#228. 'Reacher' (Season 3, Episode 3)
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A short bonus episode covering Reacher Season 2, Episode 3, which Mike and Sonny agree is a big step up from the filler of the week before, while JVL calls it a "jump the shark moment" and spends much of the episode fixated on Reacher shot-putting a Weber grill through a fleeing car's windshield from a full city block away, an image Sonny and Mike gleefully needle him about for several minutes ("I once saw Jack Reacher throw a Weber grill a block away into the SUV's windshield"). Beyond the grill debate, they track the plot advancing at last (deciphered number aliases, the returning Herc from The Wire now cooperating, the villain closing in) and single out the episode's best beat: a fat, middle-aged heavy has a literal heart attack at the mere sight of Reacher's size, prompting JVL to wish Reacher's subsequent CPR attempt had comically crushed the guy's chest. They also flag a reckless IED assault on a Queens rowhouse that Sonny and JVL agree glosses over how trigger-happy the "special investigators" have become, plus a brief tangent on Dixon (Sonny likens her to a mannish, age-appropriate Adrianne Palicki, sparking jokes that book-Reacher never dates anyone his own age) and some ribbing of Robert Patrick's suspiciously smooth eyebrows. Sonny closes on a genuine data point, citing Nielsen numbers showing Season 2's first three episodes already matched the entire binge-dropped first season in weekly viewing minutes, with an audience 58% male and two-thirds over 50 — proof, he argues, that Prime Video's real core demographic is "dad TV." As a quick bonus episode there's no extended opening banter; it launches straight into the recap.
From the show notes
TO JACK REACHER!
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome back to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode. Today, we're talking about season two, episode three of Reacher on Amazon Prime. I like this episode a whole lot better than the previous episode. What do you guys think?
Sonny00:00:23What? Wow. JVL, before this episode started, you were very dismissive of Reacher. You're like, oh, are you guys excited to talk about Reacher? And I am with Mike. This episode was much better. It's not just a filler episode. It moves things along. More Herc.
JVL00:00:37I thought this was a jump the shark moment.
Mike00:00:40Oh, boy. Tell us, JVL. Tell us, JVL. We want to hear it.
JVL00:00:43I think we finally got to the point where Reacher is just Hancock or Shazam or something. And that moment is when he is pursuing somebody driving a car and he's not able to catch up with them. So he stops and picks up a Weber grill and throws the Weber grill from a block away.
Sonny00:01:05Well, he wasn't. He cut through the alley to get to a place where he could throw it.
JVL00:01:09We see him after throwing the thing. He has shot putted the Weber grill. It lands perfectly on the driver's side windshield of this truck. And he then after the truck crashes. Ashes is like running and huffing to catch up with. And he's it's a full block. You see him running. It is. He's not thrown this thing. Twenty. Are you?
Mike00:01:38I once saw Jack Reacher throw a Weber grill a block away into the SUV's windshield.
Sonny00:01:47I was eating a hamburger off the grill. He took it right out from under me and he chucked it. And I said, that's a great throw, Jack. Then he threw me at the truck.
Mike00:01:58We made sweet love all night and he called me the next day.
JVL00:02:06That was that was the moment where I just threw my hands up. I said, come on, man.
Sonny00:02:11He had to run down the block because the car kept going. You know, it was it. You know, the guy was still driving. It was not. He didn't throw in a block.
Mike00:02:19Hey, JVL.
Sonny00:02:20He threw it halfway down the aisle. It was like half a block.
Mike00:02:22You've said your piece. Now the real fans are going to are going to. All right, boys.
Sonny00:02:27The fanboys are going to take over. Reach your fanboy.
Mike00:02:30The reach your creatures are taken over here. All right. So it's sunny, right? This was this was so much. It was it moved the plot forward. As you said, it had like some detectiving going on. How did it move the plot forward? Because of things.
Sonny00:02:45We found out. We found out. What did we learn? There's that we deciphered the numbers. There was he figured out the aliases of the guy and then they're they're going to try and get him. Her is is showing up and, you know, helping them out together.
Mike00:03:01And the big bad Herc is the cop detective that arrests.
JVL00:03:06Why are you calling him Herc?
Mike00:03:07Because he was his character on the wire on the wire. Oh, the wire.
Sonny00:03:11OK, right. There's this American television show on the HBO network that was called The Wire. It's many consider it to be the greatest television show of all time. I don't personally consider it to be, but it's it's pretty it's it's OK. Herc is a character on that.
