‘Tracker’ Season 2 Review: One of the Best Shows on TV Gets Even Better
Back in February, viewers were pleasantly surprised by CBS’s latest breakout hit drama, Tracker, which pushed former Smallville and This Is Us star Justin Hartley into the limelight. The series, based on the character from Jeffrey Deaver’s The Never Game, follows a “rewardist” named Colter Shaw as he travels the country in search of rewards. He tackles anything from missing persons and objects to aiding in solving unsolved crimes, only collecting his bounty in success. It’s automatically a fun premise, one that has loads of story potential as Colter scours the lower 48. But what makes the show even more engaging is the over-arching narrative that ties back to Colter’s troubled upbringing. With Season 2, Tracker is better than ever, adding a new layer of conspiracy to the show’s already elusive mythology. If you liked Season 1, then Hartley’s sophomore outing as Colter Shaw will pull you right back in and have you begging for more.
‘Tracker’ Season 2 Continues to Do What Made Season 1 Great
Just about everything that worked in Season 1 is back in full force here in Tracker Season 2. Colter’s balancing of his lone wolf personality with his at-a-distance friendships? Check. The secrecy surrounding his past, check. His flirtatious but non-committal back-and-forth with Reenie Greene (Fiona Rene)? Also check. There’s an old adage that says, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and Tracker has certainly taken that to heart in its second season. This is especially true concerning the basic format of the series, which has effectively remained the same since the pilot. In a day when serialized television has become the norm (similar shows such as Reacher hold to this formula), Tracker is a breath of fresh air that proves serialization and standalone plots can still work masterfully together even in this streaming age. This works, of course, largely because of the show’s choice of lead.
In many ways, Tracker is a one-man show. Justin Hartley certainly carries the series, both on and off the camera (where he serves as an executive producer), and proves once again that Colter Shaw is a protagonist worthy of our time. He may be distant and moody, but he’s also charming, thoughtful, and puts himself in the shoes of those he aims to help. The killer Season 2 opener, “Out of the Past,” puts Colter to the test as he fights to find a young family caught in the middle of some pretty bad people. But the anxiety-inducing circumstances don’t get to Colter, no matter who he has to beat up along the way. He remains cool and level-headed throughout, only ever losing his professionalism in an unrelated case that remains deeply personal to him (more on that in a moment). No matter if he’s working with the family or law enforcement, we love to see Colter put his life on the line for the sake of others. Sure, our hero gets paid (cops do too, after all) but that doesn’t make his actions any less heroic.
But although Colter may sometimes act as if he were in all of this alone, Season 2 has made a point to remind our hero that he has others standing by his side. This much-needed development allows characters like Bobby (Eric Graise) to become something more than just Colter’s “guy in the chair,” and indeed, the series ought to explore that further. (Poor Eric Graise needs some scene partners, stat!) On the other hand, Tracker is mixing up the way things work as Reenie and Velma (Abby McEnany) now share an office space. Because of this, Teddi’s (Robin Weigert) somewhat open-ended exit from the series — explained away as her dealing with a family emergency concerning her mother — is hardly even felt. Effectively serving as Colter’s co-handlers, the Reenie and Velma partnership feels so natural that we wonder why the show didn’t pair these two sooner. It’s sad to see Weigert go, but Tracker makes an expert recovery. Maybe we’ll finally see Colter and Velma interact in person this year.
‘Tracker’ Season 2 Has More Than One Overarching Mystery
Where fans should really get excited, though, is in the introduction of a new over-arching mystery that’s haunted Colter for the past decade of his life. Season 1 opened the door to the Shaw family’s muddled past (a plotline Tracker is still keen on exploring), but Season 2 has taken things a step further by involving Colter in a missing person’s case that he’s been unsuccessfully investigating for the last 10 years. Even compared to his own family issues, it’s the only job that seems to be able to rattle him to the core. It feels deeply personal, and by the end of the first episode, we understand why. When “Out of the Past” opens, Colter breaks into the home of a man named Frank (Ryan Dorsey), who he believes is involved in the disappearance of a teenage girl. Frank protests, as he seemingly does every year that Colter pays him a visit, and by the episode’s end, Colter finds himself in the arms of newcomer Camille Picket (Floriana Lima), who too is deeply connected to this mystery. It’s a bit shocking to see Colter interested in someone other than Reenie, but it opens the door for plenty of new narrative potential.
Though the general tone of Tracker Season 2 remains the same, thematically the series seems to be growing a bit darker. “The past is part of who we are, it doesn’t have to define your future,” Colter says at one point in the premiere, a truth he himself has yet to fully embrace. This new mystery is an interesting addition considering that Tracker has yet to still solve its previous over-arching enigma, but given that both plots are featured heavily in these first two episodes, the show thus far has balanced them well. The second episode, “Ontological Shock,” reunites Colter and his brother Russell (played magnificently by Jensen Ackles) for a government conspiracy tale involving UAPs (aka UFOs). On paper, it feels more like something out of The X-Files, but in practice, Tracker makes the concept its own, all while making small strides toward undercovering the truth behind Ashton Shaw’s (Lee Tergesen) death. As usual, the show leaves us hanging.
Tracker knows how to give its audience what they want, and what more could be said of Hartley’s chemistry with Ackles? The pair bounce off each other so naturally that we wish Russell Shaw were just a full-time member of the cast. Thankfully, he’ll be coming back again later this season too, hopefully alongside Dory (Melissa Roxburgh) and their mother (Wendy Crewson), who are likewise slated to return. But one of Tracker’s greatest strengths is that the series doesn’t give us too many answers too quickly. Every time we think we know something, there’s another layer to uncover, continually building up suspense. Case-in-point, the show still has yet to address some of the cliffhanging concerns Colter was left with at the end of Season 1, but we can rest assured knowing that these reveals will eventually be addressed.
The Future of ‘Tracker’ Looks Bright
Tracker is easily one of the best dramas on television right now. The show is fun, engaging, and suspenseful in all the best ways. It partitions plotlines with ease and never compromises its characters for the sake of making a narrative point. It’s an impressive show. If there were even one thing to complain about, it’s that some of the standalone plot twists turn out to be a little too obvious. This is especially true in the season opener, which pretends to pull a fast one on us when we’ve already seen said twist coming. (Also, the episode revolves around a missing family, and when Colter and the authorities discover their empty van, it doesn’t contain a single car seat. As a father myself, that felt a bit too unbelievable, since at least one of those kids would definitely be in some sort of car seat or booster seat, but I digress.)
Despite that, the charisma of Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw and the general talents of the writers involved, who continue to surprise us with the show’s ever-evolving mythos, give us hope for Tracker’s future. It helps also that every supporting guest star — such as The Librarians’ Lindy Booth, Manifest’s Matt Long, and, of course, Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles — is just excellent. There isn’t one guest or supporting character who fails to understand the assignment. Half the reason we love it when Colter hits up a new town is because of who might show up to either stand by his side or get in his way (Peter Stormare was a particular fright last season). The same is true of the second season, which gives both the main cast and the guest players more than enough meaty material to work with.
If Season 2 of Tracker has proven anything, it’s that this show is on the right track. If it can continue to maintain the same level of quality moving forward, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if this series lasted a decade on the network. It really is that good, and Colter Shaw is just a delightful character to watch on screen that we can only hope he sticks around for a long time.
