Summary
Reacher Season 3 shows some flaws in Episode 7, which shuffles pieces into place for the finale but offers little value of its own.
Reacher Season 3 has potentially been an episode or two too long. The season overall has been decent, and there’s so much to wrap up in the finale – including Reacher’s revenge mission, Teresa’s rescue, and the fate of Richard – that it’s virtually guaranteed to be action-packed. But Episode 7, rather erroneously titled “L.A. Story”, provides a considerable amount of setup without any real payoff on its own terms, leaving the final episode with an awful lot to do and potentially not enough space to do it.
There are, to be fair, some takeaways, including the climax – no pun intended – of Reacher and Duffy’s burgeoning romantic tension. But almost everything here feels as if we needn’t have bothered if the previous episodes had been a little trimmer. It scarcely feels worth the effort of recounting, but as I said, it does get things into position for the finale, so we should certainly go over the broad strokes.
Speaking of strokes, Reacher and Duffy do, as mentioned, end up in bed together. The physical attraction was already well-established, of course, but what really tips things over the edge is their getting on the same page about Teresa. Not that Duffy leaves Reacher with much choice, since on their way to L.A. they stop in to see Teresa’s sweet old grandmother, who thinks they’re a couple and is adamant that her granddaughter will be returned to her. Reacher can’t help but reassure Duffy that Teresa will take priority over his revenge on Quinn, even though he spends the rest of “L.A. Story” doing the exact opposite.
That title, “L.A. Story” – I have no idea what the point of it is since we barely spend any time in the City of Angels. It’s a brief detour to strongarm one of Beck’s associates into luring him to a fake meeting so that Reacher can make contact with him without alerting Quinn. After that, it’s right back to Maine.
This plan also ropes Neagley in, which makes me wonder why Reacher Season 3, Episode 7 bothered to include a whole scene of Neagley bullying Quinn’s old fixer into clueing her in about Bizarre Bazaar. It’s a prime example of this show killing time with needless scenes.
Neagley’s job is to meet with Beck, posing as a gun runner, and convince him that the only way he and Richard get out of this with all their limbs intact – Beck is now missing an ear after Quinn bullied him and Richard in the previous episode – is to work with Reacher. Beck reveals that the buyers are coming in from Yemen, landing at a private airfield nearby, though he doesn’t know which one. Luckily, Villanueva guesses right the first time, so… what was the point of this bit again?
Johnny Berchtold in Reacher Season 3 | Image via Prime Video
Oh yeah, Beck also has to establish details of where the sale itself is taking place, which he does in an incredibly conspicuous way. It’s his birthday, and Quinn is pressuring him to go ahead with his swanky black-tie birthday party to keep up appearances, so he’s immediately suspicious when Beck tries to get Richard out of the way. When he eventually lets on that the sale is happening during the party at a salvage yard, you just know it’s a setup, but this doesn’t occur to anyone else.
To be fair, everyone else has other things to consider. Duffy and Villanueva have decided that now is the time to loop the ATF in, since they’ll be badly outnumbered and outgunned by Quinn’s trained goons, but Reacher is dead against this idea because the authorities will prevent him from executing Quinn. The decision is made without his consent, though, leading to a tremendously awkward meeting wherein an agog ATF higher-up questions the DEA agents on why they’re only just mentioning this now – and why they’ve got a giant vagrant working for them.
Eventually, it’s decided that the ATF will raid the salvage yard while Reacher, Duffy, and Villanueva are consigned to the surveillance van. Needless to say, Reacher is not thrilled about this development. When he finally storms off, Duffy follows him and discovers that he purchased a high-powered sniper rifle from a pawnbroker that he then hid in the trunk of the car. He plans to assassinate Quinn the second he arrives and face the federal consequences, which won’t mean much to him anyway since moving from state to state anonymously like he’s on the run is what he does anyway.
As Reacher lines up to take the shot, he calls Neagley to tell her to erase any traces of the case, since he doesn’t want the fugitive status he’s about to earn to impact her career. But Neagley is a bit thrown by his plan not because it’s morally shaky, but because she’s still following the buyers along the coastal road leading to Beck’s house. They’re nowhere near the salvage yard. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, it’s a trap. See you in the finale.