Mike00:03:25Oh, but also our. Our big our big bad, the guy that we've been seeing come into the United States with the fake. But like he knows that he's there onto it. So we've you know, so now we're setting things up for a showdown between Reacher and scary foreign guy. So things happen. I don't know. I it was it was so much more enjoyable as like laundry folding TV than the than the week before. So like what else? What else? What else do we want?
Sonny00:03:53And also Reacher's like throw in throw in. Uh, you know, Weber grills. And also they're smashing into cars into they're smashing through making pipe. I didn't quite understand. I didn't quite understand the the layout of that. Uh, that. So they smashed through like everybody was upstairs.
JVL00:04:13Oh, you mean when they attack the company, the company, right?
Sonny00:04:17So he smashes through the gate and then into a truck that's there.
JVL00:04:21No, sure. Drive away. They drive that truck. That's what they're driving the truck. They drive it in reverse. Right. Through the gate in reverse, through the front window, the front window.
Sonny00:04:32Right.
JVL00:04:33And then they have two minutes to do. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's right. Sorry. Three minutes. Three minutes. Sorry.
Sonny00:04:38Again, I'm watching. I'm watching all this on my phone. So it's kind of hard. Some of this is a little little hard to make out. But the but I can watch it on my phone because Jack Reacher is so big. It's like having a it's like having a full sized man in front of me throwing things and stabbing people.
JVL00:04:56I want to say.
Sonny00:04:57I want to say, look, here's here's a serious point here. I want to make a serious point here because I I mentioned that I had some some box office talk here and I do in a way. But I have long argued that Prime Video's number one demographic is dad. Like it should really lean into being dad TV, the channel and the latest numbers from Nielsen's just show just just prove this out dramatically. All right. So the first three season two episodes come out and they rack. Up one point seven billion minutes viewed of for the week of December 11th. The in January 31, 2022, when the first season came out, they dropped the whole season at once. You guys might remember they did a whole season full binge drop. The whole season binge got one point eight billion minutes. So like audiences watched as much of the first three episodes as they watched of the entire series last year. On top of that, though, it's very important to look at the. Demographics here, 58 percent of the audience is male, so basically three fifths of the audience is male and two thirds are above the age of 50. This is this is a show that is being watched by 55 year old men. And they're like, yes, Jack Reacher's kicking ass. And I love it.
JVL00:06:13I want to watch HBO for middle aged suburban dads. This would be it.
Sonny00:06:19That's also HBO. But this is hipsters, right? Well, HBO, I would say more HBO. And it's in it's in it's Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome.
JVL00:06:31That was for you guys at the time, right? Yeah. Well, girls, sex in the city, right? HBO was for hipster.
Sonny00:06:39It was a good mix.
Mike00:06:41But can I just say real quick here that the episode starts off very much in this on the same tone as the first episode, which is I also think why it works, which is Reacher and some member of the public interacting one on one this time. In the first episode, it was the thrift store. This time it's the gun store where he's like doing this kind of dance, wink and a nod with the gun guy to get these guns. And like, that's that's a formula that works for me. They should do that every week. That's my thought.
Sonny00:07:22Yeah, he he should be interacting with people who are not accustomed to his size. Yes, he should be. He should be surprising people with his bigness in ways. So, for instance, you know, we keep talking about this car chase that ends with the Weber grill through the windshield. And that's a fantastic sequence because Reacher throws he shot puts the grill through the guy's windshield and then pulls the driver out of the car. And the guy sees Reacher and the sight of Reacher gives him a heart attack. The sight of Reacher, he he sees he sees this mountainous individual in front. And he's like, oh, I'm in a lot of trouble. Ah, my heart. And then he dies right there. That's how most interactions with Jack Reacher should go. If I'm ever in a situation where I see Jack Reacher and he's mad at me, I'm probably going to have a heart attack and die. I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a brave man. I'm not strong. I'm not I don't I don't carry weapons on me. If I see him looming over me about to, like, start tearing pieces of my body off and then beating me with them, I would probably have a heart attack. Heart attack and die.
JVL00:08:27Big missed opportunity in that scene because the the middle aged fat dude who has a heart attack, who's a bad guy who has a heart attack when he sees Reacher, that whole bit is played for laughs as it should be because it's funny. Sure. But Reacher then does CPR on him and they should have had Reacher inadvertently crushed caving in his chest cavity like as Reacher is trying to bring this guy back to life, we should have like had Reacher was like, oh, like this, like you jinx forward and you hear the sickening and then every you just sort of don't show us like the guy just show us from pointing up like the camera pointing up from the perspective of the guy on the ground and show Reacher's like face like that wipes his hands.
Mike00:09:15Right.
