoistic Fox News rabbit holes. It assumes that we—Americans, and America—are doing a good job. Talk about a fantasy.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to reflect the number of episodes in the series.