Reacher, more so than Reacher, is full of surprises: As he and his three former subordinates in the 110th Special Investigations Unit sit in a diner at the top of the season’s fourth episode, poring over the mostly-useless information they collected during their smash-and-grab raid of New Age Technologies HQ in the prior action-packed installment, this land mass of a man who never misses an opportunity to say that he prefers the blues turns out to be in possession not merely of facts, but of opinions pertaining to Talking Heads.
He complains that putting “Road to Nowhere†on the jukebox while they’re trying to refine raw data into an actual clue is “defeatist.†When O’Donnell says it’s appropo to listen to a New York band while they’re in New York, Reacher points out that those RISD kids the Heads were “a Rhode Island band that moved to New York,†then submits that “Road to Nowhere†is “not even their best song.â€
No one is interested in debating this because there’s a more significant question to be argued: The discovery that their presumed-dead former teammate Tony Swan (Shannon Kook) was New Age’s assistant director of security, reporting directly to Robert Patrick’s Shane Langston, forces Reacher’s team to consider that Swan might’ve broken bad. This is only logical, but Reacher won’t hear of it. It’s sweet, this enormous man’s enormous faith in his friends. I hope he isn’t setting himself up for heartbreak.
This music talk does turn out to be productive when Neagly, scrubbing through Swan’s emails, finds an odd message he sent to the New Age staffer — the same one who steered the team into an ambush in Queens last episode — recommending track 6 of Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold as Love. They all know Swan hated Hendrix. But track six is “Little Wing,†which Reacher recognizes as the name of a defense project he saw mentioned in one of the files the team stole. In fact, Little Wing is the biggest potential contract New Age has ever had by a factor of four, which begs the question of why Reacher hadn’t set that file aside for further examination already. But hey, there’s no bad reason to listen to “Little Wing.†Even Sting’s version is good.
Anyway, the team learns from that stolen file that one Senator Malcolm LaVoy observed a test of Little Wing, whatever it is, and has promised to lobby his colleagues in the high chamber to pass an appropriations bill that would deliver that fat contract to New Age. This is where O’Donnell’s post-Army experience as a DC-based private dick comes in handy: He knows LaVoy has a reputation as a legislator whose vote can be bought. O’Donnell has also operated inside the Beltway long enough to know that while LaVoy will have only a vague idea of what’s in that bill, LaVoy’s legislative director will actually have read it — and will be a softer target than a senator.
O’Donnell admits that much of his family-man income comes from “unsavory but legal†matters related to powerful people, and the work O’Donnell allows is “sleazy adjacent.†However, he objects to Reacher’s blunt description: blackmail. While O’Donnell excuses himself to find out who LaVoy’s L.D. is, Neagly and Dixon press Reacher again to consider that Swan may have turned. The repetition is worthwhile for the way Neagly describes the four reunited members of the 110th: “Three pissed-off soldiers and a Kaiju.â€
An odd closeup of Dixon pouring a Brundlefly amount of sugar into her coffee proves to be an arty transition to another flashback: Back in their Army days, the 110th gets a visit from Colonel Fields — Reacher’s C.O., evidently — congratulating them on the seizure of 48 bricks of pure heroin. They’re all knocking back celebratory beers at their HQ, which would seem to indicate the 110th’s elite status affords them privileges forbidden to ordinary grunts. Swan, who seems frustrated despite the jubilation of his teammates, points out that drug runners are richly rewarded for the risks they take, while soldiers are not. Dixon notices there’re only 47 bricks on the table; Swan retrieves the missing contraband from his car, apologizing for the fuckup. Back in the present day, Neagly wonders if that long-ago incident was an innocent mistake or a hint of Swan’s corruptibility. She suggests that Reacher is resisting the idea because if it turns out Swan is guilty, then Reacher, as the man who recruited him, would feel responsible for the deaths caused by Swan’s betrayal.
“Which would be stupid,†Neagly tells him. This is her version of giving the big lug a big hug.
