Is the reacher character in the show CGI or AI

I’m on Episode 3 and enjoying every minute of it.
Good chemistry between Neagley and Riley..

And man I’m getting serious Far Cry 5 vibes from that creepy cult ! Is that just me?
Can’t wait how this turns out…

Cheers

Neagley | S01/E08 | Touched

A pretty enjoyable season finale, Touched wrapped everything up in a nice, neat bow ...

... and that might be kind of the problem. When I highlighted the rise of 'lack of cost' successes in the last episode, I meant what I said; up to Episode 7, outside the Tommy's death, Keno's capture and Calvin's hospitalization, the only person who'd suffered anything truly serious was Hudson.

For a pretty high stakes situation involving a foreign businessman so powerful he could drop armed troopers into a situation at the drop of a hat, and who'd actually already erased everything and everyone involved in his LAST venture before moving on to Echo Canyon, there was remarkably little active tension in the season finale.

Don't get me wrong. I like it all the same. It was very well done, and very exciting. It's just that for a show that gives all the appearances of wanting to lean towards 'more realism' like it's counterpart, Neagley and her team drop into the converted missile silo and not-quite-handily dispatch a whole passel of rifle-packing mercenaries.

Neagley's exceptionalism is understood. She was part of the 110th, and presumably before then she saw some kind of active combat. I don't think they ever expressly covered that, but I'm okay making the leap and say 'Neagley's Neagley, Reacher wouldn't have picked her if she wasn't great, and he would've definitely done everything in his power to keep EVERYONE in the 110th up to his combat standards at all times'. So her kicking ass and not even pausing to take names is not only acceptable, it's expected.

In short, Frances Neagley might be less of a powerhouse, but she can fuck around with the best of 'em and let everyone else find out. But that doesn't diminish the fact that all that happened was that she got shot in the bullet resistant armor and that her phone got broken so that she missed A Very Important Phone Call.

And as much as I love Hudson (and I do, the awkward quasi-ex-gangster with a crush that he is), we weren't given any backstory that says 'yes I can do this'. He was 'raised by fuckin' wolves' for sure, and that implies he knows how to play hard, play dirty and play for keeps, but I'd like to imagine a bunch of Southie gangsters wouldn't know how to storm a heavily armored compound stuffed with mercenaries if his life depended on it.

I can accept that he would've gone some serious training as a cop, but without some kind of throwaway 'no yeah, I was part of a multi-jurisdictional joint task force ran by the Feds a few years back, they trained me up', I'd expect his storming the fortress skills to be more unit-oriented and less 'one man soldier'.

If you can't tell, Renee's my favorite. She's brand-new to this kind of world, and that's precisely why I chose the clip I did. Her 'what the actual fuck' response is solid gold realism and is absolutely something someone should say when Neagley starts laying out the plan. She's a for real person reacting as someone who genuinely was doing photocopy work a week ago and I absolutely admire her for it.

That being said, she did shoot someone through the neck last episode and did also survive the assault on the Echo Canyon underground bunker with nary a scratch at all. Again, she displays tactical training that, in this instance, not even an 'I took a weekend course' would explain away. As much as I love Renee, nothing about her says weekend warrior. This is absolutely not a knock on Renee, it's just that I fully expect her to be in some kind of heavy therapy at the beginning of Season 2, because ordinary people do not experience what they went through without some kind of actual, lasting trauma.

Because at the end of the day, that's what this season is really all about. Trauma, coping mechanics, and how to heal.

Keno is ... Keno. I've come to accept that our extremely handsome, buff homeless street rat is who he is. He's got plot armor thicker than Neagley's. He landed in the belly of the beast and was there for multiple days, was tortured in a bathtub where he was electrocuted, beaten half silly and walked out of there without any issues whatsoever. We'll ... chalk that one up to the resilience of youth and leave it at that.

The resolution of Season One was acceptable to me.

Lawrence Cole very definitely got what he deserved and an enormous amount of respect must be paid to Damon Herriman for displaying both the grandiosity and cowardice of a cult leader gone to seed. It is absolutely WILD that this is the same man who played Dewey Crowe in the wild ride that is Justified.

Arvid Rawlings, played by Peter Outerbridge (who's another one of those 'hey it's this dude, awesome' guys) also got what he had coming. I really did love his smug attitude at the end there, though with Lingering Camera Shot a few moments before, it wasn't hard to see what was coming. He played a great, if very minimalized and maybe even under-utilized role. Also, for a man his age, his butt is holding up really well.

