Well. If we thought the previous episode of Reacher was plot heavy, in Smoke on the Water all those plot points have babies, meaning there’s an entire family tree of stuff going on that, thanks to the spoiler restrictions from Amazon, reviewers cannot reveal. It’s understandable since so much modern-day reviewing seems to be a recitation of what happens in an show. Fortunately on the higher level at which we operate here, we prefer to think about what all that action means.
But let’s cover the good stuff first. The scene of Alan Ritchson only wearing a towel is a delight. But that’s nothing: we finally get to see Alan Ritchson in all his splendor, at least in one brief shot from the back, and he spends more time than you’d think in a wetsuit. It is to be regretted that Reacher doesn’t do the James Bond trick of revealing a tuxedo underneath, even though tuxedos are a subject of discussion. Maybe next series now! Instead we have Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) making herself extremely likeable by how flustered the sight Full Reacher makes her. It’s inspirational on many levels.
This comes after Duffy kisses him early in the episode, an event Reacher reacts to with some enthusiasm, until Duffy yells at him for the fact she threw her mouth on top of his and complains that she can’t get involved with someone she works with again. The “again” is news to everyone, including Reacher, but we’ve seen from the first two series that his move is to do nothing until a woman shows up naked begging for it. Considering how physically intimidating he can be, it’s only polite, but it’s also just another level of masculine fantasy here. Women do not usually have to resort to standing naked in front of a man to encourage his attention. Could it be the man without fear is afraid of making the first move?
But these are the only moments of levity in a very bleak episode, which for various reasons might be one of the bleakest ever made in the entire history of television, which is not hyperbole. Neagley (Maria Sten) appears in this episode, for reasons which again cannot be spoilered, but what can be said is that her behaviour is both some of the darkest ever put to film AND the entire core of the Reacher ethos. It is extremely interesting this ethos is made manifest by Neagley, but again, this is probably because Neagley is an ordinary-sized woman of colour, less stereotypically intimidating than Reacher, but someone who shares his outlook on life. And in this episode it’s made explicit: kindness is only for people who deserve it, and who deserves it is up to your judgement.
I’ll spell that out: if someone is in pain for reasons you believe are their own fault, you are entirely justified to withhold the basic human decency of relief from that pain as a result. The consequences of this choice of yours, up to and including actual death, are entirely the responsibility of the person in pain. If they didn’t want to be in pain, they shouldn’t have done the thing you’re mad about. We have seen Reacher and Neagley put their ethos that kindness is a currency more valuable than sex into action many times in the first two seasons. Enough necks have been snapped, nameless henchmen slaughtered and helicopters shot down to make it extremely explicit that there is no moral ambiguity in Reacher’s world. When he kills people, it’s for the greater good, and when people who are not Reacher and his friends kill people, it’s for the bad.
This simplistic attitude is the reason for the show’s wild success in the USA, a place currently and with understatement in turmoil. It’s quite clear from social media chat that an enormous range of Americans watch Reacher for the cathartic fantasy of beating up bad guys and/or getting away with murder. A fantasy of revenge is quite meaningful when you feel impotent in a rapidly changing, violent, dangerous and threatening world. But punching Nazis is one thing. Dehumanizing Nazis is very much another. It is very, very dangerous to presume there are humans with no humanity, or that it is possible to dehumanise others without dehumanising yourself. This is the very wobbly tightrope that Reacher usually walks.
But that wobbliness is why this scene was given to Neagley. If Reacher the character was allowed to be that openly, plainly nihilistic, Reacher the show would lose the sense of catharsis that is driving its wild success. The fantasy only works when the violence can be excused. Instead, what Neagley does demonstrates our own personal ability to cause harm, even if you feel the harm you cause is for the good. And this pushes past fantasies of revenge into fantasies of pre-emptive violence. We have to destroy the village into order to save it kind of thing. To put it kindly, it’s not a good look, and in the current moment it’s an unbelievably dangerous one.
The trouble with Smoke on the Water is not only this howlingly bleak ethos, though. Nor are the extended scenes of torture on characters who are essentially minor bystanders. It’s the main twist, which was foolish and ridiculous back when 24 did something similar in the immediate post-9/11 American haze of anger and fear. The show’s core audience of dads will remember, though fortunately for Reacher’s audience numbers the youths who find this show so cathartic are too young. On top of that, there’s an enormous and explicit reliance on luck, as sloppy and clichéd a plot device as “it was all a dream” or “somehow, Palpatine returned.” There is also a scene in a literal Chinese laundry, staffed by an elderly couple who are not allowed to speak. This is an appalling racist throwback which shames everyone involved with the show. How on earth was it allowed through?
That said, the dads will appreciate the reference to Ann-Margret (!!!!) and also the briskly nasty confrontation between Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) and Reacher over Reacher’s rapport with Richard (Johnny Berchtold). Beck’s much-discussed fiftieth birthday party is clearly what all of the shenanigans are building up to – let’s hope it goes off without a hitch! – but whether anybody will be alive to enjoy it remains to be seen. Quinn (Brian Tee) finally gets some decent scenes, but they’re all so nasty you kind of wish no one had bothered. As a result of all this unpleasantness, the pleasure on Reacher’s face while he watches Duffy beat the crap out of somebody is hardly worth mentioning. Though once again he remains a woman respecter – when the beatee calls Duffy a bitch, Reacher joins the melee with his usual gory enthusiasm.
Two final things: at no point in the show does anybody ponder how someone apparently without an American passport was able to get their federal career. In the current climate this would have been nice to know. One also wonders how the real Pennsylvania record store whose t-shirt Neagley is wearing during the scene discussed above will feel about this shout-out.
Credit needle drop: Not the title song! It’s “Come On Over“ by a British-Zambian band called Bite the Buffalo, a choice so obscure its YouTube video has 155 (that’s not a typo, one hundred and fifty-five) views as of 8 March.
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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