Meanwhile, A.M. — the dapper arms dealer who we saw elude capture at the Denver airport in the last episode — is back. I’ve neglected to mention until now that the actor playing A.M. is Ferdinand Kingsley, son of Ben. I suppose Ghandi’s son would have to be a villain just to preserve the cosmic balance. Anyway, the arms dealer consults with a plastic surgeon, who is baffled as to why such a handsome man wants to change his face. The surgeon’s narcissism is punished as quickly as it’s revealed: He’s a dead ringer for the arms dealer, who has come to to the good doctor not for a nose job but to stab him in the neck and assume his identity. A.M. knows that his list of aliases is blown, so he’s improvising. We’ve already seen this guy murder three people, negotiate the sale of some unspecified weapon (called Little Wing, we now know) and throw at least two perfectly good, possibly-even-Near-Mint-condition comic books in the trash. Even so, his narration of the medical facts of the final seconds of that surgeon’s life is the first time he’s seemed scary.
O’Donnell has learned Senator LaVoy’s legislative director is one Daniel Boyd, a rich brat whose parents made his college (U.Va.) drunk-driving arrests and law school (Georgetown) entanglement with a sex worker go away. He’ll be attending a fundraiser at the Boston Symphony that very night. Reacher and O’Donnell agree to intercept Mr. Boyd and “set him up like a bowling pin.†Finally, this show is going to give us a Mission: Impossible-style caper, letting us know the objective of the operation but withholding the details until we’re actually watching it unfold.
Reacher, who’s been ducking Detective Russo’s calls, finally picks up to give Russo the list of New Age security personnel so Russo can run background checks on them. Reacher and O’Donnell roll up on the same drug pusher Reacher robbed only days (?) earlier; inverting his procedure from before, Reacher pockets the guy’s dope and throws his pistol in the sewer. “Find a new line of work, asshole,†Reacher scolds. Nancy Reagan would approve.
Dixon and Neagly pay an armed visit to the home of the New Age employee who sent the team into an ambush in the last episode. Its owner appears to have fled in haste, but she left a duffel bag full of cash behind in her closet — puzzling behavior from someone running for her life.
A.M., picking up a car in New York using the Colorado driver’s license belonging to the surgeon he killed, spots a little girl in the rental agency waiting room. He repeats the inquiry we saw him make of a child two episodes ago — “Do you know why I love comic books so much?†Giving this guy a feeble catchphrase, one that reveals a shallow knowledge of comics to boot (“Because the good guys always win†was how he answered his own rhetorical query before), is not helping his bad-guy Q Score. C’mon, Ferdinand — your dad starred in Sexy Beast. Be better. (By being worse.)
The episode perks up as the team dresses for a night at the symphony in Beantown. O’Donnell, for whom suit-wearing is presumably not a once-a-decade event, compliments both Reacher and Neagly on their gussied-up appearances. “We look like the assholes on top of a wedding cake,†Reacher protests. Eveyone looks sharp, but Dixon’s black evening dress is a stunner, for good reason. She’s the team’s designated honey pot, as we glean as soon as we see her deliberately stumble over poor, dumb Mr. Boyd at the symphony, finagling an invitation to sit with him.
While Dixon sets her trap, Reacher and O’Donnell hang out at a restaurant across the street. When their server says she’ll “tally up the bill,†Reacher realizes the list of numbers they’ve all been puzzling over since they decoded Franz’s flash drives is a set of fractions. Ritchson plays this revelation convincingly — in addition to carrying his own weather system around with him, he’s a decent actor!
Reacher isn’t too elated by this mini-breakthrough to overlook that O’Donnell has taken a call from one of his kids, advising the child that “hands are for helping, not hitting.†Reacher points out that Mr. Hands Are For Helping has brass knuckles in his pocket. (Ceramic knuckles, technically. And canonically.) O’Donnell suggests that Reacher might benefit from domesticity. When Reacher can’t even own up to his feelings for Dixon — “She’s a friend,†he sputters — O’Donnell laughs in the big man’s face. “It’s a hell of a dress,†their teammate is wearing, O’Donnell sighs.
It is a hell of a dress: That low neckline has already helped Dixon lure Boyd away from the Boston Pops and back to her car to snort a line. This tees up the most welcome arrival of an old Reacher ally: To whom does that Boston Pee Dee badge tapping on the window of Dixon’s car belong? Why, it’s the Tweed Tornado himself, Malcolm Goodwin’s Oscar Finley, whom we know from the late unpleasantness down in Margrave, Georgia. Evidently he’s moved back to Boston and re-joined the force — and Reacher has kept closer ties with him during the prior two years, seven months, and 19 days (plus however many days have elapsed since Reacher answered Neagly’s distress call and flew to New York), than he has with the members of his old unit.
