Biohacking, baseball and the opioid crisis come together in Sunday’s third episode of Tracker Season 2, “Bloodlines.” The episode features the second controversial reunion of the season so far for Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley), following the return of Jensen Ackles from the CBS series last week. Hartley’s real-life wife, Sofia Pernas, returns in this episode of Tracker as the bounty hunter for Colter’s rival, Billie Matalon.
At the start of the episode, Colter meets Billie at a bar in Nebraska. She has a job for him, as well as a surprise. Billie wants Colter to help collect a reward for a missing high school pitcher named Eric Dobbs (Tyler Lawrence Gray). Simple enough. So simple that Colter is suspicious of Billie’s motives. She eventually admits that the reason she’s willing to put aside their differences is because the small town happens to be where she grew up. She doesn’t leave on great terms, and so the locals might be more willing to talk to Colter. (He thinks his nemesis is from Miami.) However, he can’t resist a big mystery and an even bigger reward—$50,000 split between them—and so agrees to cooperate. She’ll provide inside information about the town, and he’ll be the one to show up to the families who have a grudge against her.
It’s fun to see Hartley and Pernas’ characters spar, knowing that the actors are married in real life. But strangely enough, their chemistry doesn’t really translate to the screen. That sometimes happens with real-life couples. They’re almost too familiar with each other and the sparks don’t get noticed. For their relationship on the show, though, it’s probably for the best. Colter Shaw doesn’t need any more drama.
Meanwhile, Billie runs into a local diner owner while digging up information about Eric’s older girlfriend, Ashley. He’s very suggestive, seemingly wanting sex in exchange for information. Billie literally twists his arm and gets him to reveal that Ashley is a drug addict and is trying to save $10,000 to get clean. The pieces start to come together. Eric donates blood so she can get help. But things still don’t quite fit together. As Billie points out, the price for donating plasma is $50-$75. It’ll take Eric years to save up that money. Last week it was aliens, this week… vampires? The discovery Colter and Billie make in this episode sounds like something out of a True Blood subplot where Colter goes spying on Eric Dobbs’ family. There, he discovers that Eric’s parents disapprove of his older girlfriend, Ashley. He also finds a wad of cash and some prescription pills. However, after talking to Eric’s coach and one of his teammates, Colter feels confident that the kid isn’t addicted. Next, Bobby helps Colter and Billie track Ashley’s cell phone to a field near some abandoned train cars – a hangout spot for local teens, according to Billie. Inside one of the cars, they find a lot of blood and a trail leading to Ashley’s nearly unconscious body.
With the police now involved, Colter meets with a police investigator and one of Billie’s old classmates, Detective Penny Bullard (Khalilah Joy). While showing the reluctant detective around her own crime scene, Colter discovers an empty bag of donated blood. But since Eric is now a suspect in Ashley’s attack, Colter is left to deal with it himself. Detective Bullard is only half-convinced of his theory that there was a third person in the train car with Ashley and, presumably, Eric, but the large amount of blood is strange. When the detective sends the blood sample to the lab, Colter asks Bobby (Eric Graise) to track the serial number on the blood bag. Bobby tracks the serial number on the donated blood bag not to a hospital or a Red Cross center, but to an office building owned by a company called Everlife. Billie and Tracker break in, and the atmosphere immediately turns creepy. Hidden behind the unused office space is a room filled with LED-lit reclining chairs, shelves of blood bags, and the corpse of a teenage boy in a box of silica beads. He’s not Eric, but he’s been drained of blood. Colter and Bobby brainstorm and conclude that these are biohackers, anti-aging gurus who believe they can “turn back the clock” by transfusing blood from younger people. People like this will pay thousands of dollars for a few bags of blood from a high school athlete. What did Eric get into and who has him?
