We watched two full seasons of Reacher and never reviewed either one, and that was on purpose. It was the thing we kept to ourselves. We binged it when the episodes turned up, it was just something for us to do, and I really dig the show.
Now we’re at three seasons, and that’s kind of a bigger version of what I always say, which is give something three episodes. It feels like it’s sticking around. I feel like even after this we’ll get another one. So I’m okay talking about it now, and the first three episodes of Season 3 are on Amazon Prime, so there will be spoilers for those.
If you’re watching it, I want to know. And if you’re not watching it, tell me why, because it’s such a good show. You don’t really have to watch the first two seasons, either. They do a small recap.
Why I Didn’t Buy the Small Version
When I first saw the Tom Cruise Reacher movies, I thought, this is a cool character. I had no clue what the books were. But he’s such a small guy, and I couldn’t work out why I was supposed to believe Tom Cruise was this dangerous.
I’ve never read the books, but I’ve found out a lot since because of the series. He’s described as a mountain of a guy. Very one note, very “I have a goal.” And he roams. He’s a vagabond, which is a great way to put it.
Then you start the first episode of the first season and there’s Alan Ritchson. I only knew him briefly as Hawk, from the Hawk and Dove team on that weird Titans show. That show wasn’t good enough for me to ever want to review it. In fact it only made me mad every time I watched it. So you go back and you find out he’s got roots. He was Aquaman on Smallville. He was nowhere near as big as he is now, but that was him.
He Believes His Eyes
Ritchson just plays it right. Reacher’s smart, and his way of saying “I can take care of this” is “wait here.”
I love the way they wrote his observation skills, or maybe it’s more his logic. We’ve seen a lot of Sherlock Holmes clones. Reacher’s just a very observant guy, and it’s the training that did it. He was Army, an MP, and he led the 110, the special investigations unit that got a reputation under him as the most elite investigators there were. That’s what all of Season 2 was about, so if you get a chance, catch up, because if nothing else you get the backstory on why he is who he is.
He’s also very nonplussed. The things in front of him make sense. You’ll never hear Reacher go “I don’t believe it.” What he sees is what he believes, okay, this is what’s happening. He’s quick to give his opinion and he doesn’t give in to anybody. When the feds show up at his hotel he goes out the window and grabs his toothbrush on the way, which is a callback to last season.
And that’s where we meet the Boston agent, who I love. He’d registered under a ballplayer’s name, and she tells him, “you don’t look much like a middle infielder to me.” She’s from Boston and she’s as much of a smart mouth as he is. She fits his logic, but she’s the one who says “I can’t believe it.” She’s emotional, which Reacher isn’t, in all the right ways. That’s what makes it good.
He’s got conviction too. He just skips the emotional gloss on it. Good is good, bad is bad, and bad people deserve what they get. And let’s be for real, something’s going to happen between those two. We called that.
The Cold Open Got a Twist
Every season they’ve done what I call the cold open. He’s doing something nonchalant, he notices a thing because he’s so observant, and he goes and stops somebody.
This season they put a twist on it, and I love the way they opened. He’s taking records to a vinyl shop. We live 25 minutes from a college town and we’ve seen one of those, so fair. He notices a pickup truck, he keeps a kid from getting kidnapped, he shoots a dude, and it turns out it’s a police officer he shot. We’re freaking out.
The kid wants to go home. Reacher can’t go to the cops, he just killed one. The kid says his dad’s got money. “What’s your dad do?” He sells rugs. Nothing seems more suspicious. It’s those imported rugs that run $5,000 for an eight by ten.
Then we get to the house and get our first glimpse of Paulie, this mountain of a dude who makes Reacher look small. I didn’t think anybody could make Reacher look small. They do that shot over the shoulder where he looks up, and it reminded me of Back to the Future Part II, when Marty goes to talk trash to future Biff’s grandkid. That’s exactly what it looked like.
And the boss, Beck, is Anthony Michael Hall, who was on Psych, and who’s of Weird Science fame, and The Breakfast Club, which turned 40 the day we sat down to talk about this. When I told that to Mrs. Know-It-All she looked like sad Affleck.
Then you find out what was going down a few days earlier, in a little scene that would’ve been the cold open in the first two seasons. He’s schooling a kid who’s about to rob a lady, here’s 100 bucks, go get a job. He looks across the street and sees somebody he apparently killed a long time ago, who shouldn’t be alive. He gets a license plate, he calls the 110, and that’s what flagged the feds. So the kidnapping was a setup. He’s a plant.
I’m glad they formatted the infiltration this way. We’re not getting three episodes of explaining all the nonsense before he does it. They jump right in.
