That was quite literally an explosive hour (well, less than), and a hell of a penultimate episode for the season!
Reacher Season 4 Episode 7 continues its relentless pace as the motives finally click into place, leading to a mad dash to stop a suicide bomber from releasing a weapon of mass destruction upon a bunch of innocents.
We started the installment with Reacher, Tamara, and Jacob’s lives hanging in the balance. We ended it with Sampson, who was supposed to be on the verge of becoming the next POTUS, potentially sacrificing himself to save the masses.
Once again, we got another installment that delivered on action, quippy one-liners that will serve as vocal stims, and a kill count.
As some of you predicted, it was the delightful Springfield who came to Reacher and Tamara’s aid, just as they were staring down the barrel of some guns and near-certain death.
Springfield has been mildly annoyed all season and put off by Reacher’s very existence because he’s seemingly brought nothing but trouble to Sampson. No one has time for that when the man is moments away from becoming the next new leader of the free world.
Whatever that even means these days.
But say what you will about Springfield, he comes through in a clutch, and we were treated with mild annoyance and inconvenience, posturing as he stood aside and let Reacher do what Reacher does best with Ahlquist.
And again I say, Tamara Greene is the freaking best. Typically, even the most flexible of law enforcement officers on the series have still held fast to a certain moral code, but Tamara is a true ride-or-die partner here.
She lets Reacher do what he has to do, and if she’s not standing back minding her business, she’s leaning forward and enabling his shenanigans, and I love every second of it. Because “Snap that shit” will have to go down as one of the season’s best lines.
As for expository dumps to move the plot along, the whole thing with Ahlquist and flashbacks was heavy-handed.
However, it was effective enough for the mere fact that we still got to watch Reacher snap Ahlquist’s fingers and listen to him spill his guts long enough to not actually care when it was time for him to die.
Sampson is, in fact, a Boy Scout as far as politicians go. And he really did have no idea what was going on with Putra and the deal he struck with the military.
Basically, the US military did help train Putra’s army, but covert operations were also happening behind the backs of the lower-level foot soldiers (which is as on-brand as it gets for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of how the US military and its hierarchy function).
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Ahlquist was the chemist on a separate mission of making a WMD.
It was essentially the worst possible thing the world could feasibly face, and all so he could reverse-engineer it and come up with an antidote or whatever precaution to take against it.
For preparation purposes only, of course, not at all, because any country that has something like that in their back pocket would maybe use it on another country or anything. Right.
Sampson knew nothing about this other operation happening under his nose that definitely violated International law, and Cahill was the one who kept it from him and handled things on his end.
Interestingly enough, Ahlquist was telling the story and admitting the entire time that his blind spot was always totally disregarding the “grunts” and looking at the soldiers as less than and beneath them, unintelligent beings who somehow wouldn’t know what he was doing and only did the bidding of others.
It’s his whole viewpoint of the “trained monkeys” bit around him that just fueled so much of what he did, right?
Like, the mere fact that he took the same work he was doing to create a WMD and used that to create pesticides for profit and then hailed himself as some hero for feeding all of America was sickening.
But it was interesting to see some of the flashbacks and to know there was a strategic effort to get the photo of the formula for his WMD, which is why that picture was so important.
And basically, all these years later, thanks to technology, what made that single file comprised of that photo so important was that anyone who got ahold of it would have the formula for the deadliest weapon of mass destruction in history.
If that fell into the wrong hands, we could be collectively doomed.
Amisha and Lila are essentially picking up where Putra left off, trying to secure it.
The exchange they were having with Djibouti was to get a suicide bomber who would be willing to test this out in a massive form so they could sell this formula on the dark web to the highest bidder, irrespective of what they intended to do with it.
It’s absolutely horrific on so many fronts, and Amisha and Lila are just so profoundly evil and sadistic that it’s enough to make your stomach turn. There’s just so much exploitation in what they do, too.
It was heartbreaking watching them pull a poor addicted person off the street, mislead them about the high they’d get, and then watch with a sociopathic fascination and glee as that person died in what looked like an excruciating way.
But now that we have all of this information, it makes sense why this conspiracy has involved so many different federal agencies, mercenaries, and the like- everyone with their own agenda.
