#236. Reacher Season 2 Episode 7
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A short bonus recap episode on Reacher Season 2, Episode 7, the penultimate installment before the finale. The hosts open by griping that Amazon has rolled out ads on its original programming ($2.99/month to remove them), with Sonny noting it's the only streamer he still watches with ads and Mike ribbing him about zoning out during them by thinking about Argyle; Sonny then walks through the episode's plot, dryly noting how little of it actually moves the story — Reacher and Neely confront and kill a crooked captain out of spite, then head to the hospital to interrogate a wounded bad guy, kill him "for funsies," and immediately have to chase down and kill the assassin sent to finish the same guy, netting them only his phone and leaving them roughly where they started. JVL and Mike pile on the plotting, mocking the show's insistence on showing every beat (the villain literally has to open a crate and hold up a missile so the audience believes he has missiles) and the team's kidnapping happening conveniently off-screen so no one has to explain how a room full of super-fighters got ambushed. JVL's centerpiece bit contrasts the show's flat handling of the 110th's disbandment with the books' version, where Reacher gets demoted from major to captain after bouncing a colonel's head off a desk hard enough to dent it — a dent that becomes a running legend referenced throughout later novels, complete with a lost Bill Bräske callback. JVL admits he actually liked this episode, mostly because scenes at least advanced the plot incrementally for once, while Mike argues the show is at its worst when it tries to make you care about Reacher's found-family bonds with the 110th rather than just Reacher himself. They close agreeing the finale is obviously building to Reacher throwing Robert Patrick out of a helicopter, with a brief tangent into The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and their shared enthusiasm for hearing Henry Cavill do clipped received-pronunciation British dialogue.
From the show notes
doctor death
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00And welcome back to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode. We're talking about episode seven, right? Episode seven?
JVL00:00:16Who could keep track of season two of Reacher?
Mike00:00:19Yes, it's the penultimate episode of this second season of Reacher. And guys, we're getting set up. This is not HBO, as we know, right? In HBO shows, the penultimate episode is really where everything happens. And this is definitely like network cliffhanger. We're all setting up for the big fight in the final episode kind of TV.
JVL00:00:45Is there only one episode left?
Mike00:00:47Yeah.
JVL00:00:48Oh.
Sonny00:00:49I love that they're setting up for Jack Reacher to get in a fistfight with one guy again, like they did at the end of the first season. Do you guys remember the end of the first season? I never watched it. He spent the whole series just beating up entire teams of men. And then in the last episode, he was fought to a standstill by a guy. Just a guy. Just one guy.
JVL00:01:10I was like, I don't buy this for a second. So now we're going to have that with an old guy. You and Robert Patrick.
Sonny00:01:14It'll be the same basic thing again, I assume. I have a question for you guys, unrelated to the show, which this episode was fine. But here was my experience of watching the show.
?00:01:26Okay.
Sonny00:01:27So this was... So... Before this, I had downloaded a bunch of episodes of this and also Invincible, which I've been watching. Good show. I enjoy that. And I'd run out of the things I downloaded like weeks ago, weeks ago. And I went to play it on my phone. I went to play the new episode, Jack Reacher's Season 2, Episode 7, on my phone. And you know what I was met by?
JVL00:01:51Ads.
Sonny00:01:52Ads. Yeah. Did you guys... Have you guys been getting ads as well? Yes. I just started with this episode. The first one?
Mike00:01:59No, I've been getting ads. I've been getting ads the whole time.
JVL00:02:01The whole time you've been getting ads? So this is Amazon has rolled out ads for original programming. And if you want to make the ads go away, you have to pay an extra $2.99 a month.
Sonny00:02:12$3 a month.
JVL00:02:12And I am normally willing to pay any amount of money to avoid ads. But the amount of, on average, monthly Amazon original content that I consume is zero. So there's nothing I watch. Yeah. And anything I want to watch, I just buy it on Amazon.
Sonny00:02:34And so once you own it, you don't have to have ads.
JVL00:02:36Right. But they're not terribly obtrusive. It's not as bad as the ads on like Paramount Plus.
Sonny00:02:41So it's, so it's, so I don't, this is the only streaming service that I have that I get ads for. Everything else I pay just to get rid of them. Even, even on show streamers, I barely use like Paramount Plus. I spent the extra 10 bucks for the year free of ads or whatever. Hulu, I watch all the time. If I had to watch ads with every Hulu show, I'd blow my brains out. But the, but the, this is the, this is the one show that I watched that, that has ads and they weren't terrible. It was definitely, it was like one 30 second ad at the beginning.
