‘Tracker’ Is Best When This Element Takes a Backseat
With Tracker’s first season now wrapped up, it’s clear that the role of “rewardist” Colter Shaw was just the kind of part that Justin Hartley was born to play. With some exciting action moments that pull from his time on Smallville to some meaty character drama that echoes his work on This Is Us, there are a lot of reasons to believe that Tracker is, in many ways, the culmination of Hartley’s career thus far. The actor has masterfully adapted the Jeffrey Deaver character to the screen and given him new life on network television. But there’s one thing in particular about Tracker that makes this show stand out: the masterful balance between the show’s standalone adventures and Colter Shaw’s mysterious history.
‘Tracker’ Excels at Balancing Standalone and Mythology Plots
The longer many procedurals go, the harder it can be to balance the over-arching plot with the specific events of standalone episodes. In the case of many productions (and this is particularly true of genre shows such as The X-Files or Supernatural), elements from the show’s greater mythology will end up bleeding their way into what would’ve otherwise been a standalone story. In our streaming age of serialized television, finding week-by-week productions that tackle new concepts and/or ideas in each episode rather than pulling from the same threads can be challenging. Tracker has been compared to shows like Reacher in the past because of its basic premise, but that comparison ultimately falls short since the Prime Video series takes one Jack Reacher novel and spreads it out over a whole season. Meanwhile, the CBS drama takes us to a new location (and a new mystery) in each episode. And that’s part of why it works so well.
As a sort of anti-procedural, Tracker’s weekly adventures are always engaging, and best reveal more about who Colter Shaw is as a character than anything we’ve learned of his past via flashbacks or family dialogue. This isn’t to say the overarching plotline isn’t important, it certainly is, but Tracker wisely follows the unspoken rules of network television by dragging these ideas out over time and letting fans digest them over longer stretches. Of course, that extends to the characters themselves also, as it gives Colter time to chew on any new information before directly confronting it. For Tracker, that time is vital. When compared to many of the well-produced serialized shows out there, such as Reacher or Jack Ryan, this might make Tracker sound dull on the surface, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in episodes like “Into the Wild,” which have nothing to do with the show’s central plot, Colter’s near-fatal confrontation with Peter Stormare’s Las Vegas mob enforcer makes the episode as vital and engaging as any other.
What makes Tracker exciting isn’t an all-entangling plotline, but rather the character of Colter Shaw.
Sometimes, Colter’s cases overlap slightly with his muddied family history, and when that happens, it’s always done with tact. In the case of the Season 1 finale, “The Storm,” this happens because of a family friend, Lizzy Hawking (played by Hartley’s former This Is Us co-star, Jennifer Morrison), whose mother was seemingly having an affair with Colter’s father, Ashton (Lee Tergesen). But although Lizzy reveals some of these dark family secrets at the very end of the episode, most of the plot doesn’t touch on this at all. Colter’s primary focus throughout is finding Lizzy’s missing daughter, and that’s exactly what he does. Here, with its very first season finale, Tracker solidifies itself as a case-by-case series first and foremost. This idea that Colter aimlessly wanders America in search of other people’s loved ones and possessions is what makes the show so compelling. Thus, the mysterious mythology often takes a backseat. What might’ve been the industry standard over a decade ago feels now almost like a quirk, but it’s one that Tracker rocks well.
Shaw Family Drama Is Necessary, but Not the Point on ‘Tracker’
Though we meet Colter’s mother, Mary Dove Shaw (Wendy Crewson), at the very beginning of the series, his siblings are largely strangers until the final batch of Season 1 episodes. In “Beyond the Campus Walls,” we’re introduced to Colter’s sister, Dory (Melissa Roxburgh), and in “Off the Books,” former Supernatural star Jensen Ackles is revealed to be the adult version of his older brother Russell. Both episodes are great, and each dives a bit deeper into the Shaw family history that Colter has yet to fully uncover. There’s a lot to love about these episodes because of the Shaw family secrets that are discussed here. The mystery surrounding their family is exciting to think about, and episodes like these make us wonder what really happened that night Ashton Shaw died. Though, even when Colter figures out what actually did happen to his father, that still won’t be the point of the show.