Sonny00:09:15Yeah, that would be like caving it, caving his chest in like the scene from the thing where they're trying to resuscitate the guy with the paddles and it goes it goes right in and Trump's office. No, I that would have been amazing. That would have been amazing. That whole sequence is hilarious, too, because we haven't even talked about like before this. They just they create a bunch of IEDs and show up at a suburban New York Queen's house and start chucking grenades. I did think to myself having a shootout in there.
JVL00:09:43So this this sequence begins with them going. So they have they have they think they have the right number of the house because they've called the neighbor and the neighbors given them a positive ID and but they go and instead of scouting. The house, they simply pick the lock and throw an IED inside. And I did think to myself. I feel like there are a lot of news stories about SWAT teams gone wrong doing this sort of shit. Maybe it might have been good to show one five second scene of Neely looking through binoculars and seeing a guy through an upstairs window with a gun saying, yep, this is the place.
Sonny00:10:21Well, considering that just, you know, two episodes earlier. He attacked a cop by accidentally like he almost killed Herc because he thought he was a criminal. But now they're just going around like doing no bombs.
Mike00:10:37You know why? You know why? Because nobody messes with the special investigators.
Sonny00:10:42No one messes. That's true. No one messes with the special investigators.
Mike00:10:44I will say that the special clunkiest clunkiest line, the special investigator who was most
Sonny00:10:50growing on me as the kind of douchey guy, he's he's he's he that actor. I don't know his name. He's very good. But also like they keep giving him little they keep giving him actual character beats like the running thing about making the shot in Memphis. Yes. Was was just it's like an actual it's like an actual like nice little thing that is going to, I assume, pay off when he makes a great shot later in the show.
Mike00:11:15Yeah. I still like Dixon.
Sonny00:11:18Which one's Dixon? Is that the one that Reacher bangs?
Mike00:11:21Yeah. Really?
Sonny00:11:22She's not. She is. She's like. It's it's I was trying to think of what mannish she reminds she reminds me of a more masculine version of the girl from Friday Night Lights, who was also Adrian Palicki. Yes. Adrian Palicki. Thank you.
JVL00:11:41But also much older.
Sonny00:11:43Oh, yeah.
JVL00:11:43Like a middle like a 45 year old. Yes. Mannish version.
Sonny00:11:48An age appropriate for Reacher. But yes.
JVL00:11:51Reacher. I'm sorry. Again, I don't want to spoil this guy's from the books and I don't want to be complaining about. I don't deviate from the books, but in the books, Reacher does not do age appropriate chicks. That is not in his wheelhouse.
Mike00:12:05That's not that's not that's not the way he rolls. He's more of a Leonardo DiCaprio type.
JVL00:12:10Yeah. He keeps getting older. The girls stay the same age, you know, more of a yeah, more Matthew McConaughey to do
Sonny00:12:16when you're wandering. You're just going from town to town. You know, you're just going. Nobody knows who you are. You're just this massive Adonis.
Mike00:12:25Anything else? Any fun? No thoughts?
Sonny00:12:27No, I will say I did like this episode more than the previous one. I'm curious to I am excited for episode number four. Going to watch that on the phone at the gym this week. It's going to be great.
JVL00:12:37Maybe I'll throw a telephone pole like a javelin. That would be awesome.
Sonny00:12:41He'll go and he'll pick it up and swung it around like a baseball bat.
JVL00:12:45Like Mighty Casey. Like a Looney Tunes character.
Sonny00:12:47He sees he sees an armored SUV coming and he picks up the telephone pole and just smashes it out into the Hudson Bay. I was so far. Away from Mike. Could you guys even hear that? I was. Yes. No, I was miming. If we had video, you would have seen me swinging a telephone pole and then the SUV and then
Mike00:13:04the T-1000, you know, has like another look of shock. I do like how Robert Patrick is like slowly getting unnerved by everything happening here.
Sonny00:13:12Well, I don't. One thing I guess I don't understand is that they all seem to know who Robert Patrick is. Right. That's that last shot where they're in the they're looking at the.
JVL00:13:22No, they're they're looking at their buddy. One of their dead buddies. The dead buddy.
Sonny00:13:26You see, once again, watching it on the phone, it's hard to see.
JVL00:13:28Roger Patrick, his eyebrows gone. I don't know. I think my eyebrows anymore.
Sonny00:13:34He's probably had some. Some work done there.
JVL00:13:38No, but I I don't think I think it's just smooth skin.
Sonny00:13:41Maybe they're just very fine.
JVL00:13:44I've just been thinking of the the rest of the character. Well, anyway, you think he has a little piece of maybe.
Mike00:13:52Maybe. All right. Sure, it's fine.
?00:13:56All right.
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