JVL00:03:18Yeah.
Sonny00:03:18One 30 second ad, 15, 15 minutes in one 60 seconds. Second ad, 30 minutes in.
JVL00:03:24Yeah, I think that's right.
Sonny00:03:24And I think that was it, which like I can live with again, because I don't watch necessarily a ton of stuff on Amazon. Maybe when the boys comes back, I'll wait until that is, that's all done.
Mike00:03:37And then I'll pay for, but don't you just, don't you just do something else while the ad is on? Like go get a snack or fold some.
Sonny00:03:45I just shut my brain off and think about Argyle. My favorite movie. Yeah. I think about the colors.
Mike00:03:51Exactly.
Sonny00:03:51I think about the bright colors and the sounds and all the people who are in it. And I think, and then I get a smile on my face. I'm just like, Argyle.
Mike00:04:00Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, just, just, just get through the ads.
JVL00:04:04It's so good. We didn't even talk about the fucking CGI cat. Hey, we're not, we're not talking about Argyle.
Mike00:04:09We're not talking about Argyle.
Sonny00:04:10Talking about Jack Reacher.
Mike00:04:11Leave that cat, leave that cat out of it.
Sonny00:04:14All right. So Reacher season two, episode number seven. What happened in this episode? I watched it today. I'm trying to remember. The day we're taping this.
JVL00:04:23I dare you to remember.
Sonny00:04:25Oh, they, they get back. All right. So they, they get, they get back to the, to the hotel and they're like, what are we going to do? We're going to send these, we got to send the mom and the girl off to Buffalo for some reason. Cause that's where nobody knows us, but we know one person who is trustworthy. Sure. Why not?
Mike00:04:41But she, it's because it's because Dixon had no, didn't pay for anything that use her name or anything.
JVL00:04:48We could just hand them a wad of cash. And tell them to just drive somewhere.
Sonny00:04:54Just go literally anywhere.
JVL00:04:55Take an, take an Uber.
Sonny00:04:57No, why do that? That would make too much sense. Uh, so, so then, uh, the, so then Reacher goes and confronts the, the crooked captain with Nick Neely and then kills him out of spite mostly. And then, uh, then they go to the hospital to interrogate a guy who's sick.
Mike00:05:21To kill him too. The guy who was hit by the, the guy who was hit by the truck at the end.
Sonny00:05:24And then they, then they, then a guy who has tracked them down to the hospital. They kill him too.
JVL00:05:30Well, he's just there to kill, he's there to kill the guy they just killed.
Sonny00:05:33Right. He's there to kill the guy they just killed.
JVL00:05:35So they kill him too.
Sonny00:05:36Here's, here's what.
Mike00:05:37He just killed them with a bone saw.
Sonny00:05:39Here's my question. Here's my question on the plot. So in a, in a, in a, in a television show or a movie, every time you have a scene, that scene should be doing something. To move the plot along, right?
JVL00:05:53Moving the story forward, advancing the story.
Sonny00:05:56And in this, in this, in this show, in this, in this episode of television, you have, they, they, they go to, they go to interrogate the guy in the hospital room and they get the information out of them and they kill him anyway, just funsies. And then as they're leaving, they're leaving the hospital room. They see the guy who has been sent to kill the guy who they just killed. For funsies. And they're like, we should get him and we got to get information out of him. We are, we're going to figure out where, where they're going. And they, they chase him down and they kill him. Not for funsies. They kill him accidentally. And that just kind of leaves them in the same place again.
JVL00:06:38I guess they get the phone, they get the phone and the ability to pretend that Neely is dead.
Sonny00:06:44Okay. I guess that's true. That's a good point. I see. This is, this show is so intricately plotted. I can barely keep up.
JVL00:06:50What I don't understand is how the amazing fighters who are the best fighters ever and are all themselves like little miniature Jack reachers get ambushed and taken at their hotel.
Sonny00:07:02Well, that happens off screen. We're not, we don't, we don't actually have to see that.
JVL00:07:05So if it's off screen, then anything can happen. If it's off screen, it could have been, there are no rules for things that happen off screen. Exactly.
