Critic’s Rating: 3.8 / 5.0
3.8
Colter took his survival talents to the snowy mountains and quickly found himself in a world of trouble.
Only Colter would be out looking for missing sisters and somehow find himself involved in some weird ritual in the middle of nowhere with zero backup, one gun, and a dream.
Tracker Season 2 Episode 16 was a wild one, but that’s come to be expected with Tracker.
Tracker prides itself on being anything but ordinary.
Sure, we get cases of the week, which is a formula as old as time, but we’re not getting your average missing person every week. They deal with cases that fit far outside the box, which sets it apart from most other action dramas on television.
This could have easily been a whole hour of Colter out in the wilderness battling the elements and trying to find Shelly and Brianna, but things went a completely different direction after Colter and old friend Roger found the sisters in record time.
I was a little bummed out that we didn’t get to see more of survivalist Colter in the snow-covered mountains. We’ve seen a lot of locations in the series’ short life, but we’ve yet to see Colter battling the snow in this manner.
The way we were dropped into the mystery meant we were playing catch-up in a way we don’t normally do. Typically, we’ll see the missing moments before they disappear, but that did not happen here. Instead, it felt like we were starting behind the eight ball and missing key information.
As far as Colter and Roger knew, the girls just went missing while snowboarding, and when they found them, that theory still seemed to stand.
Shelly was in very bad shape, and hypothermia is one of the scariest things out there. The idea that your brain tricks you into believing you’re warm in sub-degree weather is frightening.
9-1-1: Lone Star had an ice storm arc, and I’ll never get the image of TK shirtless in the snow and completely disoriented.
Shelly wasn’t quite at those levels, but a few more minutes, and who knows what Colter may have found.
If you’ve ever seen a horror film, then you know nothing good ever comes from splitting up, and when Roger went off to find help and Colter stayed with the girls trying to keep warm, you could tell this was where the story was set to shift.
But did you see anything that happened coming?
Colter stumbling upon a cabin with a trio of people more than willing to help was suspect in and of itself because it did not seem like they were in a place where there would be much civilization of any kind.
Right off the bat, Rufus, Dash, and Amelia were too helpful, and I kept waiting for the other show to drop.
Were they going to poison the food? Or something else horrifying?
It was a matter of when and not if something would go bad, and when Colter left to find Roger, the devilish trio made their move.
This hour was a little hard to follow because it was not at all clear what motivated anyone.
The fact that Colter was completely shut off from Randy, Bobby (welcome back!), and Reenie meant that he was clueless in a way we don’t usually see, and we didn’t get any insight into the bad guys.
You could see Colter’s creepy antennas go off the second he found out there were booby traps in the mountains that got Roger, and then once they got shot at, it was pretty apparent this was turning into more than a simple search and rescue.
I love it when Colter gets to show off his skills, and he had to do it a few times during this one, including dragging Roger through the snow and never once acting as if he was out of breath.
Of course, because of Randy’s stealth investigative work, we knew Colter was in the dead zone wilderness, but Colter still didn’t know that, and it didn’t take him long to realize something was amiss.
Tracker continued its trend of death with that elderly couple who got caught up in a twisted game and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From here, what started as a promising case started to go downhill a bit. Colter left Roger once again and set off to find the girls with no GPS, no phone, no nothing, yet found them relatively quickly out in the middle of nothingness.
For as much as Colter is a badass under pressure, he always gets lucky A LOT. Stumbling upon Amelia was the only way he could do anything because she was the only one that was even a tiny bit sane.
Poor Amelia spent almost a decade just trying to survive and tethered to these three men who were murderers and abusing her seemingly at every turn. In doing what she needed to do to stay alive, she’d developed a twisted loyalty to them because the alternative was so much worse.
I was scared that she wouldn’t help Colter because you could see just how terrified she was of Father Ammon, knowing that he could do absolutely awful things like he was planning to do with Shelly and Brianna.
But again, this story faltered when we got zero context for anything the guys were doing. There was some religious fanaticism going on, but outside of that? It just seemed Father was a sadistic zealot who got off on cruelty and torture for fun.
Shelly and Brianna may have been out there trying to do their own little investigation into what was happening in those woods, but they certainly never imagined they’d be forced to eat raw meat and sit in a mercy chair when they set off for their investigative snowboarding trip.
Amelia’s demeanor changed from the woman we met in the first cabin to the one who came back to the second cabin after meeting with Colter. She was visibly rattled, and dumb and dumber immediately picked up on it.
The Father didn’t seem as concerned, but I should have known better to believe he, of all people, would be the one who fooled.
It took Colter a while to figure out a plan, especially as that music droned through the house. He had to know that something horrible was happening above him.
What was taking him so long? I know he used that phone to get word out to Randy, but damn it felt like he was taking his sweet old time being stealthy in that basement before he finally made his move.
Considering there was no time left when Colter finally made it to the main floor, it was going to be a quick shootout at best, and that is what happened, though Colter needed a heavy assist from Shelly to get it done.
Suppose you’ve been following along with my reviews during Tracker Season 2. In that case, you’re well aware that I have a major issue with the way innocent people, or those who inadvertently get involved in a case, keep dying.
While Amelia wouldn’t exactly fall into that category, she was a victim who didn’t deserve to die strung up in that cabin at the hands of those horrible men.
The hour kept with the theme of subverting Tracker’s usual, meaning we didn’t see Amelia or the girls return home. Instead, it ended abruptly, with a helicopter finally arriving and Colter making sure that the ever-forgotten Roger would hopefully get an assist.
It was an odd way to end what would turn out to be an odd hour of the series.
I love a dark Tracker hour, don’t get me wrong, but this one just wasn’t as compelling as some of the other this season.
And while I love that the series has finally decided to give Reenie more to do outside of just being Colter’s legal eagle, the story with Sharf seems like it’s going to end with Reenie in some trouble.
She’s going to lose her license or find herself behind bars or something awful. This story has that feeling, and I’m terrified for her.
Reenie’s a whiz, but Sharf isn’t honest with her, and he’s not the kind of guy who plays by the rules, which always puts the people around him in danger.
Tracker Notes
- It was so good to see Bobby back, but I’m curious why Randy was still the one to take point on the case. He was tinkering in the background while Randy stayed in the role of the new Bobby, making you wonder what’s next. Is Randy sticking around for a bit? Cousin duo?
- I’m starting a campaign to get Velma out of that office.
- There are only a few episodes left, and it’s unclear if the show remembers they have a whole mystery surrounding the Shaw family that they set up from Tracker Season 1 Episode 1.
- The overhead shots of the wilderness looked like nothing was in any direction, which made it hilarious every time Colter stumbled upon a cabin.
This one was a lot of things, but not boring!
Let me know in the comments what you thought about this hour so we can discuss!
You can watch Tracker on CBS at 8/7c on Sundays.
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