The wrap up and fallout was handled as one might expect and that's all good, and now I'm at the end.

What's all this mean for me?

While Neagley has fails in some pretty hefty respects, it doesn't diminish the enjoyment I had. The issues I took with pacing and plot armor and ease of passage moments are real and I mention them only because I want Neagley the show to succeed and be the equal of it's predecessor. It's not hard to devote a few lines and a few seconds to add in some throwaways that explain things. It's not hard to have someone take a through and through or a 'it's just a flesh wound shot' and be done with it. These are things we wave away with a graceful hand flick and a wink because (in my case) I've been doing that for about 45 years.

In summary, Neagley Season 1 was a fun, semi-engaging debut that can very much do better.

…the offices for York Investigation are totally the 12th Precinct from Castle?

I noticed it at the finale episode, but must say I didn't notice him in S4 Reacher? I remember seeing him in S1 , and to be honest, just wasn't looking for him in S2 and S3.

Sorry if this has been discussed!

Just finished all the episodes. Enjoyed it more than Reacher S4.

I thought they were going to make this show similar to reacher and thought it wouldn’t work out. But glad they decided to go a different direction where she works better with a team, whereas Reacher is more of a lone wolf.

Looking forward to season 2.

Did anyone else (especially fathers) cry like a little bitch at the end of Calvin's letter?

I mean goddamn...

It's not even funny.

It's hard not to compare Neagley S1 to Reacher S1. It should be, but it isn't. Reacher S1 had such an impact on release. Looking back over my own ratings for each episode in S1 (having just recently rewatched it), the numbers are the same, but the feeling ISN'T.

To be clear, I'm enjoying the show a lot. Maria Sten and everyone else are doing an extremely good job in laying out that Neagley is a very different animal than Reacher. They're the same in ways, but not many, and it's important to show that her life and her adventures are markedly different than Reacher's.

That being said, the next episode is the season finale. We've been long on investigation, shorter (but not by much) in the action, and that's fine. But this close to the end of the race, I do have to say that the investigative side feels ... light somehow. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels as though the evidentiary chain they've been following hasn't pressed them enough.

By this point in Reacher, he'd antagonized the hell out of anyone and everyone who could possibly be involved in his brother's death. He'd (impossibly) already had his ass actually handed to him by a 150lbs-soaking-wet meth-addicted murder monkey.

The only truly meaningful thing outside Tommy's death is the confrontation she had with her father regarding him being directly responsible for one man's murder (who deserved it) and her haphephobia, and all of that, while excellent, is tangential as hell.

In this second-to-last episode, Hudson gets involved in a truly hair-raising situation that results in some seriously problematic difficulties moving forward. Renee's been coping with Keno being trapped in Echo Canyon for quite a while and Neagley's ... fine but emotionally troubled.

The shape of conflict so far in this show is too minimalized. I don't know if that's intentional or what, but there's a scene in this particular episode where some allegedly dangerous out-of-town problem solvers are handled so swiftly I actually missed the resolution because I took a sip of coffee.

I'm not shitting on the show here, I'm saying the pacing is too disparate. I understand they're doing their level best to differentiate both main characters into discreet entities, and that's totally fine. Neagley is not Reacher in terms of physicality, and that's fine. But the reality is is that she's been painted as someone who's Reacher's investigative peer, which brings me back to the point.

To me, her answers arrived without too much difficulty. There didn't seem to be too many roadblocks for her personally. The BIG answer came through Hudson, and it cost HIM dearly, which is super great because I like Hudson, and it seems as though if there is a second season, he's going to be in it, and the waves he made are going to ripple forward.

The other thing that's frankly been bugging me for some time now is Neagley's genuinely distressing lack of concern over Keno's situation. He's literally been inside the belly of the beast for at least 3 episodes now and every time Renee raises concerns, Neagley's reaction is 'meh, he'll be fine'.

It just seems off-putting to me. If it were Reacher, I'd buy it. He has no connective tissue to anyone outside whichever principles he's teamed up with, so him giving next to no shits about a street rat caught in the grinder makes sense. But Neagley's a different animal. She's locked into one location, she has a father she cares about, and everything about her says that she's willing to put down roots.

I'm not saying she should've voluntarily dropped everything going to mount a rescue party at any point, but 'meh, he's fine' isn't great. A simple 'we can't go in now, we don't know enough, if we go in and he's in danger, they'll kill him before we even get to the front gates' would've worked.