Sonny00:07:13Uh, so that, that happened. And then we, again, we see this terrorist guy for like one scene and he's like, I have the missiles now.
JVL00:07:22Yeah. That's a very crucial scene because without it, we wouldn't have assumed that he had the missiles.
Sonny00:07:27We would never see him. We have to see. Yeah. The missile. I do love that guy.
JVL00:07:31In fact, he has to go and crack open a crate, look in the crate, pick up one of the missiles and show it to the camera. Because again, without, I mean, you got it. The suspension of disbelief will only go so far. If the audience doesn't see him inspecting the merchandise, then there's no way we could believe that the tip, the bad guy has taken possession. Of the MacGuffin.
Mike00:07:51Yes. We, we, we don't need that for Reacher's buddies getting kidnapped.
JVL00:07:57We do need. Well, no. Yes. The MacGuffin.
Mike00:08:01Yeah. So all that happens, but we got to go back because again, as Sonny says, this is an intricately plotted. This is a sort of, there, there, there's sort of layers here going on and we have to go back to the flashback of the end of the special investigators. Right. Where they.
Sonny00:08:20Oh, that's right. I skipped over all that. There was a whole sequence that we didn't need.
Mike00:08:23That's right. Yeah. It, it, it made no sense. Why did we need that? Just to know that everything ended kind of shittily. And so.
Sonny00:08:33No, because you needed a CBS quality shootout.
?00:08:36Oh my God.
Sonny00:08:37Yeah. At the, at the 12 minute mark. That's what you needed.
JVL00:08:39Can I, can I, can I do my thing where I go?
Sonny00:08:42It's not as good as the rock. Yes.
JVL00:08:46Go ahead. So, uh, in the show version. Of this, the special investigator unit, the 110th is told that they have to shut down this investigation that they're working on, but they, they decide not to do it because they believe in truth, justice and the American way.
Sonny00:09:03Yeah.
JVL00:09:03And they do it anyway. And they kill all the people and they find the heroin. And then, uh, the guy who told them to shut down the investigator comes in and says, I'm closing down this unit. You're all fucked. That is to me, not interesting. In the books, here's what happens. The hundred and tenth unit, uh, never goes away. What happens is the Jack Reacher is demoted from major to captain and he is demoted after an incident in his commander's office at the hundred and tenth headquarters where I forget if it's a lieutenant. I think it's a lieutenant colonel, but maybe it's a full bird colonel comes in and the two of them start arguing. And Reacher bounces the guy's head off of the desk so hard that it dents the desk. This is what then results in Reacher losing his job and being kicked down to captain and being sent off to a bunch of shit duties. But what's funny about this is that because the hundred tenth never goes away, this desk becomes an object of legend and fascination. And so in later stories, when we, when he bumps up against the hundred tenth, which is a thing that happens fairly frequently and talks to the people who work at the hundred tenth now, they all want to know the story behind the dent on the desk because it has become a thing of legend where, you know, the people who were there at the time were like, yeah, he bounced Colonel What's-His-Face's fucking head off the desk. That's where he got it. And then people stopped believing. And then it became like a general. Was it, was it a five-star general? I heard it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that you did.
Sonny00:10:47And it's a Bill Braske. They lost the chance for a Bill Braske.
JVL00:10:51But it's, but it's a fantastic shaggy dog story to have throughout the series. And it's just a great choice.
Mike00:10:58Narratively speaking, as opposed to this, which is just, well, you know,
JVL00:11:04the bad guy man told us he disbanded the whole unit.
Mike00:11:09It's just a dumb. And then they go back and then they go back to singing. They're singing Freebird heart.
Sonny00:11:16No, it was. Yeah, it's the. It's bad. Crazy on you.
JVL00:11:21So here's the thing about that. But I kind of like this episode.
Sonny00:11:25Oh, tell us.
JVL00:11:27I don't even know why. I don't know. I mean, like there was a moment. Again, I'm sorry. I'm a little buzzed. But there was a moment in it where Reacher went in and hurt some bad person where I did think that he should have used another bad person to hurt him. I think it was maybe during the shootout where he's like shooting people. And I'm. Sorry, I don't care to see Jack Reacher shoot people. Yeah. What I would like to see him do is pick up the body of a dead person and cite an enemy 20 yards away and then launch the dead person at him and have the weight of the dead body kill the live person who's just all of a sudden hit by 220 pounds of dead flesh. That's what I want to see. And I feel like, again, there were just missed opportunities there. But otherwise, it didn't move the plot.
