Reacher – Season 2 Episode 3 “Picture Says a Thousand Words” Recap & Review

Picture Says a Thousand Words

Reacher Season 2 Episode 3 begins 10 days earlier. Langston is watching on as two of his henchmen beat up Franz. Langston says the beating ends now if Franz tells him what he figured out and who else knows it. He also informs him he got a beat on his buddies in Atlantic City (Sanchez and Orozco), so he isn’t saving them by not talking. Franz spits blood in his face and has nothing to say. Langston smashes his legs and tells the henchman to get him ready. 

Langston and his henchman are in a helicopter with Franz tied up. Langston offers him one last chance to talk. Franz just laughs in his face and says, “I’m just thinking about what the big guy is gonna do to you.” They throw Franz out of the helicopter. Langston turns to his henchman and says, “Big guy? Who the hell was he talking about?” 

Back to the present – Reacher is in a gun shop and tells the shop assistant he wants 3 burners and a bunch of guns. The assistant says he has a 7-day waiting period or he can just get a firearm. Reacher pays him off to avoid “a lot of hoops” and leaves with the guns he wants. 

In the hire car, O’Donnell moans about the Glock 17 Reacher has got for him. O’Donnell likes his own Glock 17, but Reacher reminds him it needs to be a gun that can’t be traced. The group are figuring out a place they can hide out, but are interrupted by a cop car pulling them over. Reacher says, “Wake me up if something happens” and has a nap. He knows he’ll be arrested but figures it’ll take a while. Russo turns up and orders Reacher to get out of the car. He tells Dixon and Neagley to handle the New Age parking pass query, and gets O’Donnell to con his way into coming along with him to the station as his lawyer (He went to law school apparently!) .

Dixon and Neagley head to New Age Technologies. They speak with the director of operations, Marlo Burns, and they tell her there’s been three confirmed murders, another missing person (Swan), and a person of interest (Saropian) found with a parking pass on him that was issued to him from New Age Technologies. Marlo says there are over 1000 employers, so there’s no way of tracking it. 

Reacher and O’Donnell are in a police interview room with Russo, and Reacher wants to know why he’s here. Russo says they are interfering with the investigation and reassures him they all want to solve the murders. Russo finds it strange that the 110th all had multiple calls to each other, but nobody called Reacher. He confirms it’s because he doesn’t have a phone, but Russo is suspicious. He asks him what he knows about the 110th all being killed off. Reacher says if they share information with him, Russo better have something for them.

Marlo Burns tracks down the pass registered to Saropian and claims they didn’t hire him, but they have a resume on file with his address, which she hands over to Dixon and Neagley.

Back in the police interview room, Reacher accuses Russo of being dirty, which he reacts badly to and insists he is as clean as they come, and reveals the police have a suspect. In Franz’s office, they found a memory card intact with information about a weapons broker called Mahmood. Turns out, Sanchez and Orozco dug up information on him for Franz. The name Mahmood appears on the same list of aliases they found on Franz’s flash drive-A.M.! They figure they need to flag all aliases with the initials A.M. and think it’s something to do with terrorism. 

Dixon and Neagley are looking over a sheet with random numbers that they obtained in their investigation.  There are seven sheets. Dixon figures out each sheet has 26 or 27 numerical tabulations. If you run them all together you can fit it all onto one page instead of seven. All the pages have 26 except for one, which has 27, but why? There are days and months with each page being a month and six days a week. 26 or 27 days, and they start or end on working days. The last seven months something was supposed to happen 9 or 10 or 12 or 13 times a day. The numbers are pretty good in month one, but they become abysmal in month seven. What kind of somethings were they counting? Neagley is confused by Dixon’s workings-out, but trusts her judgement. But it poses the question: What exactly is going on? 

A.M. has booked a flight from Denver to JFK, so they figure as soon as he checks in, they can get him. However, A.M. is smart, and when he arrives at the airport he figures something is wrong. He knocks over a suitcase of someone he thinks is watching him, and there’s nothing in the suitcase, which confirms his suspicions. He leaves the airport and calls Langston to tell him he’s been delayed, but he’ll still close the deal, it’ll just take a bit more time. A.M. asks Langston “Have you ever done a deal like this before for the product purchased?” Langston confirms he hasn’t and asks how A.M. is getting into New York without an ID. A.M. says he’ll handle it. 

Reacher calls Saropian’s neighbour and claims he found his wallet on the sidewalk and is just making sure he still lives at the address the group has for him. She informs him he does, and the group decides they will go around to have a look, but Reacher insists on going by the hardware store first. The group led by Reacher turns up at Saropian’s house and throws a pipe bomb into his hallway, which causes an explosion, and one of the henchmen waiting there to kill them comes out on fire. So that’s why they went to the hardware store! They enter the house, and a shootout breaks out with the remaining henchmen. They take out all the henchmen. Dixon runs out of bullets when fighting one of them, and O’Donnell saves her by shooting the man before he can take her out. 

Reacher spots a car driving off from the location and chases after it. He can’t catch up to the car, but he gets creative when he comes across a barbeque and throws it onto the oncoming car. It comes to a halt. Reacher catches up to the car and pulls out a heavyset man from it. He shouts, “Who sent you? Who do you work for? New age?” He finds his ID, and his name is Bryan Collins. The man has a heart attack and dies before he can tell Reacher anything. Reacher goes back to Saropian’s house and tells the group what happened, saying they need to “get the hell out.”

Back at the motel the group is staying at, Russo turns up and storms in. He is incensed that Reacher used a pipe bomb in Suburban Queens. Reacher reveals they were being set up by New Age. 

Reacher says there’s two possibilities here – Hitmen could’ve gone to New Age to canvas a target. In this case, the address they found could’ve been fake, or Saropian could’ve gone to New Age because he was working for them as a hitman for hire and had an assignment to track them down. Either way, someone wanted them to check out the address as a trap to kill them. 

Russo tells Reacher and the group they can’t go rogue anymore. He also tells them A.M. didn’t show up at the airport, but the plan appears to still be in motion. They are getting a warrant to access New Age Technologies headquarters. He tells them to back off until they hear from him. Reacher gives Russo a number to keep in contact with them, and Russo warns “No more cowboy s**t.” Russo then leaves. Reacher announces, “Saddle up, we got a whole lot of cowboy s**t to do.”

The episode ends with Reacher and the group getting in a car and heading off to New Age Technologies headquarters. Reacher tells them to get what they can in two minutes but not to wait for him if he is late coming out. They all put balaclavas on and smash the car through the barriers into New Age Technologies. They grab what they can from there and load it all into black sacks.

Before leaving, Reacher grabs a framed picture of the New Age team on the wall. They hear sirens just as Reacher is the last one to come out. They begin to leave, and Reacher jumps in the car just in time. They stop off and torch the balaclavas and Reacher lays out the picture he found at New Age on the car. They spot Swan in the picture at New Age. He has Langston and Marlo Burns on either side of him in the photo. Reacher announces, “He was working at New Age with the people who have been trying to kill us.” 

The Episode Review

This episode raises the stakes and keeps the momentum going with some uncompromising action sequences and a lot of plot that drives the narrative forward. The togetherness of the former members of the 110th is the heart and soul of this season, and they really are a formidable group.

The highlight of the episode is the takedown of the henchmen waiting at Saropian’s house. The other supporting cast members are really good as well, with Robert Patrick proving why he is one of the best bad guys put on screen, with his shady performance as Shane Langston. If it keeps going like this, Reacher season 2 is going to be one of the best seasons of television in 2023.