#234. Reacher, S2E6
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This short bonus episode covers Reacher Season 2, Episode 6, which Mike declares the best episode of the season so far, with Sonny agreeing it beats the previous week's set piece for coherence; JVL is more begrudging, saying "it's still crap" even as he concedes he enjoyed it. The episode opens with a lengthy Sonny riff (egged on by Mike and JVL) imagining what would have happened if Jack Reacher, rather than Jesse Plemons, had wandered into 1920s Osage country from Killers of the Flower Moon — Reacher would simply tear off King Hale's head, become a folk-hero "Paul Bunyan" figure to the Osage, and save everyone from "the literal devil, Robert De Niro." On the actual episode, JVL gripes that Reacher strangles two bad guys in a car boneyard back-to-back instead of using the first corpse as a bludgeon on the second, while Sonny complains the whole sequence plays like an unwanted stealth level in a video game (Mike insists this is intentional, layered art the others are missing); Mike also admits the second strangling made him look away, and JVL notes the show has dialed back the season-one-style graphic violence (no more thumbs-through-eyeballs). The trio praises the actress who plays Marlo as head-and-shoulders above the rest of the cast, then turns somber discussing Herc's death — he lays down his life covering a child's escape, though the hosts can't stop needling the tactics (the kid barely runs 30 yards before stopping, and Herc oddly abandons cover instead of just laying down fire). They also puzzle over season two's conspicuous lack of nudity compared to season one, guessing it's a corporate Amazon decision aimed at not alienating the show's apparent core audience of married couples watching together, and riff more broadly on how CBS-clean prestige streamers like Prime, Netflix, and Apple TV+ have become, wishing someone would bring back the swearing, sex, and violence of the Rome/Game of Thrones era.
From the show notes
Herc is standing on two crates.
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon podcast. We're talking about episode six of season two of Reacher. And guys, the whole time at the end, I was going to Herc, not Herc, not Herc, but it was Herc, but it was Herc. It was Herc is dead.
Sonny00:00:26Before we start talking about this episode, I want to, I want to, I want to actually shift shift gears here slightly. I want, we talked about killers of the flower moon on the main episode this week. Yes. Could you imagine how different history would have been if instead of sending Jesse Plemons to solve the murders of the Osage, they had sent Jack Reacher and Jack Reacher just starts going in and like tearing off King Hale's head and like parading it through the city. It's like, this is what happens. This is what happens when you do bad things and just like going around and like kicking doors in and, and killing bootleggers and like blowing people up. And I like, just imagine you're, you're on the, you're in this tiny little town in Oklahoma and you're like, look at me, I'm getting away with all these murders. I'm getting oil rights.
JVL00:01:18I'm getting nutrition of the 1920s and thirties.
Sonny00:01:21You, you, you've got these like sickly world war one six people. And they're, they're just, they're lording over, uh, you know, the Osage people, all of the wealth that they've accumulated. And then all of a sudden this drifter wanders into town. Who's as big as the church, just as, just as an enormous man. And he sees that injustice is happening and he decides to, he's not going, he's not going to Washington. He's not going to go get a new bureaucracy made to come in. He would just come in and clean house. He would kick.
Mike00:01:56Get racism's ass.
Sonny00:01:58They, they would make totem poles with his head right on the top of it. And that would, I don't know, is I, whatever. The point is he would be like a God. He would, and then he would just leave and they were, there would be tales about him. The David Graham book that would have been written would be called the saviors of the Osage. The savior, the savior, the savior of the flower moon. And he would be, uh, he would be giant cloud sky man. We would, we, we would hear, it would be like a Paul Bunyan story. Like there's this enormous in this enormous fellow wandered into our city and saved us all from the devil, from the literal devil, Robert De Niro.
Mike00:02:42That's the movie they should have made. That's the movie they should have made.
Sonny00:02:46That's they should, they should give, they should, somebody should pitch this idea to like David Ayer or somebody to be like, Hey, who wants to, who wants to make a action killers of the flower?
Mike00:02:56So that's, that's a nice little flight of fancy there, Sonny. Let's talk about though, the actual episode of region we saw, which I have to say before anybody gets in here, I have to say is the best episode so far of this season.
Sonny00:03:09And thank you. Thank you. Somebody in the comments.
Mike00:03:12Did you say that too? That's right.
Sonny00:03:15Sonny, you said that last week that this episode is better than previous, the set piece at
Mike00:03:20the end, which has had a set piece like this before, like is the most coherent and the most coherent and enjoyable set piece.
JVL00:03:28It's still crap, but I am sorry to get behind. Okay. You know, it's not, we often say that it's not fair to hold against pieces of art, things that it doesn't, they don't do right. It's not, it's not fair to hold sins of omission against them, but I, I'm going to do it right now. So we have Jack Reacher, uh, in a boneyard of cars or something. And. And he is being hunted by, by bad guys. And the first bad guy he dispatches, he dispatches by strangling him, which I'm sorry is a boring way to watch Jack Reacher kill somebody, but clearly what he should do next is use that dead body to bludgeon the next guy who walks into the buses to, to death.
Sonny00:04:20Yes.
