Justin Hartley’s new CBS series Tracker is one of the most promising this season.
He was fantastic on the ensemble series This Is Us, but he’s swiftly proving that he’s worthy of being a leading man—not just a pretty face, but one that delivers the action and stands on his own.
Hartley’s Colter Shaw takes on some of the most dangerous cases as he fills a void inside by helping to find people who have gone missing or who have been taken.
The second episode of the series dived headfirst into a cult situation, taking our hero to Montana. Though it would be understandable if Colter turned right around and ran the other way at the first sign of danger—no reward money is worth messing with a manipulative cult leader who isn’t above violence and murder—he rushed in without hesitation.
Not only does Colter see a resemblance in Seth and his own father, who was also manipulative in his own right, but he actually cares about the missing people who come across his desk; he’s not doing it just for the check, he wants to help people who need a little bit of a push.
Colter immediately clocked that there was something much more going on than just a missing person when he was ambushed by a security team that threatened to shoot him when they saw him breaking into Rebecca’s house.
Soon after, he learned of her connection to Positive Light, a place that preys on people looking for guidance, support, and whose pain they can exploit, trading in secrets that can be used as blackmail for allegiance. It’s a classic cult operation from head to toe, but unfortunately, those who are in too deep are usually too blind to see the truth—unless it’s shoved in their faces. And even then, depending on how far they are in their “practice of self-actualization” they might not be convinced.
Thankfully, Colter seemed to make a slight breakthrough with Jackson, whose parents reported him missing after his strange relationship with Rebecca led to a series of uncharacteristic life choices like quitting his job, abandoning his family, and draining his bank account.
Jackson wanted someone to believe in him and help him believe in himself, which is why Seth and Rebecca were able to get to him, but he was also self-aware, so when Colter began questioning the cult’s “mean” tactics, he knew something was off even if he wasn’t ready to turn away fully.
The strangest part was that while Positive Light presented as your typical cult, there was no negative press about it—not even any forums or threads of people complaining. And every trail of lawsuits went cold. However, Bobby discovered that the cult may have covered up the murder of their former accountant, which was the string that Colter was able to pull on to help unravel everything.
Tracker Season 1 Episode 2 Review – Missoula
After getting a confirmation from David Grassley’s wife, Jana, who told Velma and Teddi (who appear to be Colter’s handlers for lack of a better word) that Seth showed her the dashcam footage from her husband’s hit and run in order to scare her into silence.
Knowing that there was evidence to bring the place down, Colter found his in via a Positive Light member who was following him (rather badly, might I add). Once inside of Seth’s instructional office, he was able to pull up David’s file, along with Rebecca’s, before proving to Jackson that he was being lied to and told what he needed to hear so that he would remain obedient, especially since his role in the cult was so critical as the new accountant.
But as we say, anyone who tried to leave or expose what was going on, would immediately be taken out.
It seems as though Seth should’ve listened to Rebecca about not letting Colter get too close to Jackson, though he was so convinced they had the latter wrapped around their finger.
Thankfully, Colter knows how to fight—and he was able to stave off Rebecca and Seth until the police got there and shut the whole operation down once and for all.
The eerie thing is that Seth did have a way of reading people accurately; through his Google search, he dug up enough intel on Colter to figure out that he was in pain because of his past with his father, a pain that he still carried with him till this day.
And while Colter isn’t easily shaken, you could tell he was a little triggered that someone was able to pick up on his past, even if he wasn’t willing to admit it.
Colter’s backstory has a lot of impact on his present (even if people are more resilient than you imagine, eventually the cracks do begin to show), not only his choice of career path but there’s still no closure as to what happened to his father. His brother, who seems to have pushed his father to his death, keeps reaching out asking Colter to hear him out, but his mother, told him to ignore his sibling, so it’s clear she’s also hiding something. Not to mention the beginning of the episode where she called her son because someone broke into his father’s office. There’s still a lot to unpack here, which only adds to the intrigue of the series. But even without Colter’s complicated backstory, Hartley is easy on the eyes (and has a huge fanbase already thanks to his NBC drama), his acting is believable, and at its core, it’s a procedural, so watching him solve cases is clearly something that has the potential to pull in a huge audience.
What did you think of the episode? Are you enjoying the series so far?