I will bet a hundred billion dollars the character of Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson) was named after the heroine of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s smash-hit novel from 1943 that introduced the political philosophy of objectivism to the world. Objectivism has been an incredibly influential ethos in economics and politics in the United States of America, not least because one of Ms. Rand’s protégés (and, allegedly, lover) was Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly twenty years. Briefly put, objectivism maintains that laissez-faire capitalism is the most beneficial system the world has ever invented. As a result, no government should interfere with the human selfishness behind laissez-faire capitalism. That’s because selfishness is the greatest human emotion: it is (allegedly) the only reason people do things. And if that wasn’t enough, objectivism specifically states that altruism – the general concern for the wellbeing of others – is evil.
Now it doesn’t take much to see the obvious flaws in this ethos; season one of Reacher’s environmental pollution subplot saw it, too. It’s also obvious that an ethos based on self-centered greed is extremely appealing to a certain type of man. One who might believe that his own human interests are not just the best ones, but the only ones, for example. Alternative viewpoints simply don’t compute.
What a mother might have to say about selfishness and a general concern for the well-being of others is not something objectivists are interested in. Fortunately for the objectivists, Reacher has a conspicuous lack of mothers. Criminal mastermind Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) is a widower, and his traumatised, gentle son Richard (Johnny Berchtold) doesn’t really remember his mom. Neagley (Maria Sten) obviously doesn’t have children, and while Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) has mentioned some nieces in passing, her concern for her missing informant Theresa is that of a boss who has accidentally gotten an intern into trouble. Finally, when Reacher (the stupendous Alan Ritchson) and Kohl are bonding in a car during a flashback, they talk about the greatness of their dads without their mothers getting so much as a mention. Moms, eh? Who needs them, amirite?
When people nowadays talk in admiring tones about The Fountainhead, they must work hard to minimise the nauseating incident when the hero of the book, on first meeting the heroine named Dominique, rapes her. And if that wasn’t enough, Ms. Rand twisted the knife by having that Dominique fall in love with her rapist because he raped her. Dominique admired the fact that he wanted her body so much he raped her for access to it. Selfishness is the best, remember? This hateful, offensive sexism – that Ms. Rand laughed off in interviews by saying she needed sex stuff to sugar the pill of her political theories for mainstream readers – has been a stain on objectivism since the beginning. Nothing can excuse it and nothing can justify it. A whole lot of words can explain it, but words like “institutional misogyny” hurt the feelings of men who see themselves as the perfect heroes of their own story. Like a man who has opinions about every little thing in the world. A man who has worked incredibly hard to provide himself a life without weakness, so he can live a life without fear.
And yet as seen in this episode of Dominique, there is one thing which Reacher is afraid of: office gossip. The episode is largely flashbacks to the very earliest days of the 110th, well before the events flashed back to in season two, so Reacher can explain to Duffy and Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos) why he is hunting Quinn (Brian Tee). Kohl is the first person assigned to Reacher’s team in the 110th, and Reacher is astonished this woman half his size (she is maybe five feet tall, and incidentally a light-skinned black woman, like Neagley) shares his mindset. He is delighted to discover he never needs to explain anything to her twice, starting with not calling him sir. When Kohl conducts a highly sensitive interrogation, Reacher watches through the surveillance glass, beaming with pride as he narrates for the viewers how her choices are the correct ones because they are the choices he also would have made.
Later, Kohl decides she needs a beer and invites Reacher to join her in the bar. But her normal, collegiate gesture is stopped in its tracks by Reacher’s refusal to socialise with her in public. If they were seen out together, it would make her look less than professional to those who think a young woman is only in the army to fulfill some quota, Reacher says, and he won’t let “some assholes” diminish what she has earned. Reacher sugars this pill by immediately offering her a beer to drink in the office with him, which Kohl reluctantly but good-naturedly accepts.
