Summary
Reacher makes “No Apologies” for the series with deadpan wit and killer twists.
This recap of Amazon’s Reacher season 1, episode 5, “No Apologies,” contains spoilers.
Read the season 1 review.
Reacher season 1, episode 5 recap
The team of Reacher, Roscoe, and Finley head back to Margrave, quietly in the car. They look guilty. They feel guilty. Finley, who is at the wheel, breaks the silence by saying they should not have left Molly Beth there. Roscoe says they called 911. However, Reacher makes a better point. They would have been detained and probably jailed for their involvement while the killers go free and cover their tracks.
As they enter the town, Reacher sees the dog again. Before, he wasn’t given water. The other time he was being malnourished. Now, the chain is cutting the poor pooch’s neck, and he is bleeding. Finley, showing some rare empathy, is about to take the dog when the owner comes out. Reacher punches him square in the face and then puts the chain around his neck and leaves him there.
“Let’s see you how you like it,” he says.
There’s nothing like starting the day with the word “WHORE” painted with a spray can on the side of your pickup truck. It gets the blood boiling and the heart racing. It’s better than coffee. The pick me up that Reacher sorely needed when he saw that word on Roscoe’s vehicle.
He knows who did it. Who else? The frat boy KJ. You see, what often happens when guys can’t get the girl they want in school, they may pull the girl’s pigtail. They settle into their frat boy, male toxicity ways when they graduate to manhood.
Reacher finds him at the local diner, but he knows KJ planned the whole thing to get him arrested and out of commission. The problem is that Reacher thinks justice trumps common sense every time. So, after giving KJ the rundown, and when the little rich boy is about to get out his second reply, Reacher then bitch slaps him, and the sound can be heard for miles.
Hey, those are the breaks.
Unfortunately, the other patrons saw the slap and kicking of the crap out of his friends. When KJ pulls a knife, Mr. Kliner comes out of hiding in the back, and Reacher’s team shows up. One witness says Reacher started the whole thing. Finley is forced to place him under arrest.
Again, those are the breaks.
It turns out Kliner won’t press charges. Reacher knows it’s because it can open himself up to being investigated, his records, and his business’s books. He can’t have that. But they do one more thing — The Mayor and acting Police Chief fire Roscoe for a minor oversight in her files. People are getting worried and suspicious.
From what Roscoe had been telling, Reacher, her father figure and mentor, who went by the name of Gray before killing himself recently, had his suspicions on the Kliner clan. This gives Reacher a thought. Men who commit suicide usually give away gifts right before committing the act, not a year before. Reacher thinks something is hidden inside that hand cannon gun case Roscoe has at her place.
After examining it, Reacher finds a secret compartment that holds an old storage locker or filing cabinet key. Except Roscoe knew everything about the man, his schedule, and even his weekly haircut with Mr. Mosely. She doesn’t know where he would have kept such a thing. Though, Reacher has a thought. Why would a balding man keep a weekly haircut appointment?
Mr. Mosley explains that Gray paid him a weekly stipend to keep his files in his basement. While going through Gray’s meticulous files, they find everything about the Kliner operation, also an incredibly generous charity program that only gives money to communities and people in Margrave.
Why though? To buy the town’s silence, says Roscoe. It’s insurance. But why Margrave? And what does it matter that they are purchasing a local town’s silence if they commit federal crimes? Well, Reacher has that one. They picked this small town because it’s centrally located in the south to points across the country and where all their travel can be used for non-federal highways.
They can virtually travel without crossing by significant police operations. And with the coast guard blockades preventing supplies from being bought to create the funny money or even shipping their finished product, things are tense for the operations.
However, suddenly Roscoe comes to the realization you and I have been thinking for a few minutes now. Her mentor was killed and was made to look like a suicide.
Reacher has learned to harness his anger and hate to use it for good. He has a flashback of getting haircuts and putting on their Sunday best with his brother, Joe. They had to apologize to that sniveling boy of the General so the elder Reacher could keep his position. Joe apologizes, but his brother refuses because bad people deserve what is coming to them. He draws his code and a line in the sand.
Jack tells Roscoe this very thing. There is no backing down.
Two developments happen. Roscoe heads over to the morgue and pulls up the records of Gray’s death. It was ruled a suicide, and the mark on his head was from being drunk, accidentally hitting his head on something, like a coffee table or pantry door.
After closer inspection, Jasper shows the dent photo on his head has a micro-aggression pattern that looks like a diamond-shaped pattern. Just like the one on Mayor Teale’s cane. So, she heads to the station, punches him square in the face, and Finley gets her out of town to relieve Picard from watching over Charlie and the kids.
Meanwhile, Reacher and Neagley head out to Arkansas. (Is it a coincidence that this state has the only United States diamond mine?). They are investigating an EPA agent killed for looking into a polluted river. Kliner had the man killed. Well, that’s the rumor anyway. They find a middleman scumbag who helps connect the rich with killers for hire. He goes by the name Viking.
The ending
Reacher and Neagley are given a ride back from the police officers who helped connect them to the informant. Of course, they are in the back of the police cruiser, which is unfortunate because the officer driving pulls his gun out and shoots his partner in the head. That doesn’t stop these special investigators from taking action. They start to kick the metal screen that separates them from the driver. They manage to kick it open and pin him, the bad guy in blue, to the steering wheel. This sends the car off the road and into the water below, passing a bridge over a river on the way down.
While the lousy guy drowns and they escape, Finley breaks into Kliner Industries to go through the owner’s files. Except, when he enters the office, they find that man is sitting at his desk with his throat cut.
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