‘Reacher’ Episode 3 Recap: “Spoonful”

That impromptu jaunt to a roadhouse on the Georgia border and into Alabama back in Reacher Episode 2 was beneficial for Reacher and Roscoe in more ways than one. Sure, crushing a few longnecks and getting close on the dance floor allowed them both to act a bit on their mutual attraction. But the resulting motel layover also displaced Roscoe from her comfortable home in Margrave. And that was beneficial to her life and limb, because the nylon-suited murder squad paid her house a visit and left a deathly warning scrawled on the front door.

Upon discovery of this desecration of her private life, Reacher says he can understand how Officer Roscoe Conklin might be scared. Wrong choice of words, dude. “You know I was recruited by the FBI and Central Intelligence? Scored a 99th percentile in IQ, but only an 80% on the psych eval. You wanna know why, you condescending asshole? I lack the ability to tolerate horseshit.” Roscoe isn’t scared. She’s pissed. This is her home, that she fixed up with her money, in the town that her family helped found. (That’s right, the Conklins were there at Margrave’s beginning, just like the bloodline of Mayor Teale. The Conklins had always been farmers; the Teales were always mayors.) And now there are killers who think they’re untouchable lurking in Margrave’s shadows. It’s time for some offense. Roscoe reaches for a box on a shelf. Inside is an enormous pistol. Reacher wanted a gun. Now he’s got one.

Reacher, Roscoe, and Finlay visit the morgue, where Jasper the medical examiner (Harvey Guillen of What We Do in the Shadows) has I.D.’d the other body found by Reacher’s brother Joe. Pete Jobling was a lowly trucker for a shipping company whose only run-in with the law was a traffic violation and disorderly conduct beef that a lawyer at a white shoe Atlanta firm stepped in to quash. Roscoe then gets a call from Molly Beth Gordon, Specialized Administrative Officer with the Secret Service. When Gordon learns of Joe’s death, she’s distraught; he was her boss, but they were obviously closer than that. Molly Beth tells them that Joe was Director of the Office of Investigations, and headed up anti-counterfeiting operations. His investigation in Margrave was classified, but she pledges to help Reacher and Finlay and Roscoe by providing them Joe’s files. “Hard copies only,” Reacher tells her. “We don’t want a digital trail.”

Joe’s work put an end to all domestic counterfeiting. The strictures he implemented made manufacturing impossible in the US, so he was chasing international fakes. Did his pursuit of an international trail of funny money get him killed in Margrave? Reacher knows it’s plausible. “People kill over 20 bucks in a wallet. Imagine what they’d do to protect a limitless supply.” He heads to Atlanta to lean on the fancy lawyer who helped Jobling, while Finlay goes snooping at the home of Spivey, the scumbag prison guard. That earns him a fat lip from a pair of racist local cops, but the call log on Spivey’s phone links him straight to Kliner Industries.

Kliner’s HQ is sleek, exclusive, and expensive, all hushed grays and mirrored surfaces, and completely incongruous with the rest of Margrave. Nevertheless, Mr. Kliner sets himself up as some kind of savior. “After all I’ve done for this town, I’m a little insulted to be under suspicion,” he tells Finlay and Reacher when they question him in his office. “More than a little.” And Kliner proceeds to threaten the chief detective with heavy overtones of racism and classism. Kliner is ensconced in corporate trappings, and sheathed in thousand dollar suits. But he’s a bully, plain and simple. And as Reacher says, bullies need to know they can be punished, too.

Roscoe’s life has been threatened, and Kliner and Teale are using humiliation to maneuver Margrave’s chief detective away from the action. The mysterious kill team is still on the loose, and the investigation has revealed that counterfeiting is somehow involved. Reacher lays it out. “A federal agent, a cop, and multiple civilians are dead. We’re not dealing with a small-scale operation; this thing’s a hydra. I cut off one head and two more grow in its place. There’s no justice for Joe in that. I’m gonna uncover this whole operation, and then burn it to the ground. And that takes time, which is something I have in great quantity. Taking Kliner out’s the last move, not the first.”

Predictability is unsafe, and Reacher enjoys reminding Finlay of that. He’s outside actual law, but still a troubadour for justice, so maybe he’ll ring a slimy lawyer’s neck with the guy’s office phone, or show up unannounced at Kliner’s sleek corporate compound. “Promise me you won’t end up in another holding cell,” Finlay implores Reacher. 

“No.”

Where Reacher does end up is Spivey’s favorite dive. After a few punches thrown, he learns that Spivey left town with “two Spanish guys.” And as Howlin’ Wolf’s “Spoonful” plays, Reacher identifies his tail and leads them in the dark and rain to the end of a dirt road. As the Wolf sings, it could be a spoonful of water that saves you from the desert sand. But one spoon of lead from a forty-five might save you from another man. He draws the pistol Roscoe loaned him, and takes that to heart with a decisive tactical ambush of the two armed South American heavies.

Reacher Features:

• Reacher, Roscoe, and Finlay rendezvous at Jolene’s Chicken Shack, which is fictional but mouth-wateringly believable as probably the best place to eat in Margrave, Georgia. Jolene herself brings their food to the table, with a respectable buttermilk chicken sandwich for Roscoe and a spinach salad for Finlay, which earns him an eye-roll from the proprietor. And here’s Reacher’s order, in full: 2 fried chicken thighs, fried okra, ribs, collard greens, pole beans, rice with giblet gravy, and cottage cheese with peaches.
• Remember in Last Action Hero, when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Jack Slater shot a stick of dynamite right out of the sky? No? Well, did you notice the gigantic automatic that John Cena wields as Peacemaker in Suicide Squad and the character’s resulting HBO Max spinoff? The Desert Eagle is a giant pistol that fires giant rounds, and is therefore a favorite accessory for giant guys. With the Desert Eagle on loan from Roscoe, Alan Ritchson of Reacher is in good bulging firearms company. 
• Reacher first faced the thugs he eventually dispatched at the end of “Spoonful” in episode two, where he took note of the head butt technique one guy tried. He says it’s from a martial art discipline called Reisy, “which hardly anyone uses except branches of South American special forces.” There’s also some evidence online to suggest that Reisy and its penchant for headbutts has links to martial arts in Eritrea.
• Reisy wasn’t the only tidbit in that headbutting scene. In his efforts to distract, Reacher has a flair for the philosophical. “You guys know what Cato said about hesitation, right?” he asks, and a split-second later he’s introducing their faces to sheet metal. So what did Cato say about hesitation? “He who hesitates is lost” is a proverb usually attributed to Roman senator and historian Marcus Porcius Cato. Reacher doesn’t hesitate.
• There are other references in Reacher. His affinity for the blues starts with early 20th century guitarist and ragtime singer Blind Blake, who was very much real and frequented Jacksonville, Florida and the surrounding region where the fictional Margrave is set. The music of Blind Willie McTell has popped up in Reacher, too, and soundtracking a violent showdown with Howlin’ Wolf does have its pulpy charms. We can also glean a bit of background about Roscoe from the scene at her home early on in “Spoonful.” Perched on her dresser is a stack of books, one of which is a copy of Babylon Berlin, the book series by Volker Kutscher that was adapted for German television before migrating to Netflix. 

Johnny Loftus 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. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges