#226. Reacher Season 2, Episode 2: The One in AC
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This short bonus episode is a week-by-week recap of Reacher Season 2, Episode 2 ("The One in AC"), and all three hosts agree it's the platonic ideal of a filler episode: Reacher accidentally cold-cocks an undercover NYPD cop (whom Mike is fairly sure is played by Herc from The Wire), the crew flees to Atlantic City for no real reason, Reacher single-handedly demolishes an under-construction skyscraper and buries the bad guys in concrete, and then everyone concludes the case was in New York all along and heads home — capped by an extremely audible hotel-room sex scene that the security guard complains about the next morning. Sonny recaps the plot in detail and defends star Alan Ritchson ("a god amongst men") as playing Reacher as lovably, enormously autistic, while Mike thinks the acting is even worse than episode one, especially in Reacher's "figuring it out" scenes; JVL and Sonny riff at length on how Reacherverse law enforcement is stocked entirely with supermodel-hot women, pure "male fantasy." The episode's best tangent is JVL's account of listening to the Reacher audiobooks narrated by the gruff-voiced Dick Hill, and how deeply uncomfortable it is when Lee Child occasionally switches a novel to first person, forcing Hill to read Reacher's breathless inner monologue during sex scenes in that same old-man growl; the conversation wanders into Lee Child having handed the franchise to his brother, writing under the name Andrew Child. Sonny and JVL close by arguing the show's structural flaw is running ten roughly hour-long episodes instead of a tight six-episode season like Slow Horses, with JVL noting the mismatch between the show's "monster of the week" instincts and its single-book mythology structure — before Sonny warns Mike that things can always get worse, prompting a shrug about episode three.
From the show notes
A filler episode if there ever was one!
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode. We talked about last time, last year, Reacher, Season 2, Episode 1. We're talking about Reacher, Season 2, Episode 2. And let me just say off the top, guys, like, I did not like this episode. It was boring, and at the end, it was pointless. Did not like it. The one where Reacher fucks.
Sonny00:00:33There's always an episode where Reacher fucks. This series is always going to have one episode per season where the ladies cannot help themselves anymore. And they just have to have some Reacher. So I was watching this in my gym, and when it got to that scene, I kind of looked around and I hit the fast forward button on my phone.
JVL00:00:54Oh, it wasn't that bad. It was fairly tame.
Sonny00:00:56It was very chaste, frankly, as far as these things go.
JVL00:00:58Compared to... Compared to the season one where they made his police gal buddy take her clothes off. What?
Mike00:01:05I got to watch season one. Yeah, she had to show her boobies. I got to watch season one there.
JVL00:01:09I... So I... Two observations. One, in the Reacherverse, law enforcement is basically like Playboy bunnies. Like, the number of smokingly hot, sexually adventurous women in law enforcement... And in the military, in Reacher, is something to behold. And I...
Sonny00:01:36You don't think this holds up?
JVL00:01:39Look, I'm not saying... I don't... Maybe it does. Maybe it does. Maybe, maybe the pathway for women who could be models in life is that they either go to the Ford agency or to the police academy. Yes. Or to basic training.
Sonny00:01:55Yes.
JVL00:01:56That's entirely possible.
Sonny00:01:58I don't see the issue here. I don't see the issue here. I don't see the issue here. I don't... It's not... It's not clear to me what the problem is. No, this is... It's movie. It's movie land. This is, you know...
JVL00:02:05Totally. You can't... What do you mean in the books? In the books... I'm telling you, the police women he bangs... And also, there are... Women LEOs are all over the world. You would get... You would think from reading the Reacherverse books that half the police in America are women.
?00:02:21Yeah.
JVL00:02:22And... It's male fantasy. They... Boy, is it.
Sonny00:02:25So we should do... We should recap what happens in this episode. So just in case you haven't seen... So basically, the guy, Reacher, and his lady friend who doesn't like to be touched, and they're... They're... What's... I don't know any of their names. The third guy from Final Destination.
