...um...
...boring....um....
I mean, I can't wait to start watching. I'm reviewing Episode 3.1, "Persuader"
Recap: Reacher (Alan Ritchson) travels from town to town, helping people with their problems, mostly requiring him to shoot machine guns, kick guys in the balls, and throw them off balconies into trash piles, then take a Trailways bus somewhere else.
Scene 1: Establishing shots of Havenhurst University in Abbotsville, Maine. Not real places, but they could mean Bowdoin College, the safety school for lots of valedictorians. Reacher pulls up to the Vinyl Vault downtown, grimaces, and brings his record collection in to sell.
While he's bickering with the shopkeeper, Steve (David Daniel Stewart) drives up in his pick-up truck. Suspicious, Reacher watches as he deliberately plows into the car, pushes it into a telephone pole, kills the driver, and drags the whimpering college student Richard Beck (Johnny Berthold, below) from the back seat into his truck.
Reacher intervenes and shoots out the tires. Steve opens fire, but Reacher shoots him in the arm and retrieves the whimpering Richard, loads him into his van, shoots a cop ("I didn't know -- I thought he was pulling a gun"), and zooms away, with more cops in hot pursuit. The campus police? Can they even make arrests?
Scene 2: A well choreographed chase, with a lot of sudden turns and smashed cars -- the staging must have cost a fortune. They stop so Reacher can steal a new car. He tells Richard to call for a ride; "tell them you're in shock and can't remember what I looked like."
But Richard wants more help; the kidnappers could still be around. "No. I'm a drifter who used an unlicensed gun to kill a cop. I gotta disappear."
"At least take me home. My dad's rich, and can help you disappear."
"Nope."
"Please?" Offer to let him screw you.
"Well, ok."
Back story: Richard was kidnapped before, five years ago. Dad wouldn't pay the ransom until the kidnappers cut off his ear.
Scene 3: Establishing shot of Richard's huge Federal-style mansion, on a rocky coast. Wait -- I swear I hear the "Dark Shadows" theme. Is this Collinwood? Is Richard like the grandson of Barnabas Collins?Richard tells Paulie, the hot security guard (Olivier Richters, the Dutch Giant), that it's ok, Reacher is a friend, but Paulie doesn't believe him. Well, he could be a kidnapper.
Reacher doesn't want to submit to a search or get his gun confiscated, but Richard bats his eyes and says "Pretty please? For me?"
More after the break
Scene 4: Richard leads Reacher in the kitchen and offers to make him lunch. Aww, how nurturing. But Security Chief Chapman Duke (Donald Sales) announces that Dad wants to see him -- alone.
Dad (former Brat Packer Anthony Michael Hall) wants to know if Reacher is serious about his son. Just kidding. He thanks Reacher for saving his son's life, and asks what he needs.
"A place to lie low for a few days, and then some money for a fake id." Reacher is being quite belligerant, refusing to take a drink or sit down. I'd refuse.
"Sure, you can stay in Richard's room." Just kidding. "Let me think it over. Go have lunch."
Scene 5: Reacher drops into Richard's room: full of books and paintings. No pictures of girls -- a queer code. The guy is an art major -- another queer code.
"Why hasn't your Dad come to check on you, considering that you were almost killed earlier?" I imagine that Dad doesn't approve of Richard being...um...artistic.
They discuss Richard's art, mostly abstracts and views from the window, as if he is a prisoner longing to escape. "You ever paint, Reacher?"
"No. I'm straight."
Scene 6: Dad and Paulie the Security Guard summon Reacher to the Carriage House for an interview. No one on the site identified him, so he's safe for now. They ran his prints: West Point graduate, two silver stars, Purple Heart.
Dad wants to hire Reacher as Richard's new bodyguard/boyfriend, but first a loyalty test: Russian roulette. "No problem, let's go."
He's hired.
Scene 7: Security Chief Chapman Duke shows Reacher his new room, all done in blue, and locks him in until morning "for security." But he didn't get lunch.