Sonny00:12:22It's funny that you mention that because there's a moment in the episode where they're scoping out the research center that they're going to do the exchange at and that car full of kids shows up.
JVL00:12:39Yeah.
Sonny00:12:39And they're drinking the beers and one of them chucks the beer into the electric fence and it buzzes and they're like, ah, fuck you. We're going to drink here. We're going to do whatever we want. We're kids.
Mike00:12:48Dad, pay for this room.
Sonny00:12:50And then Jack Reacher's like, but they did give me an idea and I swear to God, I thought for a second he was going to grab somebody and throw him through the fence. I thought he was going to throw a man. I thought he was going to like go and get one of the guards who was like making the rounds and snap his neck and throw him through the fence so it shorted out and then rushed the fence. That's what I thought was going to happen for like, for like 10. But then again, that would be too, too clever for the show. I think would be doing something like that. It would really make his presence felt, you know, it's not because he's still turning himself in. He's just like, hey, I got a present for you. Boom.
JVL00:13:26So follow what was happening when he calls the congressman and asks about his private security. Is he asking to have guys back him up?
Mike00:13:36Yes. Yeah, I think that's his calling
JVL00:13:38in his face show up. Is that what that is? I guess to say.
Mike00:13:41So all of the I again, having not read these books, I have come around to the idea and not even having watched the first season. I've come around to the idea that Reacher and his comrades is bad. We don't want to see him with his friends, right? It's all about Reacher himself. And I thought about this with the flashbacks because something has bugged me about these flashbacks because like the one tenth, like what do we ever see them do except sit around and drink beer and laugh and like play. Guitar. And play guitar. So like when that senior officer comes in and he's like, what the fuck are you doing playing guitar? Like I was kind of like, yeah, that's right. What the fuck are they doing? Come on.
JVL00:14:30You're on the side of Dean Wormser.
Mike00:14:32Dean Wormser. The one tenth should be on double secret probation. So I don't know. Like I just like we very rarely see them in these flashbacks solving any crime. It's like very like
Sonny00:14:46all of the detective work at this point has been like them looking at some sheets of paper and being like, huh, totals.
Mike00:14:54They're fractions. Parts of orders. So so like it just they are so clearly trying to set all of this up. Like you have to understand that Reacher loves these people and these people love Reacher. It's like, I don't care about that. I don't care about that. I do not.
Sonny00:15:16I don't care if the loner man loves anyone. I want him to love one person in town and then leave her.
JVL00:15:22Yeah, that's that's that's another shit. I did really. The reason I like that, I think, was just because not be each of the conflict did move the plot along incrementally, and that has not been true of anything else for the last several episodes.
Mike00:15:39Yeah, but that's this kind of out of necessity, right? Like they've got to get to
JVL00:15:44the we got to get everybody up in the helicopter so that Reacher can drop Robert Patrick out of the helicopter. That's right.
Sonny00:15:50Yeah, that's that's obviously where this is headed.
JVL00:15:52Yeah.
Mike00:15:53All right.
JVL00:15:54Any other thoughts on spoiler?
Mike00:15:57That's what's coming for
JVL00:15:58anybody hasn't figured that shit out. I'm sure it's fine. Is he? Oh, are we? Isn't he also in the new Guy Ritchie movie? Who, Robert Patrick?
Mike00:16:09Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Sonny00:16:10Yes, he's in the
Mike00:16:12the ministry of tiny glasses.
Sonny00:16:14An enormous man. He's doing he's doing the Dave Bautista from Blade Runner 2049.
JVL00:16:22You guys want to see this movie, right?
Mike00:16:23Enormous. Absolutely. Did I text you guys? I said that I said like, I just want to see a movie of with Henry Cavill and Cariel was just like going back and forth in like that like very clip like Cariel was in that very clipped like British, you know, received pronunciation like, you know, talking about what the, you know, Her Majesty's government what's it? Yeah, I just that I want to see a movie of that. I love that.
Sonny00:16:48The ministry of ministry of ungentlemanly warfare. Is that it? Yeah.
JVL00:16:54Sign me up, baby.
Sonny00:16:56I'm sure.
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