ATM – The season opens under the cover of night with a helicopter sending a corpse crashing to the ground in the middle of the New York Catskill Mountain, nearly two hours from north of Manhattan. Elsewhere in Murfreesboro, Arkansas with Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stranger” blaring in the background, a shortage of cash sends Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) across the street to an ATM. He immediately deduces that the lady ahead of him has been carjacked and the perpetrator (Joshua Barilko) is leveraging her young son (Ashton Cressman) to drain her bank account. Reacher intervenes and beats the man to a pulp before returning to the ATM to make his withdrawal. On his way to cover the thrift store purchase, he discovers a cleverly disguised alert from Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) on the ATM receipt. Using the Cashier’s (Amy Keating) cellphone, he learns about the murder of Calvin Franz (Luke Bilyk).

The unexpected discovery sparks a memory of the day Calvin was brought into Reacher’s new investigative unit. Although it’s their first official meeting, Reacher explains how days earlier he witnessed Calvin resolve a dispute involving a care package and two huge soldiers. As the memory continues, it appears the members are having a hard time warming to each other.

Reacher touches down in Brooklyn, New York on a cold, busy day with Jeff Cormack’s “Sunshine’s Gone” blaring in the background. Making his way to a crowded diner, he finds a coffee, a full plate of food, and Neagley waiting on him with an open file. After a quick teasing about his “road worn” look, the open file reveals that 2 years have passed since the Margrave case. It also appears that the man thrown from the chopper was Calvin. While Neagley blames herself for blowing off Calvin’s attempts to reach her, Reacher deduces that Calvin was tortured before being dropped from 3,000 feet. Reach suspects the drop was a clever attempt to throw off ballistics reports. Before they make a pact to investigate Calvin’s death, Neeagley updates Reacher on the death of Stanley Lowrey (Dean McKenzie) and not being able to reach any of the other members of their unit. Reacher is further surprised when he learns that during his absence, Calin not only married Angela (Tea Helena Carini) but he has a young son, Mikey Franz (Nolan Gahan).

Leaving the diner and en route to Calvin’s house, it appears that Neagley and Reacher already have two separate tails. One of them reports to someone else over the phone while the other notes the Neagley’s license plate number. Reacher attempts to reach the other members of the squad while Neagley drives. They are not only unavailable, but David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) is the only member that he can leave a voice message with.

Angela reveals that Calvin was proud of his time with Reacher’s unit and not shy about sharing stories. Other than that, the only usable information he can provide is the location of Calvin’s office and his keys.

Outside, Neagley doesn’t appear overly concerned with Reacher’s announcement of them being followed. At the same time, their other pursuer is shown giving Shane Langston (Robert Patrick) an update on Neagley and Reacher, which isn’t much because Neagley was clever enough to bribe the hotel concierge. He’s ordered to keep watch at the hotel.

Reacher and Neagley arrive at Calvin’s office (Three Rivers Investigations) to discover that it has been ransacked. Reacher claims the excessive mess likely indicates that the searcher became frustrated with his or her lack of success. Neagley says that the snapped chair legs indicate they were searching for something extremely small. A bit more searching leads to her noticing the post office across the street. She suspects that Calvin would have been tricky enough to hide something in plain sight where no one would think to ever look. The closed post office sends them back to their hotel where they waste away the night playing Gin Rummy. Neagley also reveals that she’s excelling in her career and earning more money than ever. Further discussion alludes to the fact that Reacher had feelings for one of the team members, Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), but never acted on them. When he loses another hand, he calls it a night and promises to pay Neagley back for the flight and hotel room.

His promise to repay her causes his memory to pick back up where it left off earlier, with them now at a bar drinking and attempting to get better acquainted. At one point Neagley does attempt to learn more about the team and the reason for its creation but that’s interrupted by a surly Major (Karl Campbell), who thinks Neagley doesn’t belong in the Army. The verbal altercation turns physical with Reacher’s team kicking the crap out of the Major and his men while Elton John’s, “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.” The drinking and bonding resume at the campsite from the team photo they found in Calvin’s office. Calvin also gets Reacher to admit to setting up the altercation.

The following morning, a man identifying himself as Adrian Mount, AM (Ferdinand Kingsley) checks in with customs at the Los Angeles. Once he’s through, he immediately goes to the bathroom and burns his passport. Meanwhile, not knowing Calvin’s box number forces Reacher and Neagley to make a rash move that nearly blows up in their face. Thanks to Neagley distracting the postal clerk (Timm Zemanek), Reacher is quick enough to locate Calvin’s box and its contents. Although they find a hard drive the size of a USB stick, they need an adapter to read the contents. When Reacher asks to borrow Neagley’s vehicle, she asks if he’s going after a firearm. He confirms her suspicions and reveals that he also plans on stopping by the church. Speaking with the priest (Marvin Ishmael), Reacher spins a clever story about a missing drug-addicted cousin in an attempt to locate the town’s biggest street dealer. The priest gives him a street name but warns him how dangerous the area is.

Reacher stakes out the dealer for several minutes while Electric Light Orchestra’s “Showdown” blares in the background. Finding the perfect opportunity, he races in and quickly dispatches the dealer and his cronies. In the process, he steals and disposes of the drugs while also taking a gun and a wad of cash. He later donates the money to the church’s outreach program.

AM meets with two Forgers (Dan Darin-Zanco) to collect several fake passports. While the forgers express their amazement over being paid in bearer bonds, AM uses the opportunity to kill the men. Reacher and Neagley return to the hotel at the same time to find Neagley’s room ransacked. A quick search leads to the discovery of David O’Donnell hiding in the bedroom. He claims he’s not responsible for the ransacking. While David explains why he’s been unreachable, Neagley learns the hard drive is not only password protected, but has a built-in self-destruct that will active in 2 minutes if not deactivated. It takes several incorrect guesses but they correctly guess the password as “Reacher.”

While waiting in line at the airport for the ticket clerk (Pearl Sun), AM notices a small boy admiring his comic book. Before gifting the book to the boy, he says he enjoys comics because the good guys always win.

Neagley prints a list of names from the hard drive, which appears to be a list of AM’s aliases. Along with that, the only other thing they learn is that they are going to need help. With the rest of Reacher’s original team, David mentions having Lily O’Donnell (Andrea Grant) reach out to Swan (Shannon Kook), who just happens to live in Queens. Minutes later they find themselves at Swan’s place where they break in to discover his dog dead of dehydration, indicating that Swan hasn’t been home in a long time. Reacher suspects there is only one reason he would return, he’s dead.

 

Reacher Review

Not a horrible way to start a new season. Mystery, intrigue, action, and typical Reacher hijinks, the episode had it all. That said, there were times when the episode felt like slogging through quicksand. I am not a huge Neagley fan and was certainly glad to see that it won’t be just her and Reacher. It’s not that Neagley is a bad character or that Maria is a bad actress because that isn’t the case. There is just something that feels missing there.

Other than this, I find the premises intriguing and AM is quite the enigma, I am looking forward to learning more about. I’d give the episode a 5.5 out of 10.

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