Handcuffed in an interrogation room, Boyd asks the question that’s worked for him in the past: “Do you know who I am?†Finley does know — in fact, he tells the dissembling little slimeball, the moment he punched Boyd’s name into the computer, the FBI dispatched a couple of agents who’d like a word.
And now we learn why it was necessary for the two boys of the reconstituted 110th to dress up just like the two girls did: Finley introduces Reacher and O’Donnell as “Agent Margrave†and “Agent Blake,†the latter being the name of the blues musician whose life story lured Reacher to Margrave in the first place. Boyd announces his intention to lawyer up, but O’Donnell’s — sorry, Agent Blake’s — threat to leak his drug arrest and phone his wife persuades Boyd otherwise. O’Donnell’s methods are sleazy adjacent, no question. But Boyd is just plain sleazy.
Boyd gives up the MacGuffin: Little Wing is a software package that enables ground-fired missiles to defeat all known countermeasures. A magic bullet for a terrorist who’d like to bring down an airliner. But don’t worry, only we have this tech, he assures O’Donnell, Reacher, and Finley, at least two of whom know that isn’t true. Boyd also lets slip that New Age’s New York facility — the one the 110th ransacked last episode — is only their software center. They build their hardware outside of Denver. (This seems like something the True Detectives of the 110th would’ve known about already, but I like the idea that publicly available facts might go unnoticed by these skilled snoopers.) As Reacher and Finley say their goodbyes, Finley lets us know the neglected dog he adopted last season — and awarded Reacher’s first name, Jack — is still thriving. Woof.
Reacher issues some puzzling orders: He wants Neagly and Dixon to go to Colorado to try to sabotage New Age’s hardware facility while he and O’Donnell head down to DC to warn Homeland Security about A.M. and New Age being in cahoots. Reacher assures O’Donnell he can get Homeland to listen to them via his brother Joe’s contacts there. This rang false to me: We know from last season that the Reacher Brothers had fallen so far out of contact that (Jack) Reacher didn’t even know what division of the agency Joe worked for. We also saw the only Joe Reacher associate we knew of getting murdered not long after Joe did. Before Neagly, the only member of the former 110th who knows what went down in Margrave can stop him, O’Donnell asks Reacher how Joe is. “Dead,†Reacher replies.
Reacher cuts off any potential condolences by announcing, “I’m starving!†The team pulls into a place called Master Steaks, detonating the illusion that all this has been happening on the U.S. side of the Canadian border. A motorcycle gang surrounds our heroes, triggering the shocking revelation that the prior 38 minutes of screentime have been no more violent than an episode of The Great British Baking Show. Worse, not one person has reminded us of the Special Investigators’ policy in RE: being Messed With.
Both deficiencies are quickly remedied. When the ringleader of the bikers announces, in so many words, his intention to Mess With the Special Investigators, Reacher doesn’t even let the guy finish his sentence before head-butting him. The biker is beefy, but Reacher is geologic. Domestic bliss hasn’t made O’Donnell any less formidable in a punch-up, and Chekhov’s Actually-Ceramic Brass Knuckles make an appearance. Dixon wins Kill of the Week, breaking off one of her stilettos in an attacker’s eye socket. She won’t be able to return that pair of heels to the store!
Reacher pulls his old trick of reaching the Big Bad — whom we now know is Langston — via the cell phone of one of the legbreakers he’s just killed. Langston decides to try negotiation. “What is it that you want?†he asks.
“I want to throw you out of a helicopter,†Reacher says.
That he’s going to break Langton’s legs first is implied.
In an Investigation, Details Matter
• When Reacher appears in a suit, O’Donnell asks him, “Don’t you feel more civilized now, Ms. Doolittle?â€
• Last season felt the need to explain Reacher’s ease of finding a suit that fits his continental proportions by having a tailor tell him a football player ordered one and never picked it up. This season doesn’t bother. Maybe Reacher can buy off the rack in Boston.