some shows I would like to see Reacher appear on

the actual character, not the actor who plays him (who I also call Reacher)

The White Lotus

Reacher is a guest at the hotel. He is sitting outside sipping an umbrella drink out of a coconut. Another guest berates the staff. 

“Maybe you should be nicer to people,” Reacher says. 

“Maybe you should mind your goddamn business,” the guest shouts and goes back to yelling at the staff. 

Reacher crushes the coconut in his hand and drowns the guest in the pool.

Hacks

Deborah Vance spots Reacher in the crowd at her comedy show, sitting alone at a table with a glass of water, never laughing but still seeming to enjoy the show. 

“Look at this guy,” she says. “I haven’t seen an audience that stiff since I did a set at a Viagra convention.”

The audience laughs. 

“Viagra doesn’t have conventions,” Reacher replies. “It’s just one product made by a larger pharmaceutical company. But I do appreciate your joke.”

Deborah moves on. 

Justified: City Primeval

[Reacher lumbers onto a crime scene past two dozen confused law enforcement officers and walks up to Raylan Givens]

REACHER: I’m Reacher. 

[44 minutes of silence and unflinching eye contact broken up by a handful of commercial breaks]

RAYLAN: All right. 

House of the Dragon

A dragon swoops in during a festival and begins spitting fire at the villagers, ruining their stands and burning a number of them alive. 

Reacher headbutts the dragon. 

The dragon leaves.

Abbott Elementary 

The teachers are in the lounge. Janine is freaking out about new standardized testing rules. Gregory is trying to calm her down. Barbara is annoyed because she just wants to teach her class without “all this nonsensical hullabaloo.” Melissa agrees with a hoagie in her mouth. The fire alarm goes off. 

“I didn’t think we had a drill scheduled for today,” Janine says. 

Ava runs into the lounge. 

“Uh, y’all need to get out,” she says. “My new bezazzler set the roof on fire.”

Reacher, making his first and only appearance on the show, walks out the front door of the smoke-filled school carrying nine children in his arms. His presence is never explained. 

Shogun

Everything is exactly the same as the first season, all the various manipulations and maneuvering and cultural confusion, with all the actors and actresses giving the exact same performances, but we replace Blackthorne with Reacher, and instead of showing up on a ship he just marches in from the ocean and wrings out his t-shirt on the beach. 

The Bear

Reacher walks into Carmy’s fancy new restaurant and asks for a table for one. He does not have a reservation but they seat him anyway. He orders a black coffee. He does not order food. He sips his coffee while reading a newspaper, eats a Clark bar he brought with him, leaves a five-dollar bill on the table, and walks out. 

Richie is still furious about this four episodes later. 

I Need A Black Market Taco Bell Painting

It brings me unending joy to inform you that something strange is afoot with the artwork in our nation’s Taco Bell locations. Go read this piece in SFGate. It’s fascinating. Taco Bell enlisted an artist to make some cool stuff to hang on their walls and, in doing so, ended up creating a thriving black market for taco-related masterpieces. Some people are straight-up stealing them from the walls of the fully operational locations, and yes, this is where we imagine them doing it while set to a peppy mariachi cover of Sinnerman by Nina Simone, but there’s also a whole underground operation run by inside operatives, too. 

Deep in the trenches of Reddit, there are threads explaining how most paintings from these remodels wind up in the trash — but every now and then, they reappear on secondhand sites like Mercari and eBay for $300 to $750. Unsurprisingly, it seems like employees are in on it. 

It gets better. 

Multiple users who claimed to manage Taco Bell stores said they took the art during renovations and were willing to pawn the pieces off, while others lamented that shift leads and higher-ups ran off with them, beating their subordinates to it. This trend appears to date all the way back to one of the first heists in Westlake, Ohio: According to CBS, the thieves’ getaway driver was an 18-year-old former employee. 

Three thoughts in conclusion:

• I need one of these paintings now

• I can’t stop picturing a black market auction where wealthy buyers from around the world come to bid on these pieces in the grimy apartment of a 19-year-old Taco Bell employee named, like, Tyler, and they’re all crammed in there adjusting their monocles while sitting on a futon with multiple unidentifiable stains on it

• I hope Tyler becomes a millionaire from this

Good luck thinking about anything else the next time you are in a Taco Bell. 

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Alan Sepinwall wrote about streaming bundles and how they’re not the deal you might think they are

— Katie Baker wrote about Hacks, which remains a perfect little show

— Ryan Gosling movie jackets, ranked 

— the Minnesota Timberwolves were eliminated from the NBA playoffs but this is still a good blog about Prince and basketball

— a Philadelphia restaurant known for banning unruly guests is unbanning them on a case-by-case basis 

— I actually missed this video last week when I linked to the profile it accompanied but I would absolutely watch a daytime judge show where Ayo Edebiri mediates petty disputes 

— this post about Bill Walton made me cry (this one did, too) and it made me remember this Charles Barkley story and then that made me cry too 

— wait, was Susan Lucci almost the Golden Bachelorette?

— cattle heist

— brisket heist

— one of Jean Smart’s ancestors was a witch, probably 

— Kevin James is going to play John Daly, which… makes… sense… I guess?

— the Home Alone house can be yours for many millions of dollars

— someone planted weed in the tulip patch near the Wisconsin state capitol 

— “Strawberry truck overturns on San Jose freeway, creates jam”

— “'Serial slingshot shooter,' 81, arrested in California, police say”

— “‘They’re out of control’: flock of 100 feral chickens torments village”

— “Taylor Momsen Was Bitten by Bat While Opening for AC/DC, Must Undergo Rabies Shots”

— I will watch Wolfs

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please share and subscribe and maybe retroactively put Reacher in an episode of Columbo, too