A while back I posted about the growing genre of Dad TV, and how it’s managed to lock down the demographic of adult males over a certain age (raise my hand to that) who are sick of seeing themselves portrayed as clueless fathers getting schooled by their sharp savvy wives, doofus fathers who embarrass their teenage kids, and the dildo sitting in the back seat at the Sonic drive thru.

So I’m talking about the male fantasy of being the provider. The protector. The defender of innocents. The patriarch who’ll go to any length, pay any price, bear any burden, to take care of the people who depend on him:

Dad TV is embodied by strong men who live by their own moral code. Over the last decade or so, it’s been anti-heroes like John Dutton in Yellowstone and Walter White in Breaking Bad, to law-and-order types who bend the rules when they have to, like Raylan Givens in Justified and Jack Ryan in, not surprisingly, Jack Ryan. In the fantasy/Sc-Fi realm, think Joel Miller in The Last of Us or Mando in The Mandalorian, both played by Pedro Pascal and trying to safely escort a young person who might be The Key to Everything through hostile worlds.

And at the moment, no one represents the archetype better than Alan Ritchson’s title character in Reacher, the ex-military badass who shows no mercy to those who threaten the vulnerable who can’t defend themselves.

I understand completely why Reacher is big with aging guys like me who grew up on Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford characters and are sick of getting fed a steady diet of Sheldons. What’s a mystery to me is why it’s so popular with suburban women like my beguiling Irish Rose. I mean, what exactly does she see in a stoic, resourceful heroic figure with 0% body fat who looks like he was chiseled out of a 400 pound block of solid testosterone?

Then I saw where he was on The View promoting a new movie where he plays a dad who risks life and limb to get his daughter to a medivac flight in a blizzard, told a story of his real life heroism, and basically reduced those hens to a water park:

Source –  On this morning’s episode of The View, Ritchson appeared … alongside his Ordinary Angels co-star Hillary Swank. …

“I was on a date with my wife. Let’s start there. It was dusk in Old Montreal,” he said as he set the scene. “The cobblestone streets were romantic. The sun was setting. It was beautiful.”

Date night with his wife. Old Montreal. Cobblestones. Sunset. Already at this point, he’s reversed the menopause of half the women on the panel and the audience.

Ritchson continued, “My wife noticed some feet dangling out of a vehicle. She said, ‘I think that dude’s breaking into the car.’ And he ran off with a ton of bags and passed us up. …

“I chased him down. He took a left. I turned the corner. I almost caught up to him. He took another left. I rounded the corner and he was gone,” Ritchson recalled. “Then somebody down the street that was watching us goes, ‘He’s under the van!’” …

Ritchson was eventually able to catch up to him.

“We’re running side-by-side and we look at each other and go, ‘How does this end?’” he joked. “I’m not sure how either of us get out of this situation. We’ve taken it pretty far.”

We’re with Sara Haines when she said Ritchson “just got hotter!”

By now, they’re ovulating.

At one point, the ballsy criminal even attempted to go up against Ritchson, whose staggering 6’2″ height is complimented by his rock-solid frame.

“He goes to put his hands on me. He’s like running but he’s got his fists up,” the star said. “I was like, ‘Don’t do this dude.’ He shoves me and so I gently … I don’t want to hurt him … like multiple spins into a building wall and he just sat down. That was it. That was really it. We got him.”

Here it is, cued up to the 7:00 mark. Watch close, keep your finger over the pause button, and see if you can locate the exact moment all those fresh eggs get fertilized:

If you’re a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin, you can respect a man who has this effect on the ladies. Appreciate it, even. Making women swoon this way comes with the territory. Part of what draws us to Dad TV-type heroes is the way they ride into town, deal with the bad guys no one else can, and they get to kiss the girl. It’s what we all aspire to.

Even as the most romantic place we take our wives to is a chain restaurant next to the mall and the most heroic thing we do is figure out how to change the water filter cartridge for the automatic ice maker.

I speak from experience. And can appreciate why these women and the one in my life would fall all over themselves hearing this guy tell this story or watch him play pretend on TV. They’ll just never love a Dude Who Rocks the way a man can.