#230. 'Reacher' Season 2, Episode 4
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This is a short bonus recap of Reacher Season 2, Episode 4, with just Mike and Sonny (JVL off this week), and both admit going in that they can barely remember what happened — Sonny compares the show to The Walking Dead, "perfect laundry TV" you fold clothes to without it leaving a mark on your brain. Their real gripe is the closing biker-gang brawl outside the steakhouse: since every Special Investigator fights at Reacher's own superhuman level, nobody's ever in real danger and there's no dramatic point to having a one-man wrecking crew like Reacher around at all. Sonny wishes the show would drop Reacher alone into an overmatched situation (his fantasy scenario: Reacher versus a whole Roman legion) and let him win through sheer individual might, the way the fight choreography lets a smaller, "compact" actor like Jason Statham shine in The Beekeeper through technique rather than brute force. Mike diagnoses the structural problem — every episode's fight has to top the last, so the team keeps getting scaled up to survive them, flattening Reacher's specialness — and notes the villain Mr. A.M.'s recurring identity-theft murders feel like the show spinning its wheels to justify a ten-episode order that both agree should really be six tight hour-long episodes instead.
From the show notes
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Full transcript
Mike00:00:00And welcome to our bonus Sub-Beacon episode. Sonny, we watched the fourth episode of season two of Reacher on the Dad Network Amazon Prime video. What do we think? What happened in this episode? We don't even remember.
Sonny00:00:24I watched this episode. Again, we're taping this on Thursday, pulling the curtain back. We're taping this on Thursday. I watched this episode on my TV at home, not at the gym. I watched this at home on my TV because I'd missed many things. Apparently in the in the last one, I wanted to get the full Reacher experience. And I, I cannot. I literally three days later now, I cannot remember almost anything that happened in this episode, except for except for the big fight at the end with the biker gang that shows up. And menaces Reacher and his friends. And the special investigators unit. And I, I feel like this is, well, this is a problem for the show in terms of like how sticky it is. That's not, that's not ideal. You don't want people to not remember what happened in an episode, but also like the, the, the fight at the end kind of gets to something that has been vexing me about the show the whole time. Which is that I really just, I don't, I don't like reach. Sure. As part of a team where he's just like the biggest guy and they're all equally as awesome at fighting as him. Like everybody. So I don't, I, Mike, I don't know if you remember, I don't, maybe you remember slightly better than I do, but we get to the scene. We get to the sequence at the end of the, at the end of the episode. And, uh, like a bunch of like the hell's angels show up and they're like, we're going to kick your, they show up out of nowhere.
Mike00:01:55By the way, these guys have been literally no, we haven't seen any establishing shot. Does she? It shows they're on their way. Yeah.
Sonny00:02:01These people don't exist on the show until this very moment. So they show up and they, uh, they make a circle around the special investigators who have parked outside of a restaurant, like a steakhouse or something. Um, and, uh, and they're like, we're going to kill you. Jack Reacher and friends and Jack Reacher and friends say, no, we're, you're, we're going to kill you. Actually, that's what's going to happen. And they proceed to kill the guys. And like, you know, Yeah. Each just, just watching, watching the fights was vaguely frustrating to me because all of the special investigators were just as good at fighting as Jack Reacher. They don't actually need Jack Reacher there to, to protect them. They don't need his brawn, his mic. They don't need him to Hulk out and start like crushing heads with the palm of his hand. Like he probably could. Um, they all, they're all handling themselves just fine. Like each one. Of them basically gets hit once. Like each one of them gets like punched in the face once or takes a kick to the chest and like doubles over, but then they're back to like doing everything and being hyper-competent and like, what's the, what's the point of having Jack Reacher there? If you're, he's not just tick killing six guys at once all by himself. Like that's, I guess that's my, that's my issue with this, this, what is happening in this team dynamic. I don't like the team dynamic. I want one. I want one man. I want a one man wrecking crew. I want Jack Reacher to be faced with, uh, I want, I want like what I want. Here's what I want. Like, I want Jack Reacher to be dropped into, uh, into ancient Rome. You'd like, you know, those, you know, the like Reddit threads that are like, could one platoon of Marines take out an entire Roman, uh, uh, Legion and the answer is yes, because we have guns and, but like, I want, I just want Jack Reacher dropped by sci-fi. I want, I want, I want science fiction to come in and pick him up and drop him in into a Legion of Roman soldiers. And I want to see him take out the whole Legion all by himself with guns, without guns, whatever. I want just Jack Reacher all by. And like, that's not what I get from this biker fight. It's wrong. It just, it feels. It feels wrong.