JVL00:04:21And he doesn't, he just strangles him again. And then the, we have another bad guy. walking outside and again the answer is reacher should go to the top of the bus stand there with the body over top of him and throw the body down onto the guy walking past the bus to kill him with his own fallen comrade and said reacher's like i'll just do like penny wise i'll just like pull
Sonny00:04:44him underneath the thing no no where are my feats of strength yeah no the the whole this this uh that part of the show reminded me of like a uh if you're playing a video game and you have a stealth level where you have a snake where you have to be like quiet and sneak you can't be seen i hate levels like that because here's why i play video games i play video games because i want to pretend that i'm shooting somebody with a gun that's why or running them over with a car maybe i could do that as well or like like i don't know doing i want to do so i want to do something big and all the sneaking because i'm i when i'm again when i this is why i think i i don't know doing i want to do so i want to do something big and all the sneaking because i'm i identify with reacher so much is because i like i just like this uh kind of man mountain bulldozer sensibility that he has and that's what i bring to it and when he does the whole stealth mission thing i don't i don't care for that i don't i don't like that this is what this is where you
Mike00:05:36guys are missing the true art behind reacher um i mean this is this is this is all intentional guys that that stealth video game this is a show this is an episode where video games are a meaning there are layers in this that you guys are just not even seeing uh and and i think you
JVL00:05:58need to reevaluate i did enjoy this episode for the rest can you guys explain to me the choice from season one to season two to eschew nudity so in season one there's so much nudity that's not necessary and in season two we get weird not nudity yeah when it actually is kind of called by the script yeah and of course i just assume this is a corporate level decision on amazon's part that like they but i don't understand it because like it's could be the talent could be
Sonny00:06:31the talent i was thinking about remember the the so this this also happened in game of thrones the the the actors in game of thrones the actresses really in the game of thrones started saying we don't want to do as much nudity so there was a stretch where there just wasn't there wasn't really as much uh and that that kind of continued toward the end um i would assume look i i would assume that they that amazon has a lot of data showing that like yes this is dad tv but it's also dad tv that is watched with like married couples and maybe they are trying to yeah you know great penalize us thanks yeah so i but i i've noticed the same exact thing it's it is it's it is it is uh it's a choice it's a conscious choice for sure so the in terms of the plot of
Mike00:07:22this episode right there they they have to go they're looking for the woman who led them astray from the company who uh has has absconded with her child out of the house uh where she can you abscond with your own no you don't abscond with your own child uh she's flat she's flat yeah um i was thinking that she she i was about to say actually that she absconded with the money but of course she left the money that was the whole reason they whatever that doesn't make any sense oh yeah i've forgotten about that yeah no it makes no sense um but i have to say the the woman who played what's her in marlo the kid the act like the actress who played marlo was like head and shoulders above every other actor that we've seen on this show like it was it was it was like she the whole scene where she's like explaining what happened and this and the fear with her daughter like i thought that was all good um yeah she was fine she's fine yeah i feel like
Sonny00:08:18everybody on the show is basically i still like i still like the smart alecky guy yeah yeah i know he's good he's good too um and herc of course who is r.i.p yeah so this episode ends right with her dying which you knew was gonna happen he lays down his life to save a
JVL00:08:34child that's right he doesn't even bother to run the way he tells her to yeah that kid did not did not pay attention she looked she turned around too that was also when you see by the end she's run like what 30 yards yeah when she stops are you kidding me i know what what i didn't really
Sonny00:08:51understand about that is why he left the cover of the car i like i understand i understand he's trying to draw the fire but like you could you could still draw the fire while also having her
JVL00:09:01run i mean like i you don't you can run on an angle you could you could just fire your own weapon doing what what is known as cover fire yeah right this is that's what that's what he
Sonny00:09:11was doing kind of but he was also doing it from out of cover and it was i was i didn't understand the the tactics there jack reacher should have given him a better uh training in this sort of thing i feel like jack reacher of course jack reacher just would have run to the bullets and they would have bounced off him like he's a cage so so i will i will
Mike00:09:30say the complaint that we have had about this season which is that all of his happens all of his comrades seem to have the same abilities that he does because they all fight in the same fights like they do leave and we do get one on like reacher like like on his own which i thought was a good was a good development like that like they're moving in the right way i know you
JVL00:09:51guys didn't like the it's fine he's just strangling dudes i want to like rip a guy's arm off and then
Mike00:09:56beat him to death with his arm that's straight the second strangling was like that that made me turn away like on the on the bar like really strangling like like wigs me out like i have like
JVL00:10:09i have a hard time watching that's interesting i feel like they have ramped back also the verisimilitude of the violence right in in the season one like there's a fight in a prison bathroom where he puts his thumb through a guy's eye and stuff i don't think we've got any of that anything close to that in this this show i will say this show feels
Sonny00:10:32very very much like it could i like almost make it onto cbs we talk about we talk about these shows feeling like cbs shows and i really feel like you could just about put this directly onto cbs you have to get rid of the fuck certainly on fx yeah if you if you just like uh adr out a you would be fine with the show being on cbs yeah which is a problem for a show like again i i the reason i you know the reason i watch things on streaming i i is it just i again this is this is a broader conversation about the nature of of where streaming is but i do i i get the feeling that this is true not just a prime video but also with netflix like netflix is almost chased in its uh certainly apple tv plus has always been very fairly chased uh even hbo i think to a certain to a certain extent it really kind of shies away from ain't the days of game of thrones and ro rome anymore we need we need to bring rome back we need we need to show the children rome and be
Mike00:11:42like this is what they took from you you need to return but is that is that the prudishness of the
Sonny00:11:51of pornography it's it's a function of you have these you have these streaming networks that are trying to attract audiences in the nine figures and if you are trying to attract an audience in the nine figures you are doing whatever you can to avoid alienating portions of that audience and one of the ways that you avoid alienating the audience is to not do hardcore violence or
Mike00:12:12nudity or sex or anything it's well that alienates another part of the audience huh do they ever think about that did they ever think about that ever think about the carbs of the world think about
Sonny00:12:21what you're doing to prime video and netflix indeed think think of the bread michael should i beep that should i should i i you know i don't think he would i'm sure it's fine
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