Reacher
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I used to describe the sublime FX seriesJustifiedasWalker, Texas Ranger for Smart People.
At its worst,Reachercan feel likeWalker, Texas Rangerfor People Who Think or at Least Hope Theyre GettingJustified.
This wheels-spinning episode is the latter.
Eliots gruesome boot-stomp killing has been foreshadowed so heavily that its more like five-shadowing.
She even lies to Eliots father about how he died!
Certainly the revelation Annette was an ATF spy seems to come out of nowhere.
In fact, its straight outtaPersuader, the Lee Child Reacher novel from which this season has been adapted.
is some posh brand thats been processed through a cats digestive tract.
It tastes like coffee, is Reachers initial assessment.
A cats asshole, Reacher muses.
This is the episodes highlight.
When he coerces lesser crooks into working for him, he gets easily duped clowns like Zachary Beck.
When he hires directly, he gets self-sabotaging goofballs like Angel Doll and meatheads like Paulie.
The Neptune Society is Harleys euphemism for waterborne body disposal.
It seems too clever for him.
The two new legbreakers introduced in the cat-butt coffee scene are emblematic ofReachers villain problem.
Theyre supposed to be the reinforcements, the heavies, personally recruited by Quinn a fugitive Army Intelligence Colonel!
and installed at Becks place, just like Paulie.
But when we meet them theyre sitting around making cracks about the help like a pair of jabronis.
Reacher knocks one of them out and suffers no consequences for it.
(Annette even thanks him for defending her honor by delivering a slice of pie to his bedroom.)
The guy Reacher confronted appears unscathed, too.
This is, in fact, the most plausible plot point in this shaggy-ass episode.
(Anyway, the machine gun is Paulies.)
Reacher takes advantage of the blackout to set up an ambush to stop Cooper from reaching the Beck house.
He gets away by telling Beck hes going to check the road for threats.
Always with the Reachersplaining, this guy!
Intercepting Villanueva, Reacher tells the DEA man theyre going to turn his car over to create a roadblock.
Math is never wrong, Reacher declares.
Why does Villanueva have to remaininsidethe overturned vehicle for this diversion to work?
Shut up, thats why.
(This is what Reacher was equipped with inPersuader, instead of a regular-ass, talking-out-loud phone.)
Paulie is blase about the murder, claiming it was an accident the 400-lb.
ogre just slapped this petite young woman a little too hard.
Oops, he says.
This, again, seems like somethingPauliewould have to answer to Quinn for.
The fact that hes not the least bit worried about it makes Quinn less scary!
It also amounts to a double-fridging: Reacher isnt just avenging U.S. Army SFC Dominique Kohl now.
Hes avenging ATF informer Annette, too.
More than one, evidently.
For a few seconds, it actually feels like somethings at stake.
It has more effect on the guy half his size than it did on the guy twice his size.
Richard comes to Reachers room to tell him he knows that Reacher disposed of Annettes corpse.
So much for his replacement father figure!
He also tells Reacher its okay that hes afraid of Paulie, which Reacher denies.
I just haventsolvedhim yet, he says.
Reacher is becoming more Dexter-like as this bloody season wears on.
Theyre running guns, not drugs!
But it still seems like the sort of clue The Worlds Smartest Ex-Military Cop mightve intuited before now.
In that same loud speakerphone (!)
Beck asks Reacher if hes ready to meet the boss.
Why is his speech so stilted and formal?
Is he a Terminator?
Tune in next week to find out!
Villanueva suffers every kind of discriminatory insult imaginable in this episode.
Later, Reacher fat-shames him with a crack about doughnuts.
Microaggressions these are not.
