And now, man without fear, he must face the final curtain: except of course it isn’t. Like James Bond (RIP), Reacher will return. The zeitgeist can be guessed at and striven for, but it cannot be faked and it cannot be bought, because the audience never knows what truly speaks to them until they’ve seen it. Reacher, this wildly successful show about a man who cannot be hurt and can barely be harmed, has tapped a disturbingly deep vein in the current American psyche. What the show represents has become a fantasy for so many people.
So in this final episode of season three of Reacher, the problems are solved through a judicious application of the law, the negotiations of well-fed lawyers and a reliance using hands for helping and not for hitting. Lol. Lmao, even. Reviewers have been begged not to spoil anything, including who participates in any physical confrontations and whether or not anybody dies, but suffice to say it might be necessary to build a new graveyard in the great state of Maine. As the ammo manufacturers cheer another busy evening, the bodies stack up like tattooed asylum seekers in El Salvadoran concentration camps and rough justice may – or may not – be dispersed, instead reviewers must wonder what all this was for.
Is it enough that Neagley (Maria Sten) makes a joke comparing Paulie (Olivier Richters) to King Kong? Or that Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) mentions his butler’s pantry? At one point Quinn (Brian Tee) actually says “The champagne is incomparable” at an event where a tower made of full champagne glasses extends from the tabletop to the ceiling. There’s also a moment of bravery so reckless and ridiculous combined that it’s incredibly moving. All these things help, of course, but this appetite for violence and the casual disregard for so much death is landing very differently in an America which already feels very different from when the first three episodes dropped, just over a month ago.
In – insert sarcastic airquotes here – a game of dominoes, Reacher (the unbelievable Alan Ritchson) and his opponent agree to settle their differences “like men,” i.e. without guns. Let’s think for a minute why, in a nation awash with firearms, this choice was made, because it probably just wasn’t to drag out the run time. Fear of guns kind of takes over the brain in ways which are very unpleasant to experience in real life. No show can properly replicate that paralyzing blitz, which is why on-screen shootouts need the outré, over-the-top stylings of something like the John Wick movies to innovate. But the superpower of Keanu Reeves’ titular character, who has the backing of an improbable international cabal of psychopaths in order to commit all his violence, is his unbelievable tolerance of pain.
Whereas Reacher is merely a man without fear. There is no challenge he cannot out-think, there is no enemy he cannot get the drop on, there is no woman he cannot respect, there is no weakness in either his body or his mind. (The fact that Mr. Ritchson is at his most attractive when he is surprised – can you imagine him laughing? Because this show sure can’t – is something a man without weakness can only hint at.) The physical violence he endures and inflicts in this episode is so catastrophic that it becomes almost cartoonish, which only emphasizes that the lack of a weakness is a weakness in itself. The moment a person feels themselves separate from the rest of us is when they are at their most vulnerable, or their most dangerous.
But Reacher is a person, and thinks he is a good person, and the show’s entire ethos is based on the fact that Reacher is supposed to be a good person. And yet this character is very, very comfortable with casually committing torture and/or murder for his own purposes. It must be said again: the idea that one person, any one person, has the right to be judge, jury and executioner is so unspeakably dangerous that we might, as a nation, need to stop making art that glorifies anyone taking the law into their own hands. No more lone cowboy, righteous lawman, or modern-day drifter with the heart of alleged gold. I’m afraid no one is separate from us and no one is better than us, and that “I’m afraid” is meant to be taken literally.
We are living in a moment where the importance of community and the power of the collective is viscerally the most important thing in the world. America as a nation has forgotten that it has taken the hard work of millions of people to build the overwhelmingly safe and prosperous democracy that we are in the middle of destroying. Americans have a people have allowed themselves to be in thrall to one man who thinks he always does the right thing.
When are we going to wake up and realise this all was a mistake?
Season four, maybe. If we all live that long.
Final sequence/credit needle drop: “Shine” by Mondo Cozmo
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.
You might also like…