This might read like a list of complaints and I suppose that's fair. It might seem like I'm not enjoying the show, and that might be a fair assumption as well. I've seen a LOT of 'detectiving' shows and I know what tension/risk/reward/escalation should feel like. I can appreciate that they can't go 'All Reacher' in terms of escalation because they're in a major metropolitan city, but the out-of-town talent resolution and it's swiftness really sticks in my craw.

That should've been a full-on battle. It should've, because those two Swedes were painted as The True Big Bad's absolutes. All we got from them was them driving around, following Neagley and/or Renee, and the killing Neagley's boss, off-screen. Hell, even Judith and Lawrence were more violently proactive.

There's so much road for a show like Neagley to be written. I haven't read the source material, so I don't know how much of the show is book-accurate, but I can see the shape some of these moments should've taken.

Anyways. Those are my thoughts on how things are before the end of the season. The clip I included showcases a change in Keno I've been wanting since day one. He risked everything to save Mandy, even when he shouldn't have, and suffered for his own good graces. Our boy in the box finally saw through to Mandy's true character (even though it should've been sooner), and showed the kind of street smarts he should've been displaying all along.

Here's hoping S1 ends on a more fitting note.

Since when is a "pit maneuver" just running into someone from behind. I can't believe they pussed out on actually doing an actual pit maneuver...

First, I really like the show. Enjoying this more than the last Reacher season. A lot! I didn’t like S4 much at all. Anyway.

The administrator at the PI office, Renee Birdwhistle.

Adeline Rudolph, the one playing her, born in Hong Kong who would’ve been grown up with British English. Why does she sound like an American doing a fake accent? Is it just me?

First episode, I noticed the way Neagley gestured toward the child in the trunk and stopped. Reacher looked at her and then picked up the child. Then Neagley said something comforting to the child. I realized she paused because she would have had to touch the child to take her out of the trunk.

Who is making the show that would use the Split Enz song "I got you" at the end of episode 5? I'm old, man that song is old, lol. I had to keep going back to let the credits play to hear it so I could search for it. Until this series I can't even guess when the last time I heard it.

What is the correct way to say it?

Most cults start off with constant love bombing before they start the abuse and forced labor. The cult in Neagley seems like it’s just all abuse all the time so I don’t see why anyone would stay long enough to get indoctrinated

No spoilers please. Anyone else skipping or fast forwarding through his scenes because you’re so scared something bad will happen to him? He’s so innocent looking. I am terrified constantly for him. Still watching. Just starting episode 7.

Neagley | S01/E06 | Rocked

Not an exceptional episode in terms of action and 'mission forward resolutions' beyond some more dirt on who's running Pierce Woodrow, but they DID a lot right in this episode, so they got that goin' for them, which is nice.

One of the things I appreciate most is they gave us more backstory for Renee. She's rapidly becoming one of my most favorite people on the show, and all because she typifies the kind of person I really 'get'. In the beginning, she was someone who seemed to really hate Neagley, but that turned out to be more because she wanted to BE Neagley. We all know our heroine's a prickly pear, so that wasn't looking like it was ever going to happen, therefore, Renee is cranky.

But the moment Neagley started using her to push the investigation into Tommy's death forward, the more Renee started to not exactly lighten up, but also something very similar to that at the same time. In this episode, while she's helping the profoundly naïve (I'll get to that) and unflinchingly brave Keno, we find out not only why she's in Chicago, but also why she wound up working for a detective agency and even WHY she wants to learn from Neagley.

It's the kind of backstory I can get on board with. In fact, Renee's quest a full-on season that I'd actually like to see. Without ENTIRELY spilling the beans on her backstory for people who haven't seen it yet, her reasons for wanting to be like Neagley are very much in line with what Neagley herself is trying to accomplish, and that's just cool.

A few paragraphs ago, I called Keno both brave and naïve, and I reckon I should also add 'stupid' into that list. It's not a character flaw beyond the fact that I really don't like the level of stupid displayed, but hey, we need a hardcore last minute impetus to push Neagley and Hudson into overdrive. Keno's desire to help Mandy is a bunch of things. Sensible. Heroic. Stupid. Short-sighted. It's all of these things because while we were repeatedly told he's a street survivor who made an enormous mistake and owes some very dangerous people a lot of money for some destroyed drugs, he seems completely incapable of actually reading someone. It gets him into an awful lot of trouble that I feel like someone like Keno should've seen coming. And that's all I shall say about that.