Before they give him the job, they make him play Russian roulette with his own gun, this conspicuous giant revolver. Remember the show Sledge Hammer? Like that. I’m like, what is this, the Old West? He knows where the bullet is, because later you find out he marked it. And there’s the phone, this teeny tiny thing hidden in the heel of his boot. It’s the Zoolander phone. Reacher’s got big feet, so fine, it fits in the heel, but he’s got big hands. How small is that phone?
Where It Feels a Little Contrived
I’ve never read the story, and some of this setup feels a little contrived at the moment. What story isn’t, sure.
Beck’s head of security, the former cop, doesn’t trust Reacher and is crappy to him the whole time. They lock him in his room. He’s had about three hours of sleep in two days and they keep calling him lazy. You hired him out of appreciation for saving the man’s son, and now you’re locking him up?
But we find out why. Beck is under the thumb of the real bad guy, who’s going by a different name now. Quinn is the name Reacher knows him by. Beck was a real rug guy with a warehouse who bragged at the wrong party about his shipping lanes and how fast he could move things. The wrong guy heard it and said, I want those lanes, you keep doing business as usual and I’m going to ride them. The big security people actually work for the bad guy.
So you almost start to feel bad for Beck. Dude just muscled in, took his kid, and has stolen his business. The kid’s scared. He’s been lost in the shuffle. There’s no mom there, and I almost feel like Dad buried himself in his work after she died, and then the poor decisions happened.
The agent has her own thing going, too. She’s running a side op that’s totally off the books. It’s her, a rookie, and an older guy days from retirement, and they’re trying to find her informant, who’s disappeared. Reacher’s in it for the dude he saw. She’s in it for her. So they work together.
They’re also holding the son’s bodyguard, who’s on Quinn’s payroll. You guys realize this is 100% the ends justifying the means, right? You hope it turns out right by the end.
I’ll say this for Angel Doll, the guy Reacher meets at the impound: he’s so erratic, all over the road, and he’s actually kind of funny. I’m sad he’s dead.
The frustration is how Episode 3 ends. It’s the agent who finds out who Beck’s boss really is, and she hasn’t gotten it back to Reacher before the episode’s over. When he finds out, he’s going to lose his mind. We might have to get up at 3 in the morning for Episode 4.
Amazon, and the James Bond Question
Amazon Prime is hit and miss, but they’re getting better at what they put out. To me it started with Jack Ryan, and John Krasinski was amazing in that. Then The Wheel of Time, which is amazing, and we watched that 11 minute teaser right before Reacher. That’s another video.
The Rings of Power is a hot mess. Some of my viewers keep telling me to watch it. We’ve tried. It’s just not good, at least to my sensibility. And there was that other fantasy series with the creatures, which we watched one season of and never went back to. I don’t remember any marketing for it.
Amazon just announced they’ve bought the creative rights to James Bond from the family that owned them, and a lot of people are concerned they’ll make a series. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. There’ve been diminishing returns on Bond over the years. They’ve had like 79 movies or something ridiculous. I keep jumping to that number.
I don’t think you go far from what it is. Keep the movies. I have a different respect for the Bond movies after watching The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. But a longer story might have value. Casino Royale was based on the original book, and a lot of the rest are original stories set in that universe. SPECTRE was in the books, and the movies only visited that a little in Daniel Craig’s run. Do it like a Star Wars story. A James Bond story, a season at a time.
So it’s not The Acolyte. Yes, The Acolyte is going to come out of my mouth in every review. To me it was the height of how you write stories badly. And then you have Reacher, which takes existing material, doesn’t do it word for word, and still honors it and tells an amazing story. When I see the money and the talent they’re giving this, I feel like there’s a universe where they do a good job with Bond.
People worry about a Moneypenny side series, and I don’t know if you need all that. But Reacher’s characters are compelling enough to carry one. His partner from the 110, the one he called in again this season, is getting her own spin-off on Amazon Prime, and I don’t have a problem with that.
Where It Stands After Three
It wouldn’t have had three seasons if it wasn’t solid, because a lot of people get tired of the same action hero story. I think the books are why. I’ve never read them and I probably should. Give me the audiobook narrated by Alan Ritchson. That’s what I want.
Last season felt bigger in terms of the stakes. I liked it because we saw more of his world. This one circles back to the charm of Season 1, a smaller, more manageable deal, and it’s just him. But you still get the recurring characters. He feels like he’s a loner, but he’s got friends and he can call them. When he calls the 110, the guy who picks up can’t believe it’s actually him, and Reacher asks about the dent in his old desk.
We’re not doing a Know-It-All Index on three episodes. The number 10 did get said out loud on that couch, with the warning that it can move over the rest of the season.
There are eight episodes. We’ll watch two more and come back, and then again after the last three, because that’ll be the finale.
Are you watching Reacher, and if you’re not, what’s keeping you away? And would you watch a James Bond series if Amazon built it one book at a time? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
