Hey there, curious reader! Ever scroll through your feed and stumble on a show that seems daring and fresh—only to wonder if it actually delivers? That’s how I felt about Tracker, CBS’s latest action thriller starring Justin Hartley as a guy who barely manages to pay the bills through a string of gig-economy jobs—and then turns into a badass problem solver. Cool premise, right? But does it land—or does it fade into the background? Let’s dive in.
What Makes Tracker Tick (and What Doesn’t)
The Gig-Economy Twist
So picture this—our guy, like so many of us, jumps between rideshares, food delivery, odd-jobs—you name it. It’s that modern hustle culture rubbed up against spy-thriller action. That mash-up is intriguing. It says: “Hey, what if your Uber driver was also your secret guardian?”
Justin Hartley’s Role: Charming, but…
Hartley fans will recognize that familiar charm and rugged look—yep, he’s got it. But charm alone doesn’t carry a thriller. His performance is solid, but not exactly explosive. He is suave, but I wanted more grit, more layered tension—some Reacher-style edge. It’s like he’s got secret sauce, but just a whisper of spice, you know?
Pace vs. Substance—The Balancing Act
Here’s where it gets sticky. The show moves—fast. Gunshots, near-misses, car chases—BAM. You barely have time to blink. But that sprint-through keeps you from breathing with the characters. Foundation feels thin: motivations, backstory, emotional stakes—kind of nebulous.
Head-to-Head: Tracker vs. Classic Jack Reacher Vibes
Similarities That Spark Interest
Let’s be real: we all see that Jack Reacher silhouette in this. Lone wolf, roaming slayer of bad guys, righting wrongs on his timeline. Hartley’s character mirrors that archetype—resourceful, taciturn, deadly—minus the deep military scar tissue and bullets lodged in backstory.
Where Tracker Drops the Ball
But Reacher stories—whether books or films—linger in your bones. They’ve got atmospheric weight. Tracker races by. The dialogue feels serviceable, but not memorable. The emotional undercurrent? Light. The result: close to a carbon copy, but missing the heft that made Reacher addictive.
Subheadings That Spell It Out
Engaging Conceit, Thin Execution
Love the “gig-economy Reacher” idea—fresh, relevant—but the execution? A bit skinned-low in depth.
Hartley’s Magnetism—Yet Lacking Raw Edge
He’s magnetic, for sure. Yet I kept waiting for the moment that jolts me. It never fully came.
Flashy Over Flesh
Tracker serves style: slick camera moves, quick cuts, cool music. But does it build anything behind the veneer? Sometimes, I wanted a beat to breathe.
Supporting Cast & Story Gaps
Others around Hartley serve the narrative—but too often, they’re placeholders: the investigator friend, the shady employer, the ominous client. All fine archetypes, but I craved more color, more dynamic chemistry.
Breaking Down What Works
1. Watchable Energy
My tea cooled off a bit, and still—I didn’t stop watching. That’s credit to the brisk pacing, the “what’s next” engine.
2. Gig-Economy Meets Action—That Hook Counts
It’s timely. It speaks to the modern grind—but with a Mach-Twist. That’s clever.
3. Hartley’s Steady Presence
The man knows how to hold a scene. His charisma gives the show a backbone, even when the story gets shaky.
When it was originally announced that CBS was doing a series based on the main character from Jeffrey Deaver’s novel The Never Game, it was called The Never Game, which made sense.
Several months later, CBS announced that the series, created by Ben H. Winters, was changing its title to Tracker, a name that I rather consistently confuse with Amazon’s Lee Child series, Reacher. This also makes sense and, in fact, borders on ideal for CBS. With Reacher following recent streaming protocol and producing eight-episode seasons that can air “whenever the pieces come together,” there is probably an audience appetite for a cut-rate version — a series that delivers a lot of the same lizard-brain pleasures on a broadcast schedule capable of producing 15 or even 22 episodes of lone-wolf vigilante justice in easily digestible 41-minute weekly morsels.
So if you accept that Tracker isn’t exactly Reacher 2.0, but it’s close enough to offer the equivalent laundry-folding diversion, it has virtues even if, as a TV show, it’s beyond forgettable. Two days after watching the first four Tracker installments, I can barely remember a single standalone plot, much less the overall series mythology, which is much less interesting than the show seems to believe it is. But in Justin Hartley, Tracker has a solid action leading man, even if thus far the series hasn’t come close to tapping into any of the things that made Hartley so effective for six seasons on This Is Us.
Hartley plays Colter Shaw — “Colter,” like “Tracker,” has that appealing “Reacher” mouth-feel, coincidentally or not — a so-called “rewardist.” This means that Colter, who travels the Northwest in a macho GMC truck lugging a shiny Airstream trailer behind him, uses a particular set of skills — accumulated through his childhood with a paranoid survivalist father — to collect rewards for tracking down missing people and solving basic mysteries of that ilk. Like Jack Reacher, Colter is a roaming samurai who can’t avoid attracting attention with his size and his lack of interest in working with local law enforcement. Like Jack Reacher, Colter is drawn to trouble. And even when he isn’t, trouble finds him. Like Jack Reacher, Colter frequently encounters female “characters” whose names he barely learns before he beds them and moves along to the next town.
Unlike Jack Reacher, Colter has a team behind him, even if he works alone in the field. In Teddi (Robin Weigert) and Velma (Abby McEnany), he has a pair of dispatchers who spend all of their time at home with their rescue pets and pottery, but occasionally supply Colter with assignments and basic research. Bobby (Eric Graise) is an expert hacker who… finds things on the Internet but, thankfully, has yet to make a single reference to “The Dark Web” in the episodes I’ve seen.
So far, Colter has only interacted with these characters via phone. That’s not the case with Reenie (Fiona Rene), an attorney who seems to have the time and resources to fly to wherever Colter happens to be in order to bail him out of jail — local law enforcement tends to chafe at his renegade ways — and generally bust his balls for that one time they slept together and he didn’t call or something. In an ideal world, they would have will-they-or-won’t-they chemistry since Reenie looks at Colter like she’s a cat and he’s a mouse. But he looks at her like a female “character” whose name he barely learned before they had a one-night-stand and he moved along to the next town.
