Critic’s Rating: 4.4 / 5.0
4.4
I Know What You Did Last Summer met Tracker in this twisty hour, during which Colter tracked across a beautiful Pacific Northwest park searching for missing campers.
Sometimes, I couldn’t even focus on the dialogue for a second because of how picturesque the landscape was on Tracker Season 2 Episode 6.
But this was another exciting hour in what has quickly become a rather enjoyable second act for the action-drama series.
Sophomore slumps are a very real thing in the world of television, and there’s still a lot of Tracker left to go this season, but thus far, the cases have been overwhelmingly intriguing for the most part, even if some of the first season struggles are still present.
Everyone else except Colter and Rennie are still being sidelined, maybe even more than before. Still, there’s been something inherently fresh and exciting about the cases, places, and people Colter has been meeting this season in his quest to track missing people and claim his rewards.
Not every hour has been a home run, but it’s been fun. And that’s all you could really want from a show like this.
The missing campers saga brought Colter to a park where a group of friends mysteriously disappeared after a night of drinking and talk of drunk hiking out to a waterfall under the super blue moon.
We could see that someone was watching them, so it seemed poised to be a case in which Colter would ultimately find out there was some madman in the woods hunting people for sport or something of that nature, and that did seem to be the way things were going when Colter met Keaton.
If Reenie, Billie, or Russell are not available, Colter often meets someone in law enforcement who ends up helping him in one way or another, even if the relationship borders on contentious at best.
Keaton was law enforcement but of the retired variety. He was out in the park chasing a cold case that he couldn’t shake, even in retirement. After the initial male posturing, the two discovered they had much more in common than not.
Colter doesn’t exactly give off vibes that he’s looking for company at any given time, but once the two men talked, it became apparent that they could help one another.
Colter knows all about chasing demons from the past, and the similarities between the two cases were too strong to ignore.
Keaton was an old-school cop and the kind of man who would never be able to rest knowing that there was work to be done on something he had promised to do. No matter how much time had passed, the drive to solve this case never left him.
He would have never been content to give up because he’s not wired that way. Sound familiar?
Colter’s a lone wolf through and through, but his partnerships are usually nice, especially in instances like this one, where he and Keaton had so much in common.
There was a lot unsaid between the two because of an immediate connection. They were virtual strangers, yet it felt like they’d known each other for years in how well they worked together.
How they saw a bullet and the way it hit a rock and were able to determine precisely where it was likely shot from is an acquired skill, and once they stumbled upon that camouflaged shack, they were right on top of the shooter.
It was way too early in the hour for everything to be wrapped up neatly, but who guessed it would go so very spectacularly off the rails?
Marcus may have been Keaton’s man, but he wasn’t who Colter was after.
Colter and Keaton meeting on that mountain was a blessing, even if it came about from something tragic. Marcus would have continued his rampage on the people who dared to step foot onto the mountains if it hadn’t been for them.
Marcus gave Colter the little nugget of information he needed to start breaking the case wide open when he said the friends looked like they were ready to kill each other, and all he had to do was sit back and watch.
This was such a curveball, but when things started to slot into place, my first thought was the 90s horror classic starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar because anytime people start talking about covering something up from years ago, my mind goes to a man in a slicker and Jennifer Love Hewitt screaming a lot.
The friends having run over a man while drunk driving and then disposing of his body only to go on with their lives for 8 YEARS like nothing happened is a rather insane thing to think about, but Coop’s conscience became too loud for him to ignore.
His conscience was always in play since he had been paying Natalie for years, even though he may not have truly had the means to do so.
Clearly, he was not content to die with his sins, but interestingly, he went to Jason and Monika, hoping they’d also feel the same way he did and want to come clean while knowing that wasn’t very likely.
Jason and Monika clearly had moved on and were at a place where they weren’t prepared to ruin everything they had crafted over the years.
They were the people who got away with murder and were okay with that — chalking it up to a college mistake.
But Coop was the one who got away with murder but couldn’t ever accept that. He tried to make his amends through monetary means until that was no longer enough to assuage the tremendous amount of grief he felt.
I kept thinking that one of Jason or Monika would come around and agree with Coop, but that was not what was happening in that apartment. Coop may not have meant to kill Jason, but I have no doubt the couple would have killed Coop if he hadn’t made a move.
With the cover of them all going missing while out on a hike, once Jason and Monika got into that computer, they could have deleted the email, deleted Coop, and then disposed of his body the same way they did Brian’s.
That was one messy and diabolical couple. They may have made a mistake initially, but from there, they showed no remorse and were willing to compound the tragedy with even more pain to keep the life they created.
How Monika was able to wrap up Coop’s body, drag him out of that apartment, and load him up into the car with no one seeing or a camera catching them defies logic, but that’s also why we didn’t see any of that.
Everything led to Colter and Keaton finding them on that dock, though Coop being alive after all was certainly a twist!
Again, Monika was two seconds away from killing him, and she would not have thought twice about it. Killing to protect a secret is a tale as old as time.
Colter and Keaton teaming up to save the day was certainly a highlight, and I appreciate them finally finding someone on one of these cases that Colter can connect with beyond just one case.
Justin Hartley often has such great chemistry with everyone, and I can think of a few people he’s connected with that I wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Tasking Keaton with looking into Gina’s case guarantees that will come back around, and I like how they chose to intersect that case with this one.
Colter often lives in the past; clearly, Keaton does, too. While we can debate whether that’s healthy or not, what it is right now is reality. So, why not use both of their cold case obsessions and turn them into something good?
Tracker Notes
Not enough Velma. Not enough Bobby. Free them from their phones and put them into the thick of the action SOON!
Sorry, but Colter and Reenie really do remain the superior potential ship. They sit across from each other, sipping champagne out of a mug, and I giggle and kick my feet.
That waterfall was breathtaking. They’ve visited some truly gorgeous places this season.
Are there any plans to move the Shaw Family drama forward? I must admit, the stories have been so good that I’ve been thinking about it less and less, but I still don’t want them to get so far away from it that we forget it exists.
Alright, Tracker fanatics, over to you!
What did you make of this hour?
Did you like the partnership between Colter and Keaton?
Please sound off in the comments so we can discuss!
You can watch Tracker on CBS on Sundays at 8/7c.
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