And poor Anna was just screwed over in unimaginable ways. She had no idea that she’d be the person, decades later, manipulated into getting a file from her long list of files she was digitizing, and that it would trigger all of this.
When you stop to think about how she and Ben were victims of something so much larger than themselves, all because people view them as disposable, it’s heartbreaking.
Nevertheless, it puts an unlikely dynamic of Reacher, Tamara, and Jacob dodging authorities on all fronts while trying to stop a terrorist attack and prevent an Armageddon-level weapon from getting into the wrong hands.
And it’s just so out of their depth that, even in the penultimate finale, I don’t actually know how they can stop things.
The Sampson angle was great, though. For most of the season, it’s been hard to care much about Sampson.
Still, they gave us an installment that fills in some blanks, reaffirms him as a genuinely good, honorable man, and has him make the ultimate sacrifice to keep Philadelphians safe.
It goes back to what’s been enjoyable this season so far and how it approaches some things. Not to diminish the previous ones, but something about Reacher Season 4 reminds us there’s more than just Reacher being heroic.
Reacher’s ability to share the spotlight a bit this season hasn’t led to less Reacher or made him any less fun to watch; if anything, it’s added to how entertaining he is when interacting with very different people.
Sampson has felt like a passive ally with an agenda all season, and if this is the last of him (I don’t see how he could have survived that explosion, but who knows?), he went out as anything but passive and definitely heroic.
Docherty even earned some points during the hour, too. It took him a bit, but he didn’t plan on killing Jacob, and it seems he has nothing to do with everything else that was going on.
Finding out about the CIA guy may have been the tipping point for him, making him realize Tamara and the others weren’t wrong about this being much bigger than just this case with Anna.
And while it’s evident Docherty doesn’t like Reacher or Jacob, he does trust Tamara and is willing to help however he can.
Well, maybe not as much after willingly making himself look stupid by claiming Jacob, of all people, got the jump on him, and then disrupting a massive event under their advice, only for it not to be the target.
But given that it was hard to know where Docherty stood for a bit there, it was nice to hear how much he cares about Tamara and that she potentially makes him a better cop.
Overall, the hour feels like it was scrambling to piece things together after realizing the finale was just around the corner.
The overarching plot this season has been a tough sell for most of it and not nearly as compelling as you’d expect. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe this wasn’t the ideal book to adapt into a season.
Because, as has been the case all season, it’s not so much the massive conspiracy (which feels a bit generic now that everything is revealed) that has held interest or made this season as interesting as it has been.
It’s the characters and how they’ve reacted to being pulled into this conspiracy that has made the season watchable and fun.
If those elements weren’t so strong, the actual story would feel like it would fall apart.
But hey, we’ll be back here and eagerly awaiting to see how they bring it home in the finale!
Rebellious Thoughts:
- I will defend Jacob until the end of time, but it really was dumb for him to just be out and about in the Philly streets looking suspicious, especially when he, unlike Reacher and Tamara, hasn’t changed his damn outfit once.
- Speaking of his wardrobe, was anyone else annoyed that he didn’t give Tamara his jacket when she said she was cold? Like, setting aside the catching feelings or reciprocal energy reasons to do that, it’s just as simple as being a damn gentleman.
- Tamara’s “snap that shit” truly had me wheezing from laughing so hard. She really does act like Reacher’s handler who lets him off the leash for sport, and I live for it. Her level of indifference to Reacher killing people now is also amusing.
- Reacher snapping Ahlquist’s neck while wearing the Get Cracked in Philadelphia shirt: chef’s kiss.
- Ahlquist was so insufferable, but he also reminded me of Lance Durand on Cross Season 2. Billionaires patting themselves on the back for “feeding the world” while also sacrificing innocents for a greater good or cause they never sacrifice for themselves.
- So, Sampson’s wife just acts shady for no reason? I swear she seems so suspicious, and yet we’ve gotten nothing to support it.
- Poor Plum is relegated to off-screen surgery he may or may not survive.
- Amisha being this vengeful over a man is so disappointing. STAND UP!
Over to you, Reacher Fanatics! Did you predict who’d save Reacher and Tamara? What are your theories on how they’ll wrap all of this up? Sound off below!
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The post Reacher Season 4 Episode 7’s Explosive Hour Did In Fact “Snap That Shit” — And It Was Glorious appeared first on TV Fanatic.