Mike00:04:31So here's what's going on. I think so. Every fight in each subsequent episode has to get bigger. And the way they get it bigger is they add more people. And, and so like he, it's, you could see if they approached it this way, he's got to protect the team. You know, he's got to protect these like weaker guys who are no slouches, but like, they're not Jack Reacher. Well, now you've got like, you know, 10. And bikers, like they're all like, you can't just go hide in the car guys. I'll take care of this. Right. Like that doesn't, that doesn't work. So they have to fight. And if they're going to fight, like they can't get actually hurt because they got to stick around for several more episodes to do their investigative, their special investigators. So, so they just end up like you end up elevating their skills and their abilities. And it's just, it's, it's, it gets to, I'm essentially saying, I agree with your point that. The, the, the group dynamic doesn't really work. And I'm sure if JVL were here, he would say, well, that's because this is what happens in the book that this season is based on. But, um, last time I checked adaptations, don't have to follow the book. Exactly. So it, it, it's a weakness, but, but here's the thing.
Sonny00:05:48Like there are ways to make the team dynamic work and they, and there are other portions of this episode where, where they actually do work. So there's like the actual investigating the, the special investigators. Should be there to do the actual investigating. So like the scene, the sequence where Jack Reacher and, uh, what's his name? The pretty boy, uh, go to the, the cop station and like sweat the legislative aid for information. Like that's all very clever and well done. Uh, or, um, you know, other, other, other, other investigation things are, uh, are, are handled in, in a way that is, I think, pretty, pretty skillful. But also like, again, all of these things. Eventually should come down to Jack Reacher, hurting people by himself in situations where nominally he should be the underdog. Like for instance, against an entire biker gang, like if the sons of anarchy show up at the steakhouse that you're eating at, and they're like, we're going to kill you, Jack Reacher, you should feel danger for Jack Reacher. You should be like, oh no, how's he going to get out of this? But you know, that the way he's going to get out of it is by picking up one of the motorcycles and swinging it around in a giant circle and just crushing them. Yeah. Oh, that's how this episode should have been. This episode should have ended with him jumping on one motorcycle and riding it and grabbing another one with his other hand and using it to batter the the the sons of anarchy. I'm just going to keep calling them the sons of anarchy. Yeah, that's what they are, that whole.
Mike00:07:17But but but it's not tells angels, but it also gets to the the frustration I have with like almost everything in this show is either them sitting down and like talking and eating or drinking beer or like these like fighting scenes. And there's you know, maybe that's all that I should expect from this show. But it's it's just it follows these these and it feels like the fight scenes are all they're just perfunctory. They're they're they're they're just going through the motions about it. And I feel like, OK, I've seen I've seen it already. I know what's going to happen. You know, it's it's neat to see Reacher like they find some clever way, like what does he do in this one that he like? Well, there's the one where the the motorcycle at the end, like he like at the end of the fight, like, isn't there a guy on it? And he like clotheslines him in the bike keeps out of it. I don't know. It's just it's they can't keep coming up with inventive stuff for them to do. Can I say about so they're building up Mr. A.M. as this like like insanely like scary bad guy, but like I feel like all he just keeps doing every episode we see, we get like one or two scenes of him. And like there's one scene where he does something horribly gruesome to some poor, innocent person. And then there's another scene where he like turns on the charm and does something to make people go, Oh, who is this kind man? I've just run into and like, that's all we see.
