Bullet Points: Reacher (S3 Ep1) “Persuader”
The time for Reacher Season 3 hype is over, the time for Reacher Season 3 watching has arrived!
- Hot Start: The season opens in a small college town in Maine. Reacher (Alan Ritchson) pulls up to a record store with a crate full of albums he’s looking to sell (including The Ethel Merman Disco Album). Then Reacher witnesses a kidnapping attempt to take place on the street outside of the record store, and true to form Reacher gets involved, preventing college kid, Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold) from being kidnapped. Reacher ends up shooting the kidnapper and accidentally shooting a cop , before Reacher and Richard flee the scene with campus security hot on their tail! Richard convinces Reacher to take him home, where his rug merchant father and all of his wealth and connections could help Reacher, who is obviously in a lot of trouble after killing a cop!
- An Offer He Can’t Refuse: Richard calls ahead and it isn’t long before Richard and Reacher arrive at the palatial estate of Zachary Beck. But before they can get past the gate, they encounter a hulking security guard named Paulie (Olivier Richters), teasing the inevitable “battle of the beef” between Reacher and Paulie. Once they get inside, Reacher meets the head of security, Chapman Duke (Donald Sales), who escorts him to meet Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall). After their initial meeting, Reacher asks for help out of his whole cop killer dilemma, but instead ends up being blackmailed into becoming an employee of Beck’s Bizarre Bazaar empire. Duke escorts Reacher to his room, locks the door and tells Reacher he will start working in the morning. Reacher then checks for any bugs in the room, before he pulls a hidden phone from out of the heel of his boot, makes a call, there’s a woman on the other end and he says “I’m in.”
- How Bizarre: At this point I had a few questions… where did the hitchhiking, bus riding Reacher get a van?!? Also, where did Reacher, whose only possessions are the clothes on his back and a toothbrush, get a crate filled with albums?!? How did a man with the credentials of Reacher make a bonehead mistake like shooting a cop?!?! And last but not least, who was the woman that Reacher was talking to on the phone?!?! …After the title card, we go back in time a bit, when Reacher first arrived in Maine and spots Quinn (Brian Tee), a face from the past that spooks him. Reacher calls in a favor… but that ends up bringing some DEA agents to his cheap motel room door. That’s when Reacher learns from Agent Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) that she has been investigating Zachary Beck’s Bizarre Bazaar potentially being connected to drug smuggling and after a screw up and losing a CI who went undercover as a secretary for Bizarre Bazaar and that’s when they hatch the plan for Reacher to prevent Richard Beck from being kidnapped as a way to get Reacher on the inside of Bizarre Bazaar!
Some clever timeline manipulation, and an action packed start made for a high quality season premiere for Reacher. The groundwork was laid for what Reacher will be dealing with and who his friends and foes are in Season 3. The most intriguing part to me, is the reaction Reacher had to seeing Quinn… I am expecting one heavy duty villain and a lot of danger for our hero and plenty of tense moments to come.
The first three episodes of Reacher Season 3 are now available on Prime Video, a new episode will then drop every Thursday starting next week and running to March 27th! So if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go check out Episodes 2 and 3, while you read these Bonus Bullet Points…
- Based On: Reacher Season 3 is based on the 7th book in Lee Childs’ Reacher series, Persuader.
- Soundtraxx: Episode 1 featured “Blood and Roses” by The Smithereens.
- If You Ever: …wanted to hear Reacher’s thoughts on “Surfin’ Safari”, then this is the Reacher episode for you!
