“Reacher!
Did Hubble talk when you two were locked up?”
“No.”
“Baloney.”
“Easy, Finlay.
Watch your language.”
Although Reacher Season 1 had some outlandish stuff, like Reacher blocking multiple crowbar
blows with his forearms, and later, one to the head, the season as a whole was pretty
awesome.
They changed some stuff from the book, but the changes worked very well.
In this video, we are going to breakdown the season, layering in some extra color from
the book.
Then we will breakdown the climax and the ending.
The first question is: why did Reacher go to Margrave, Georgia in the first place?
Reacher’s brother, Joe, had once told Reacher that a blue’s singer named Blind Blake died
in Margrave.
A few days before the show began, Reacher was in Florida.
He was in a bar, and he heard a Blind Blake song.
Since Reacher doesn’t have a home, he was free to wander.
So he got curious and took a bus up to the area.
Low and behold, his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in years, got killed there the very night
that he arrived.
“This morning.
It's last night until 11:59 and 59 seconds, and then it becomes this morning.
In an investigation, details matter.”
So Reacher went to Margrave to find out about Blind Blake.
To see if he had really died there as his brother had once said.
In the book, the barber’s sister told Reacher the truth.
A long, long time ago, she was walking down the street with Blind Blake.
A ten year old boy and his father were walking towards them, so she stepped off the sidewalk
into the dirt as they were supposed to do since they were black.
But Blind Blake was blind.
So he didn’t see the boy and his father.
Blind Blake accidentally knocked the boy over.
And the boy was very angry.
He asked his father to do something, so his father bashed in Blind Blake’s head with
his cane.
Blind Blake died.
And that boy grew up to be a mayor.
Mayor Teale.
“F*ck the Teales.
Conklins built this town, Teales stole it.”
The Teale family is not the only bad family in Margrave nowadays.
The Kliners are also terrible.
About 60 years prior to the story, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the Federal Aid
Highway Act of 1956.
In short, the interstate highways destroyed business within the town of Margrave since
people would just drive on by.
As a result, the town was ripe for the picking.
The Kliners have a counterfeit money operation.
And they chose to set up shop in Margrave for a very specific reason.
Margrave has local highways that go various directions.
That allows the Kliner’s trucks to avoid federal interstates for most of their trips,
and thus, to stay off the radar of cops.
The Kliner’s business is pretty simple.
They hired Hubble to help find ways to collect a lot of single dollar bills.
They would pay for those bills with wire transfers.
The Kliners would then bleach the dollar bills and reprint them as one-hundred dollar bills.
The United States motto is “E Pluribus Unum” - out of many, one.
Reacher’s brother Joe had written a note with a different word order: “E Unum Pluribus.”
Although word order might not matter in Latin, Reacher’s brother wrote it that way for
a reason.
It was a code.
Instead of the U.S. Motto of “out of many, one,” it meant “out of one, many.”
He wrote that as a clue since the Kliner’s were taking one dollar bills and turning them
into one-hundred dollar bills.
The Kliners were in business with Venezuelans.
And things were going well for the Kliners.
But over the last year, the Coast Guard had enforced a blockade.
So the Venezuelans had paid for counterfeit cash, but the Kliners had been unable to deliver
it to them for the last year.
So the Venezuelans were mad.
Luckily for the Kliners, the Coast Guard blockade was going to end soon.
So they began piling up a ton of cash in their warehouse so that they could start shipping
it out once the blockade ended.
That leads us to Reacher’s brother, Joe.
Hubble wanted to get out of the business, so he left a message on a federal tip line,
and Reacher’s brother Joe called him back.
Meanwhile, Hubble noticed that one of the Kliner truckers had been stealing cash.
So good ole Hubble put the driver in touch with Joe Reacher.
Unfortunately, the Kliners already had their eyes on the trucker.
So basically, Joe came to town to investigate.
And both he and the dirty truck driver were killed.
“If I hadn't have walked in that bar a few days ago, heard that Blind Blake song, probably
would've been years before I found out he was dead.”
Coincidentally, Reacher arrived to town the same night that his brother was killed.
Reacher hadn’t seen his brother in years, but they used to be very close.
So he was pissed.
That’s why he stayed around and sought vengeance, partnering with Finlay and Roscoe.
The Climax of the season took place at the warehouse.
“You know, it's hard to tell with the suit on, but you're kind of jacked, Finlay.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Finlay’s friend Picard had sold him out to dry, so it was poetic that Finlay got to
take out Picard.
Similarly, Roscoe got to take out Mayor Teale.
That was poetic since Roscoe’s family, the Conklins, were there since the town was founded.
In her eyes, they had built it, and the racist Teale family had stolen it.
On top of that, Roscoe found out that Teale had killed Inspector Gray with his diamond
topped cane.
And Roscoe looked at Gray like a father.
So Roscoe killing Teale was perfect, and in theory, Roscoe is in a good position to become
the new mayor of Margrave.
Last, but certainly not least, Reacher got to take out Kliner Junior.
KJ had killed Reacher’s brother, Joe.
So this ending was poetic as well.
The coolest part about the climax was that it was foreshadowed in the dialogue all the
way back in episode 3: “I'm gonna uncover this whole operation,
and then burn it to the ground.”
Now, the ending.
"You're not my daddy.
Horatio Finlay's my daddy."
Reacher could not stay in town.
After all, there were going to be various types of feds raining down on it.
He had covered his tracks, so he wouldn’t have been convicted of anything.
But they could have held him up for two years or so, and he didn’t want that.
On top of that, Roscoe loves the town.
She’ll likely be there forever.
And the town will be better for it.
But that type of life isn’t for Reacher.
Reacher is a wanderer.
“It's just who I am.
If there was anyone who could make me stay close to the flame, it would be you.”
In memory of his brother, Reacher buried their grandfather’s medal of honor where his brother
had died.
So Reacher walked the 14 miles into town to find out if the story about Blind Blake was
true.
And the story ended with him walking back out of town to a very fitting Blind Blake
song.
“All my life I've been a travelin' man.”
The ending was bitter sweet because Roscoe was awesome.
The silver lining is that Roscoe had given Reacher her phone number.
But these are the final words of the book, quote: “I didn’t need that.
I had already committed it to memory.”
“It's been nice getting to know you.”
“Nice getting to know you, too.”
“For the record, I'm not a vagrant, I'm a hobo.”
“Whatever.”
“Bye, Reacher.
Bye, Roscoe.”