Tracker decided to give us its best episode in the final hour, and I can’t even be mad at them for it.
I have been shouting from the beginning how gripping the Shaw Family drama is overall, and the show has only been better for devoting time to it, but during Tracker Season 2, the mystery has not been a factor much at all.
But that changed during Tracker Season 2 Episode 20, as Colter found himself back in Echo Ridge working a complicated case that would inadvertently bring him the biggest break in the case of ‘Who killed Ashton Shaw?’
For someone like Colter, traveling home would feel like an out-of-body experience because it’s not something he ever really does.
Echo Ridge doesn’t bring with it this litany of happy memories because of what happened to his father, but it’s still a familiar place. It didn’t add much to the plot, but I enjoyed the moments when Colter looked around the Little Fork restaurant, remembering a different time in his life.
Colter’s life has helped shape him into a hardened yet practical man, and you can sometimes forget that he was once just a child, playing a song on the jukebox while eating pie with his family.
Restaurant owner Bill’s disappearance was eerie, and all we could glean from it was that he was looking for someone and then two men quickly ambushed him. But who was he looking for?
Sister Angela provided Colter with the key to the disappearance, and kudos to the show for employing a flashback instead of info dumping as they’re prone to do.
We’ll get two minutes straight of a character detailing everything Colter needs to know to start his search, which is necessary, obviously, but I much preferred actually seeing Bill’s first interaction with Chris and Carl Murphy at the bar.
Bill was suspicious, as he should have been, and you could tell he was kindhearted. He saw something and would have said something, had he had more time to assess the situation.
Instead, Chris and Carl slipped out right from under his fingers, and it was apparent that he could not move on from that encounter and helping Chris.
It consumed him to the point that when he saw Carl Murphy again, he couldn’t stop himself from trying to find Chris, putting himself directly in the crosshairs of some incredibly dangerous people.
Both old friend Joe and Mary Dove talked about how much Echo Ridge had changed since Colter was a boy and last lived there. Neighbors being a little more cautious and less friendly is one thing, but that town sounded like it had just become a hotbed for criminal activities.
Meth labs and knows meth lab kingpins getting pizza around town, and a whole child trafficking operation taking place as well. Where is the law enforcement in that place?
Once Colter started to piece things together, it became fairly obvious that Bill got mixed up in something very serious, and it became a matter of simply finding out some names so he could start to make some connections.
And leave it to Colter to wait in the backseat of a known meth dealer’s Jeep and point a gun at the back of his head to get the information.
Never change, Colter.
Once Colter gets a name, it’s light work for Randy and Bobby to find a location or tie to a person that will make it easy for Colter to make some inroads.
Finding that trailer turned out to be more than just a lead on the case though, and I don’t know how to feel about how quickly we jumped from not knowing a damn thing about the Shaw Family drama and then all the sudden Colter stumbles upon a wooden figurine that leads Colter directly to his dad’s killer!
But before we get there, the case of the missing children was heartbreaking and so disturbing.
Children account for more than a fourth of human trafficking victims, and it’s a serious problem.
Colter wasn’t going to stop until he found Chris, and I was glad to see him recruit Joe, who seemed like a decent man. However, I was certain Joe would end up being killed because we often lose so many innocent people on Tracker who get caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like Bill.
I hate that he lost his life, but while it took a lot of people to rescue those boys, Bill was the one who devoted himself to trying to help. He lost his life trying to do the right thing, and it’s incredibly bittersweet, but without him taking a stand, those children probably would never have been rescued.
I don’t know what was in the water during this episode, but the flashbacks to Bill at the restaurant, instead of the info dumping and then showing us the little flashbacks to Colter threatening Carl about where he got Ashton’s figurine from, were so good.
This type of show doesn’t lend itself to showing more than telling because there’s not enough time, but it works when they pick their spots like they did here to showcase things differently.
Colter pushed down his own worries and suspicions when he found that figurine. Per usual, Mary Dove gave him nothing when asked about it, but he kept that figurine in his back pocket, ready to whip it out when needed.
It was why he shot Carl in the legs. He needed him alive to help find those kids and to understand the connection between Carl’s family and his father.
If you have distrusted Mary Dove since we met her during Tracker Season 1, nothing she did during this hour would change your opinion.
It always felt like she was hiding something, or a more apt way to describe it would be that she knew more than she was letting on.
Both Dory and Russell have proven to be even-keeled, astute individuals. They’ve been wary of her in a way Colter hasn’t, probably because he spent more time with her.
When they spoke on the phone, and Mary Dove was in his trailer going through all the contents of Ashton’s box, you could tell she was rattled. But rattled by what exactly?
Everybody is always quick to tell Colter to stop looking into the past, as if they don’t know the man. He’s spent his adult life trying to find people, right wrongs, and solve various mysteries.
Why in the world would he run away or stop solving the biggest mystery of his life?
Once Colter got a name, he wasn’t leaving Echo Ridge without talking to Carl’s uncle. And when the man opened the door and realized who he was looking at, it felt like he’d been waiting for this conversation for years.
There are still so many unknowns about Ashton Shaw and the entire family from then on.
How many times have we heard that Ashton had many enemies?
It seems like the suspect list could include many people, but Colter appeared to know the longer the man talked, that he was sitting across from his father’s killer.
Tracker is the Justin Hartley show, and it expects him to do A LOT. But the series doesn’t often ask him to carry the emotional load of many hours, as that’s more or less reserved for the guest stars.
But in that final scene alone, Hartley did so much with little dialogue, as Colter’s brain worked through what he was hearing and what it meant for the assumptions and facts he thought he knew about such a pivotal moment in his life.
That image of him holding a gun out and a tear sliding down his face as he realized his mother was the one responsible for the death of his father all along was as hauntingly devastating as it gets.
This mystery continues to be such a bright spot of the series, and now they’ve opened up so many storylines because there’s no chance there’s not much more to the story than what we (and Colter) know so far.
Bring on Tracker Season 3!
Tracker Notes
- Even though we only spent a few moments with Reenie, I’m glad the show reminded us that she just went through something extremely traumatic during Tracker Season 2 Episode 19, and will need time to process it.
- If I have one request for the next season, keep Randy around and have him and Bobby be a true team. The series has been better with Randy in it.
- Correct me in the comments, please, but did they ever tell us the name of the man who killed Ashton?
That’s a wrap on another season of Tracker!
There were more highs than lows, and I’ll evaluate everything in an end-of-season report card soon!
But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this stellar hour.
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