Mike00:02:43Yeah.
Sonny00:02:44He... They're checking out the house, and they're like, oh, somebody's been following us. We gotta go stop him. And Reacher kicks his car. Kicks his car, and the airbag goes off, and it knocks him out. And he gets out... And the guy gets out of the car, and he's reaching for a gun. So Jack Reacher just breaks his face. Just smashes his face all to hell. And then it turns out, oops, he's a cop. He's a New York City police cop, so we gotta get out of town. We gotta get as far away from New York City as we can. Let's go to Atlantic City. Let's go to... They'll never look for us in Atlantic City. So they go to Atlantic City. And my favorite part of this episode was the... First off, the idea that Atlantic City isn't, like, a totally empty hellhole now. I mean, it, like... No, it looks awesome. Does it look to Atlantic City anymore? Does it look better than Vegas? I don't know.
JVL00:03:32I'll have to report and let you know.
Sonny00:03:34Because I just watched the Apple TV movie, The Family Plan. And there's a whole sequence there where they go to Vegas. And, like, Vegas looks like Vegas. But this was like, look at Atlantic City. It's kind of like Vegas. It's got big... I guess there's still the Revel or whatever in Atlantic City. I don't know. The Borgata. Anyway, so they go there and they're talking to the casino guy. And they're like, hey, we have these sheets with numbers. Can you look into these numbers? And the guy's like, we're not missing any money. So then they get ambushed by the T-1000s guys who are trying to kill him. And Reacher and his hot lady friend, who, as we just talked about, they make sweet, sweet love later. They run into an under-construction skyscraper, again, in Atlantic City. I'm not sure how much of that's going on. This all sounds realistic. But they run in there and Jack Reacher, through his... His brawn and strength, like Samson, tears down the entire skyscraper on top of the guy. Starts beating him with girders like the Hulk. He just smashes through it and is ripping guys limb from limb. And they bury the guys in concrete. And then they get back to the hotel and they're like, nah, we didn't need anything in Atlantic City. Let's go back to New York. That's the episode. This is the definitional filler episode of a TV show.
JVL00:04:59But they bang it out at the hotel. When they get back to the hotel, they bang it out.
Sonny00:05:04Yeah, they get back to the hotel and they bang it out.
Mike00:05:05Everybody hears it. Everybody hears it as we find out the next morning.
Sonny00:05:10Jack Reacher, as we know, is the Bill Braske-like character. You have the guy who runs the hotel security comes up and he's like, I heard the banging all the way in my house down the street to Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher. He made love to my wife. That is that's all that happens in this episode.
Mike00:05:32Yeah, it's great. It's they literally say it. They're like, they're like, the case was always in New York at the end of the episode. We're like, so why the fuck are we here? Why are we here?
Sonny00:05:41Why are we in Atlantic City?
Mike00:05:42Also, so so the they set up of the end of the first episode. They have that shot of the cop outside the house. And it's if any of you have seen The Wire, it's Herc from The Wire. It's the it's one of the. Yes, it's Herc. I didn't check the little Amazon thing. I didn't check, but double check that. I think it's Herc. It looks and sounds like Herc, who's one of the cop characters on The Wire. And so I'm thinking, oh, we're going to be with him for a while because he's like a recognizable face for TV viewers. And then he's just he's just fucking out for the. And I assume we're not going to see him again, but maybe we will. I don't know.
JVL00:06:19Well, if this follows the books, then we will. But I believe we have taken a large departure. That is him.
Sonny00:06:27That is from. I couldn't really tell because, again, I was watching on my phone in the in the on the elliptical.