The famous lone wolf has a human weakness after all! It also means the man without fear will insult everyone in the army, his talented protégé and himself when the mere concept of workplace slander turns him into a giant scaredy-cat. In what world would anyone believe Reacher, who prides himself on doing everything right, would ever sleep with the women he manages? Season two quite memorably established that Reacher was not only very aware of workplace power dynamics vis-à-vis Dixon, but also downright thrilled to smash up a military bar on Neagley’s behalf. One wonders why he was unprepared to do the same for Kohl.
But this is where Reacher’s status as the modern James Bond comes into play. Reacher doesn’t objectify women. He is a woman respecter, or at least he thinks he is. In both previous series he did not act on any sexual interest in any woman until she was standing naked in front of him telling him to. The scene of him in Number 2 with a Bullet wiping his feet for Agnes the cook (Helen Taylor) is about the first time in the entire show Reacher interacts with a woman who is neither in distress, staffing a cash register nor part of one of his investigations. His friendship with Neagley, which has no sexual undertones or physical contact whatsoever, is the opposite of Bond’s famous flirtations with Moneypenny. This is designed to make us think of Reacher as an upstanding guy, one who always does the right thing. And yet, admiration for someone in your reporting line is not meant to be a secret, and it’s uncool to refuse to acknowledge good work in public because you’re worried about what your mediocre white male colleagues might think. Avoiding women as much as possible is not exactly respecting them. In the face of scurrilous rumor, Bond would have put on his tuxedo, bought Kohl the sexiest dress one can find in a p/x, and gotten smashed with her in the officer’s club with his middle fingers up.
But despite the frankly exhausting amount of work Reacher is doing to differentiate itself from Bond, the end of Dominique has a disappointingly similar result. Reviewers have been specifically asked not to spoil it but anyone who has seen a show try to provide an extra kick of motivation to a hero can guess. There are a lot of women involved behind the scenes in this series of Reacher, with several of the season’s episodes written or directed by women, but as Ms. Rand demonstrated there’s no gender limits on institutional misogyny. At least there are more women reviewers these days who can fatigue their typing fingers calling it out.
However, it’s all part and parcel of the objectivist ethos of this season of Reacher. If show creator Nick Santora didn’t want the parallels with objectivism to be explicit, he could have named Kohl, or indeed this episode, something else. Thanks to objectivism, we are meant to believe people, starting with Reacher, only act in naked self-interest. Reacher is only helping Duffy find Theresa because she and her team are helping him find Quinn. And yet, the mere threat of corporate backchat had the power to make the man without fear act out of concern for the wellbeing of others. The irony is that was a bad mistake. Reacher’s subsequent choices are certainly one way to deal with being haunted by guilt, but just because it’s Reacher’s way doesn’t automatically mean it’s the correct one.
Then again, this is a show that has taken two and a half seasons to directly ask Reacher why he chose to join the military as an adult. He expresses enormous resentment whenever he’s asked about being raised in the military as a child, after all. His answer, which is given with a straight face, is “Never really gave it much thought.” This is the funniest moment the show will ever produce. Reacher has firm opinions about ice cream! He tells Richard to his face he will always be the weakest person in any fight! He advises a starry-eyed young man never to bring the woman he likes roses! This man’s entire career is built on his ability to give little details much thought. It is therefore impossible to believe that Reacher didn’t decide the guarantee of a lifetime pension to finance his ‘hobo’ lifestyle was worth a decade or so in uniform to earn that pension. But if he admitted that, then we would have to observe people can rely on the government to meet their needs in ways which laissez-faire capitalism will never do, and that a general concern for the wellbeing of others can include benefits for you personally. The only downside is, when you do that, the whole ethos of objectivism blows up.
When the man without fear is a hypocrite he’s not much a hero. But Reacher’s going to use an awful lot of cruelty and violence to persuade us this is not the case.
Credit needle drop: “Nearly Lost You” by The Screaming Trees
Season 3 of Reacher is now streaming on Prime Video.
Learn more about the show, including how to watch, at the official site for the title.
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