It’s weird to use the phrase “good old-fashioned” for a television series in its second year, but Tracker Season 2 Episode 12, “Monster,” feels like a good old-fashioned episode of the hit CBS procedural series. Every character, even the ones who only showed up for one scene, is locked in this week, and for a good reason. The stakes are especially high and creepy. Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) takes on the case of a missing woman kidnapped by a villain-of-the-week who was a true, well, monster.
Colter Shaw Looks for a Missing Mommy in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 12
This episode kicks off with a single mother, Alice (Mariana Klaveno), putting her son Miles (William Kosovic) to bed in suburban Ohio. He’s afraid of monsters. His fears are not alleviated when he wakes up in the middle of the night and not only is his mother gone, but the door is wide open. Creepy from the start! His grandmother Judith (Beverley Elliott), who lives in the guest house, hires Colter to find Alice. She told him that Alice is newly single. She doesn’t want to involve the police, because Miles’ father might use it against Alice in the custody battle. She also reveals that Alice is a recovering opioid addict when Colter finds Vicodin hidden in a drawer. Lots of potential leads already!
Velma (Abby McEnany) rules out the ex-husband as a potential suspect. He has an alibi. Colter’s first of many stops is to find Alice’s phone after it pings on a location app. He finds it along with her car, purse, and signs of a struggle at a gorgeous-looking nearby lake. It seems as if Alice left home in her own car and was taken from the meeting point. So Colter enlists Randy (Chris Lee) who finds out that Alice recently got dumped (or so it seems) by a married psychiatrist named Sal Markowitz. For the second consecutive episode, Randy discovers signs of adultery and calls it scandalous–catchphrase alert? He also says that this doesn’t look like an app situation. They knew each other. Colter goes to Sal’s house next, and finds the doctor’s decapitated body in the bathroom. Whoa! Tracker is not usually this graphic!
An Unconventional Therapy Session Goes Wrong on ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 12
Before the cops arrive, Colter finds notes about a dangerous patient named PJ. “Cognitive distortions,” Colter says. “That’s no good.” As per, the police detective asks Colter to let them handle the case. And as per, Colter does not. They’re solving a murder. Colter still has to find Alice! Enter Reenie (Fiona Rene) who informs Colter that Alice trained as a therapist in grad school and used to work with court-mandated psych patients. Sal was her supervisor, so maybe she referred to “PJ” to him for treatment. It no longer seems like they were having a scandalous affair, Randy.
Sal’s notes on PJ, which Colter must have speed-read, mentioned a recurring fantasy about a convenience store clerk he watched from a park. There’s enough identifying information in the notes for Colter to go there next. The store’s security cameras show an armed, creepy guy approaching and then turning away as a police car drives past. Colter snaps a picture of his face and neck tattoo. There’s a horrifying moment where the poor clerk, Beth (Brenna Llewellyn), realized that she’s watching footage of her own stalker getting distracted as he was about to kill her… and then Colter asks her to rewind it so they can watch it again! His people skills still aren’t top-notch, unfortunately.
Randy runs facial recognition and identifies “PJ” as Paul James Hamilton (Jonathan Whitesell), who was abused as a child and killed his stepfather when he was still a minor. He has been living with his mother since his release from juvenile detention. Colter goes to the family house next and finds Sal Markowitz’s missing head and another dead body. Paul, who appears to have killed his mother too, propped them in front of the television in a mock domestic scene. He also rigged a gun to fire like a booby trap that Colter just missed.
Meanwhile, in an undisclosed location, Paul turns to Alice for some twisted therapy. She may not be able to escape, but she keeps him talking. Paul says he only trusts Alice with his treatment. He talks about his mother’s “wicked needs” (sex, basically), how she deserved to die, and describes the way he staged them as “giving her what she always wanted: a man who never left her.” So gross! (The boy who grows up resenting his single mother for her bad taste in boyfriends is such a pervasive trope. In another life, Paul could have been Percy Jackson, Billy Batson, Eggsy from the Kingsman movies or… Hamlet.) In turn, Alice shares with him a little about herself and how she decided against being a therapist because internalizing her patients’ pain was damaging to her own mental wellness and addiction. We don’t always learn this much about the kidnapping/missing people on Tracker from their own mouths.
On a tip from Reenie, Colter finally figures out that Paul has Alice stashed at an amusement park where he used to work. In a visually impressive Batman-esque sequence, Colter follows the serial killer through a teacup ride and into a hall of mirrors. He corners Paul. Alice tries to talk him down. But Paul turns on Alice, and Colter shoots him in the back. Not that retributive justice is the answer, but he seemed a little beyond help and set in his problematic views to change. When are we getting an entire episode where Reenie defends Colter against the multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter he must have in his record, by the way? It could be like a clip show!
Reenie Makes an Enemy at a Storage Unit on ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 12
Reenie, who happens to be across state lines doing work for her mysterious new client in Indianapolis, checks out Paul’s storage unit. She finds information about the carnival and Paul’s maternal designs towards Alice. But the vibes at Budget Storage are immediately bad. The attendant, Ron (Claude Duhamel) tries to propose her for sex because he’s doing her a favor. She threatens him with obstruction of justice if he aids in withholding evidence. Then Ron locks Reenie inside the storage unit and stands by as she leverages her way out with a hand truck. They exchanged angry words like Reenie leaves, and Ron vaguely warned her that she might run into someone dangerous. “Dangerous doesn’t scare me,” Reenie says. “You better hope you don’t have any outstanding warrants.” Who knew that Ohio was like this? What in the Hillbilly Elegy is this episode?
Thankfully, either Ron’s threat was empty, or Reenie’s counter-threat protected her. Still, it felt unresolved until Reenie appeared at a diner with Colter at the end of the episode. (Was anyone else worried that Colter had forgotten about her, and she was going to be in trouble?) They swapped their usual fireside beer for some B4D, a.k.a. breakfast for dinner. Reenie is surprised that Colter is a pancake guy, and he replies with a rare bit of family backstory. Colter’s mother, when his father had an “episode,” would make him and his siblings pancakes. “It’s like starting the day over,” Mama Shaw used to say. That is a lovely line for a sweet, albeit complicated memory. Reenie suggests that Colter thinks about finding a therapist that he can talk to about this stuff. He says he’d rather just talk to her — which she admits she does like… but he should talk to a professional. Cute moment! Both things can be true, as Colter and Reenie enjoy their well-earned calm after a very tumultuous job well done.