JVL00:06:33Yeah. So I have a similar kind of thing with the well, not similar. I have an adjacent kind of thing with listening to the Reacher audio book. So most of the Reacher audio books, some of them are read by Scott Brick, but most of them are read by Dick Hill, who I love. Dick Hill is like this. His voice sounds kind of like a grumpy old man. And so he just really fits the Reacher thing. Mm hmm. There's only one problem. Lee Child, I assume just to abuse himself because he got clearly bored writing these fucking books. But he had to because they are a printing press for money. Would every once in a while switch and do a book from the first person point of view rather than third person? Oh, OK. And I did not like that for lots of reasons. Like, I just I don't like first person Reacher. I like third person Reacher. Well, like Reacher grunted, you know, and you're not like Reacher is thinking all the thoughts and you're in his head.
Mike00:07:34Yeah, we don't need inner thoughts of Reacher.
JVL00:07:37Yeah, I don't need Reacher's inner monologue. But the problem is that when you get to in the first person books narrated by Dick Hill to the Reacher fucks scenes, you've got Dick Hill not just like narrating like and then Reacher thrusted into her, but like Dick Hill doing the first person. I couldn't believe she was taking me this. Hard with his gruff. That's not even his voice, but like with that gruff old man voice. And it's very, very disconcerting. Not conducive. It makes me feel really awkward. Even just like if I'm driving in my car alone and it comes on, I just look at them. Does anybody hear this? I don't. Why is Dick Hill like and faster, faster? I couldn't believe you're like, oh, God, no, no.
Sonny00:08:29So this is this is interesting. So there are first person Reacher books and third person Reacher books. That's so confusing that why would that happen?
JVL00:08:37I believe purely because Lee Child was bored and just had to do something to make it different because they're all formulaic in their own way. And they're strong, like the things he does well, like his sense of place and his pacing are all done well. And this is the same way he jumps around in time, like, you know, some of the books are actually take place when he's in the army. Like, you know, their whole books, which take place back when he's with the 110th in the army, you know, long before he becomes a preacher. I think Lee Child, like literally. And that's you could tell me he's not old and he's already handed off the series because he just couldn't make himself do it anymore. Sure.
Sonny00:09:18How many copies of these books have been sold? Are we talking like tens of millions?
JVL00:09:22Yeah.
Sonny00:09:23So he he doesn't have to write any more of these books.
JVL00:09:27Oh, no. And he does. But he but he's made it. Like a bequeathal. Right. So it's his brother. Yeah. This is something I've never seen before. Like not him. Not even like the Tom Clancy estate where it's like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Right. Right. Yeah. This is it's like Lee Child and his brother, whatever child. It's like Andrew Child. Bobby Andrew Child.
Mike00:09:50But like Lee Child, it's in his real name anyway. Right. Like like that. That's that's a that's a nom de plume anyway. So his brother has adopted the last name. Child. It's kind of bizarre. So but OK, but back to the show here. Back to the show. Like, I don't know. Maybe I was just sort of jazzed to start the show last time. Like it got like I kind of see the seams like this is like not that great of a show. But like this second episode, like all the acting was somehow worse to me. And he's a bad actor.
JVL00:10:24He is. I'm sorry, but he's a bad actor.
Sonny00:10:27And you guys are wrong.
JVL00:10:28He has to place.
Mike00:10:29When he tries to act smart, it's pain. Oh, yes. That when he's there's in the flashback scene when they're talking about I don't even know what the fuck they were talking about. It was like she brings the the case to him and he's like the fuel truck. You know, the fuel is lower. It is like he like pieces it together. I'm like, I don't believe you for what? Like you were literally reading cue cards on the camera.
Sonny00:10:53This is this is our man mountain putty. He is a David putty who's built like an enormous. That's a character. Yeah, that's right.
Mike00:11:00I don't know if you watch. Yeah, that's right. I want David putty is all sides.
Sonny00:11:05Yes, he he's he is a god amongst men and I will hear nothing but good things about Alan Richardson on this show. He is he's playing he's playing Jack Reacher like he's mildly autistic and and like and enormous. Those are the as far as I can tell, those are like his main characteristics.
