‘Reacher’ Season 2 Episode 7 Recap: “The Man Goes Through”

Imagine you’re a henchman. As a member of the International Henchpersons Guild (or whatever), your moral code is already scant – the last time we saw you upright (Reacher Season 2 Episode 6, “New York’s Finest”), you were about to shoot an innocent. But that was before Dixon and Neagley T-boned you with an SUV, the impact of which you somehow managed to survive. (Must be all of that rigorous Hench Guild training.) Waking up in a hospital bed, you’re probably expecting that shady lawyers hired by your asshole boss Shane Langston will cut you loose from police custody, allowing you to hench another day. Really, you can’t believe your luck. (That SUV was moving fast.) You kick back in your hospital smock, ready for a few days of drinking juice boxes and watching cartoons. And then Reacher and Neagley show up in your recovery room. “I’ve messed up a lot of guys a lot of ways,” our XXL badass king says as his looming shadow blocks out the available light. But putting air into your catheter will be a first. Terrified, you spill what intel you have as one of Langston’s hired shooters. And that’s when Reacher and Neagley shift tactics. That you sidestepped being splattered by an SUV wasn’t a miracle. It was just what put you here. And now it’s time for your present. “A gift, from Guitano Russo,” Reacher says with a curt nod from Neagley, and he induces the embolism that ends your henchman career – and life – forever.

As Reacher moves into its one-two punch of a Season 2 closing shot, it’s cold-blooded scenes like the one above that illustrate how refreshingly little it cares for the pedestrian trappings of usual good guys vs bad guys television. When its enormous rambling protagonist joined up with his old army team, the series built in an opportunity to explore something like the dynamic of the NCIS universe, with Reacher’s people an extension of his rigid personal ethos. The clunky flashbacks to the 110th’s army investigations that have peppered this season are essentially this, even if they’re mostly meant to establish the team’s personalities, particularly those we never met in life. But Reacher and his group at an official crime scene, standing over a body in matching polo shirts, or working to bust up a base motor depot drug ring – none of that is effective in the way it is to watch them disobey bullshit orders and destroy the rule book on the way to doing what they know is right. And by now, with a police detective murdered and Langston making moves like calling in air support to try and kill the big man, we are way past any kind of rule book. (Especially a staid TV rule book.) Reacher is now fully operating on pure pulp vibes.

Reacher and Neagley take it in stride when the additional henchman sent to kill the hospital bed henchman goes after them instead. (Cue a well-choreographed fight sequence with a tenacious Neagley fighting off a whirring electric bone saw.) They aren’t strangers to tying off loose ends, as Lieutenant Marsh discovers when he tries to run with his ill-gotten payoff cash.

But Langston, with his never ending supply of thuggery, has also grabbed Dixon and O’Donnell from the fleabag motel where the team was staying. With a lie about Neagley being killed in the hospital attack, Reacher agrees to meet Langston alone, to be contained alongside his friends at a New Age production facility. The Little Wing weapons deal is in a matter of hours, and Reacher knows turning himself in will put him in proximity to all of the players left in the game. Neagley doesn’t like it. “Langston said if anything suspicious goes down he’ll kill Dixon and O’Donnell, and there’s no way to initiate a plan from outside.” Which is why Reacher knows he’s gotta do it from the inside.

Remember when Senator Lavoy offered to help the big fella go full Margrave on burning down Langston’s operation? Reacher cares little for the slimy politican’s grandstanding about trying to do right by the country, but he does want to use Lavoy’s ex-special forces security team. And with that backup en route and Neagley ready to patrol the building perimeter, Reacher prepares to enter alone. “People live and then they die,” he says, speaking of his ethos. “As long as we do both properly, there’s nothing much to regret.” That’s it, and with a wink – “Asshole,” Neagley says with a grim smile – he stalks over to the facility’s exterior gate. Inside, we’ve already been privy to what Langston has in store. Dixon and O’Donnell, both bloodied, both strapped to gurneys we recognize as the kind that fly out of helicopters with people attached, and both having to bear the interminable gloating of Langston and his remaining inner circle of dirty cops. 

“Move aside and let the man go through…” In Reacher Season 2’s latest exquisite ’90s alternative needle drop – Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom” surfaced way back in episode two – Soul Coughing’s 1996 single “Super Bon Bon” is the soundtrack for Reacher’s arrival on the New Age scene. There are the random henchmen with guns. There’s Langston, smug, with Dixon and O’Donnell in the background, restrained. And the barest, tiniest hint of a smile emerges on Alan Ritchson’s face. It’s the perfect suggestion of Reacher going into subtlety mode. Of the message he’s quietly transmitting to his team. This seemingly insurmountable tableau? With none of them armed and all of them in cuffs? It’s just a precursor for what’s undoubtedly set to pop off in the season finale. Langston and his bullshit crew will never understand just how many guys Reacher’s messed up, and in just how many ways. They’ll probably regret that.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.