Sonny00:08:53No, the real problem with him again, we're four episodes into the season. We're almost halfway through the season because we're a couple episodes behind everybody. Else so that we're four episodes into the season. And like this guy has essentially. Now, every time he has shown up, he has basically killed somebody to do identity theft, correct? It's like it's like here's he's identity theft, man. He's just stealing ideas all over the place. And he's and like that. Again, there's there's a real like running in place motion. It's like we have we have ten episodes and we need to remind people that this guy exists. And he's a villain. And he has something to do with the arms transactions or whatever is whatever the whatever the actual plot is. He's got something to do with it. And he's here to take out some people, maybe or help with the deal or whatever. And like we have to be reminded of him, but he can't actually do anything yet because we can't move that part of the story forward because we're spinning our wheels in first Atlantic City. And now this this this in Boston, they were in Boston is weird.
Mike00:09:59Yeah.
Sonny00:09:59This is just this is just a show that like it again. This this this the season should be six episodes long. There should be six episodes an hour each. And instead, there are ten episodes, 55 minutes each. And that's too many. Too much.
Mike00:10:14Too much. And I don't know. Have we talked about this episode that we don't even remember too much already?
Sonny00:10:22Probably. Probably. I have a question. So, like, it's funny, we we. We talked a little bit about Jason Statham and like one reason why Jason Statham, I think, works is because he is a he is like he is like. Believably built, like one reason Jack Reacher is funny is fun is because he is unbelievably built, he's you know, he is free frame, but also just like naturally he is like an enormous person, right? But like one of the reasons that Jason Statham works is because he is essentially he's like he's I guess he's not a little guy, but he's not big. Either he's he's like compact.
Mike00:11:01He's like he's like he's like boy. He's like boy next door. If boy next door was like like did a bunch of working out and and special training and and could kick everybody's ass.
Sonny00:11:14Right, which is why, like, which is why, again, like the beekeeper works in a very specific sort of way, which is he has a bunch of fights with people and the fights are all basically believable because they're there. You know, it's Jason Statham doing like martial arts moves. He's doing front kicks, you know? He's like he's like he's like striking people and spinning. And like, it's not brute force, right? And that's that's a I don't know where I'm going with this exactly. Precisely. I know what you say that like it's it's important to it's important that you lean into your actor strengths on something like this. So when I when I say that like. When I say that it's frustrating to watch Jack Reacher like team up with a whole bunch of people and fight them, I guess what I'm really saying is you got to lean into Alan Richardson's strengths here and that is being big. Like he should just be he should just be manhandling and mauling everyone. And when you when you put him in a I hate I really hate to emphasize I like I hate to like harp on this and and and complain about it. But like if when you put him in a situation where he is just as competent as everyone else at fighting, it really like reduces the it reduces the impact of him as a character. It just it just kind of like. Lowers him.
Mike00:12:31Totally. No, it's like it's it's it lowers the standards for all of the action when you do that. So, yeah. All right. Well, maybe maybe this this season will continue as it's gone, which is like good episode, bad episode, good episode, not so great episode. And that next week's will be.
Sonny00:12:51Wasn't even it wasn't even a bad like I was watching. It's not like I was watching it. I was like, see, again, this is why it's like it is very much like The Walking Dead. It's like perfect laundry. Oh, you just sit there, you do something else, and then you're you're the show's also on. Like, again, it's funny. I like I specifically went out of my way to like sit down on my couch and watch this episode. And I'm pretty sure I remember it less than I did the episode I was watching at the gym. I like I like I before we started talking, I like totally blanked. I was like, wait, what happened in this?
Mike00:13:22What happened in this episode? This is like like my oldest when I read out loud to him, like there are big chapter books he insists on like having his like action figures in his hand. I'm like, you're not listening. He goes, No, no, no. It helps me listen to like just like have my hands moving a little bit. And that clearly with like Reacher, like you just need to be folding laundry and your your brain. Yeah, I think that's probably what it is.
Sonny00:13:48All right. Yeah, that's probably. Yeah.
Mike00:13:50I'm sure that's why.
?00:13:59you
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