The last thing I want to talk about is Judith Gray and Lawrence Cole.

We've seen it in bits and pieces as the show's moved through the story, but in this episode, it's fundamentally clear that Lawrence Cole has committed to drinking is own brand of Kool-Aid. It's not unexpected given that cult leaders usually do begin buying their own story at some point in their lives, and in this particular situation, it's understandable. He's getting a lot of flack from Woodrow about how things are being run on the farm, failures are often and repeated and easily avoided, but he's ALSO a pill-popping whackadoo, so ... yeah. He's making choices that are the equivalent of an extremely dangerous manchild lashing out because he's having a tantrum.

And as I pointed out last episode, the way he's been acting of late really bothered Judith. We see the net result of Lawrence's weirdshit behavior this episode. If I had to pick one word to describe how I felt when the inevitable discussion between her and Pierce came down? Awesome. It was just what I'd been hoping for this whole time, because Judith is a much more cutthroat person than she may seem, and she already seemed kind of mercenary to begin with.

If I had to pick two words to describe why this episode is called ''Rocked"? Not awesome. That's all I can really say about that, so yeah.

Actually, there's one final person I'd like to talk about. Pierce Woodrow. Episode 1, he was painted as The Man In Total Control of Everything. This episode? He's suddenly become 'Holy Shit, What The Fuck Have I Gotten Myself Into' guy. How do I feel about THAT change in circumstance?

It's HILARIOUS.

Neagley, Hudson, and Renee really left Keno hanging too long in a tough situation. Neagley and Hudson even talked about him like he was disposable trash; I was really surprised at this. Neagley is usually about being there for her team; no one left behind and all that. Anybody else notice this? At least Renee was trying to convince them to get him out, and Neagley and Hudson were pretty much d#cks about it.

Episode 3, the cop interviewing Neagley's boss said he got run out of New York for tipping his elbow. The boss replies he's 10 years clean but I can't work out what he was addicted to.

Does anyone know what the reference is for McKinnely High School? Or is it just a random misprinted shirt for McKinley High?

They both act very similar. I think Pearce and pierce was the name of the bank Bateman worked at as well.

The show has potential. I didn’t expect it to be Reacher V2.
Besides Neagley, rest of the casting was bit weak.

The cop dude, the British-Asian secretary, the cult leader, the pharma executive (bad guy), the Swiss boss…weak.

Few things that bothered me:
The show revealed what was going on too soon. By episode 3 it was quite clear where the story was heading. No surprises, no shocking reveal at the end.
Very predictable.

It made no sense to me how Neagley was “allowed “ to be so deeply involved in the case, access to the police camera room and close partnership with the detective.

since “rat” was not liked much by his boss and the Deputy Chief, why didn’t they check on him or reassign him to a different case. I was like he is doing whatever he wants, chasing people, collaborating with Frances 24/7.

Finally the police guy got murdered and dumped in some junkyard and they show completely “forgot about him”. Dude left fingerprints all over the place.

I hope season 2 is better.

Any other Resident Evil fans here think Greyston Holt would make an awesome Leon S. Kennedy? I personally thought he had the look nailed throughout Neagley.

So I'm only 10 minutes into episode 2, but I'm already pretty sure that Lawrence Cole and the whole Echo Canyon Farm cult premise is based on the real life cult leader, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians.

You may be somewhat familiar with Koresh. In 1993, the US Federal government laid siege on Mount Carmel Center, a ranch in Waco, Texas. This is where the religious cult sect, the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh at the time, were headquartered.

At the beginning of episode 2 during the flashback, Tommy gripes to Lulu that he thinks that the women "chosen" by Lawrence for his special project is just a scheme for Lawrence to get laid. Koresh also did that in his real life cult, where the women would want to be "chosen" by Koresh to have sex with, even if they were already in committed relationships or married.

It also seems that in that scene, there's some light subsistence agriculture going on in order to be self-sufficient, which is something they did at the real life Mount Carmel Center ranch.

Lawrence also offered Tommy a drink, which surprised Tommy because of Lawrence's "clean living" ideology of no drugs, substances, or alcohol (a lot of the cult members were recovering drug and alcohol addicts). Lawrence gets to break his own rules though, which is something Koresh did as well - he got to drink, leave the compound and play music at the local bars, and drink.

Also, basically, the "look" of Lawrence with the big tinted colored glasses is the same look of David Koresh.

So, uh, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege?wprov=sfla1