Mike00:11:24I get I just like, OK, so that first scene where he kicks in the front of the car and the airbag goes off and they realize it's a cop like the way that they all leave the scene. Like, I know it's escapism and all this stuff, but it was just like it took me out of the whole episode because they're just like, oh, shit, it's a cop. I guess we better go. And like they're like, no, they're all stunned because Jack Reacher has made a mistake.
Sonny00:11:49It's one of his few mistakes. No, they're not.
Mike00:11:52They're not stunned. They're stunned.
Sonny00:11:53They're stunned into shock. They're all in shock.
JVL00:11:57No, they are. Jack Reacher would fuck them.
Sonny00:12:02But everyone, whenever Jack Reacher is not on the screen, everyone on screen should be saying, why isn't Jack Reacher fucking me right now?
Mike00:12:09The other thing I noticed is like 90 percent of the episode characters are either sitting in chairs or in a car, like like except for the big fight scene in the construction zone. Like they're just like sitting and like they're all sitting around something.
Sonny00:12:27Again, this this this problem, this show. This show has a real structural problem, which unlike slow. We talked about this last week, but unlike Slow Horses, which is a pretty tight six episodes, 45 minutes per episode season, these are 10 minutes and they're like 55 minutes long. And like there's a lot of padding. There's a lot of padding here. It is. This is I mean, look, this is a network TV show with a little bit of cursing and some some sex stuff. And like that is. That's just what it is. And again, I think I think Amazon has made a very good decision in in leaning into this brand. I think this is a I think this is a good thing for Prime Video to be doing. But what you end up with is the old rhythms of network TV, where when you had these serialized shows, you would have episodes that are just kind of like, all right, we're here. We're going to get one little piece of information and then we're going to go right back to where we started.
JVL00:13:24Yeah, the difference is, though, those network shows always. Had a monster of the week. Right.
Sonny00:13:32I mean, if they wouldn't be so if you had a monster of the week, it had the Armenian guy.
Mike00:13:38Yeah, yeah, he didn't scare me. Armenian guy, the guy, the guy who was like gets on the phone with Robert Patrick tears
Sonny00:13:45the building down on top.
JVL00:13:46Yeah, I guess I don't. I don't think of that as monster of the week. So, I mean, the classic structure for series television is that you have what's the term for it? Um, they don't call it legacy episodes and monster of the week episodes, but, um, but
Mike00:14:05that's what it is. Basically, right?
JVL00:14:06There's an overarching story, a mythology episode, and then a monster of the week episode. And, you know, most episodes do a little bit of both, but some are more clearly one. Some are more clearly than the other. The reach or limited series is just all the mythology of the story because we're giving, you know, we're getting the one book that this is based on, but the episode. Don't really work. It's self-contained. I don't think that's right. That's how I think that's again.
Sonny00:14:34I think these should, again, these should be like six episode series.
JVL00:14:38Yeah.
Sonny00:14:39Like it should be a six episode season and they should be shorter and they should be, you should keep all the violence and you should have all the dialogue take place while the
JVL00:14:46violence is happening and more sex too. So like maybe some sex while the violence is happening.
Sonny00:14:51Jack Reacher is smashing somebody's head with a cinder block while he's thrusting at the same time. You should, he should also be shouting. Who's got the guns in the tanks? That's what we have to find.
Mike00:15:04I'm going to find that dickhole passage and play it for you guys.
Sonny00:15:08Really something else. Yeah.
Mike00:15:11All right. Well, uh, anything else on season two, episode two of Reacher? I'm excited for episode three. Yeah. It can't be any worse.
Sonny00:15:19Oh, it could. It could always be worse. Don't ever say that. Mike Warren. Hasn't anything of the last six years taught you that everything could always be worse?
Mike00:15:27Yeah. I'm sure that's fine.
?00:15:29I'm sure that's fine.
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