'Tracker' Finally Delivers on What Colter Shaw Has Been Missing for 2 Seasons | Review

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Tracker Season 4, Episode 4.After teasing a new love interest for Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) last week, Tracker returns with another adventure that ends in a possible love connection. Don’t worry, it seems like Jenna Nova (Gillian Bolt) is here to stay for now, but that doesn’t mean that our hero doesn’t have other important things to do. Heading to Utah, Colter is hired to track down a missing woman in a mystery that’s far more complicated than heartbreak might imply. As Season 4 continues strong, this week’s episode, “Purification,” reminds us that Colter is truly the best at what he does.

“Purification” Sends Colter to Utah on a New Case

Late one night in Danville, Utah (which sounds like the beginnings of a country song), Nicole Dunning (Iman Benson) sits crying in a park. This may seem like normal heartbreak at first, but since this is an episode of Tracker, we know there’s more to it than that. When Nicole hears a strange noise coming from the bushes, someone in a hoodie (Luca Diaz) rushes up to her telling her not to scream, pulling her away. The next day, our resident tech wizard Randy Davis (Chris Lee) gives Colter a call with an $8K reward from the father, Roy Dunning (Troy Winbush), who is quite worried about her daughter, despite her only being missing a day. It would’ve maybe been fine had Nicole not missed his birthday dinner, and that was unlike her. When Colter arrives in town, Roy walks him through Nicole’s apartment. Colter reassures the worried father that he’s here to help, and Roy reveals that Nicole had been upset a few days back, but he wasn’t able to find out why. Colter begins putting the pieces together when he finds a box of cupcakes in the trash, which Randy tracks back to a Stephen Jones (Kanoa Goo).

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

Of course, we can’t forget about the riveting office space hunt by Reenie (Fiona Rene) and Mel (Cassady McClincy Zhang). Every chance Tracker gets, it seems like we’re bouncing around this idea, which is a shame because at this point, some of Reenie’s legal cases would even be more exciting — or, you know, any new developments surrounding Mel’s mother’s death. Fortunately, “Purification” doesn’t make us sit through it for long, because Colter soon arrives at Stephen’s home to find his young son, Henry (Lincoln Bodin), at the door. When Stephen shows up, he pretends not to know who Nicole is before Colter threatens to reveal the truth about his affair to his wife. The cheater quickly reveals that he and Nichole met at the park the night before, talked, and ended things for good. Although he has no idea where she might be, Colter demands he show him the location of the meeting. When Stephen pushes back, wondering what he’ll tell his family, Colter replies with the sickest of burns: “Just go lie to your wife or something, you’re good at that. Figure it out.”

At the park, Stephen shows Colter around. They find a bracelet of Nicole’s in the grass and discover that her car is missing. Stephen tells him that the east side of the park has had some assaults, and Colter drives off, leaving the cheating husband in the dust. Pulling up at a gas station, Colter finds a towing company hauling a wrecked car with stripped plates. He takes a look and discovers it’s been broken into — and that there’s a hoodie with a strange barcode on the back left inside. When Colter speaks with the gas station manager, Dale (Matthew Downs), he reveals that his employee got assaulted the night before over the car. So, Colter heads to the hospital to speak with this employee, Fernando (Izzy Diaz), who tells him that Nicole came in the night before with a kid with burn marks on his hands. She told Fernando that the boy was in trouble and all of a sudden a truck with a camper plowed in. The guy from the camper knocked Fernando out, but not before he saw one crucial clue: a sticker with a two-headed tiger.

‘Tracker’ Puts Colter In the Middle of the Chaos

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    Image via CBS</figure>

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