He checks for bugs, then calls Duffy to say "I'm in." WTF? His meeting and saving Richard was no accident? It was all planned in advance?
Scene 8: Days earlier. Reacher is having coffee downtown, near the bus stop, cruising a cute guy. We've all been there, dude. Suddenly a mother and young child run up, having just missed the bus. Cute guy sits on a bus bench with them.
"What are you going to do?" Cute Guy asks, frightened.
"Give you $100." Is that for the whole night?
Uh-oh, Reacher sees his nemesis, Quinn (Brian Tee), crossing the street and getting into a car. It zooms away. I thought Reacher was new in town. He borrows Cute Guy's phone to call Special Investigator Powell (Owen Roth) to run the license plate. So Reacher is still working for the military, just pretending to be a drifter?
Scene 9: We don't see Reacher's hookup with the Cute Guy. Later, he is in his hotel room, when federal agents bang on the door. He escapes through the bathroom window, but is apprehended by Duffy (a woman) and two other agents. One is Steven Elliott, the kidnapper, and the other is Guillermo Villanova, the cop he killed! It was all a set up!
The car he ran the plates for belongs to Mr. Beck -- Richard's Dad -- who runs the Bizarre Bazaar rug importing company, and also the biggest drug trafficking organization in the U.S. But they can't get enough evidence to make an arrest. They want Reacher to go undercover into his organization.
"OK, I'll do it, if you do something for me": Check hospital records in Linton, Virginia, for an Asian-American man in his 40s with wounds consistent with being shot in the head, a high fall, and drowning.
Scene 10: At breakfast, Duffy reveals that they found the guy. He was in the hospital for six months and claimed to have amnesia, so he stayed a John Doe. "But from the way you're eye-fucking him, I'd say you know who he is." Maybe Reacher just thinks he's hot. "Quinn, Military Intelligence, sold military secrets to our enemies. Went on the run, had his file at the M.I. wiped. I want to arrest him."
"Ok, we can help each other, but we're working off the books, for reasons."
Back story: They already had a plant working as a secretary at Beck's Bizarre Bazaar, but she disappeared. In case she's still alive, they want Reacher to infiltrate the operation and find her.
Scene 11: Next, we see the fake kidnapping, and how they managed to pull it off without actually hurting anyone.
Scene 12: Back to the newly-hired bodyguard Reacher locked in his room, calling Duffy. There's a secret room in the carriage house; the previous plant could be held captive there. He'll check it out after everyone is asleep.
He checks it out. The plant is not there, but one of her hoop earrings is. The end.
Beefcake: Not in this episode, but I understand that Reacher takes off his clothes a lot.
Heterosexism: Reacher and Duffy are flirting in the "You're so arrogant" love/hate way. According to the reviews, she becomes his Love Interest this season. You're out of luck, Richard.
Gay Characters: Richard has a lot of queer codes, and he seems to like Reacher -- a lot. I went through Episodes 2 and 3 on fast-forward. He appears in only one scene in Episode 2: Dad assures him that he won't be kidnapped again. .
In Episode 3, Reacher and Richard go to a toy store to buy a gift for his Dad's 50th birthday: a Roy Rogers cap gun like the one he had as a kid.
While Reacher is in the bathroom, some townies led by Connor McMahon (left) approach, angry because his Dad made their dads lose their jobs. They attack, but Reacher wallops them.
Then they get ice cream -- Richard likes "lavender infusion." Reacher: "This is why people beat you up." You disapproves of femme boys?
"No, that's not it. They make fun of me for having no friends, no Mom, and an evil Dad. I keep having a fantasy of just taking my car and driving away." Reacher thinks that leaving is a good idea, and offers to help him do it, if he comes clean about his Dad's business. Are they going to walk into the sunset together?
Richard appears in five more episodes that haven't aired yet, but I doubt that he gets a girlfriend. He may even be canonically gay.
My Grade: I was surprised to discover that it was all a set-up, but after discovery, it dragged a bit. And there should have been a lot more Reacher-Richard buddy-bonding. B.
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