Leave it to Colter to go to Boston for personal reasons and then waltz right into a case that has him killing two men that same day.
The man went to Boston on a professional trip and didn’t even get to see any of the sites or get a lobster roll.
The life of Colter Shaw is genuinely one of one.
I’ve said it before, but as much as I love it when Colter’s work takes him out to the middle of nowhere, and those survivalist skills are put to good use, I also enjoy it when the cases find him in the big city.
Colter was only in Boston to follow up on the David Pearson lead, and I know some people are getting a little tired of how the Shaw family drama is limping along. Still, it’s important to remember that when Colter “solves” the mystery of his father’s death, that whole storyline will end.
And that story is woven into the very fabric of the show, so don’t be surprised if they drag this out through the end of this season and beyond.
Andy Flemming gave Colter enough information to chew on about the mysterious David Pearson and his connection to Ashton. Though, as with most answers we get in the mystery, more questions are formed.
A research professor, a government worker, and a neurologist being friends doesn’t, in itself, seem suspicious. Maybe they were all in a poker league or something.
But considering what happened to Ashton, coupled with his paranoia and erratic behavior leading up to his death, at the very least, makes you side-eye why the three men were not only hanging out, but being shady about it.
Hearing that the men were watching tapes of men hooked up to machines screams government conspiracy of some kind.
How many movies have we seen about covert government programs that were brainwashing people or something else sinister?
Might Ashton have stumbled upon something like this in his research and reached out to two knowledgeable men within their own professions to uncover some truths?
Truths that ultimately got him killed? And where does Mary Dove fit into all of this?
As I said, the “answers” begot more questions, but right now Colter is just trying to figure out what his father was up to in the time leading up to this death, and hoping that he’ll find something that will lead him to understand why Ashton was murdered in the first place.
It has to feel a bit like he’s looking for a needle in a haystack, but when has that ever stopped Colter in the past? Yes, this case is personal in every way, but Colter’s not someone who throws in the towel.
As much as he wants to finally get closure to the greatest mystery of his life, he also can’t stomach there being a mystery he can’t solve.
Speaking of mysteries, the case of the week fell into Colter’s lap, and it was one of those instances where Colter mixed himself up in something incredibly dangerous in the span of a few hours.
Meeting Dale probably felt like fate for the father, who was going out of his mind with worry about his missing daughter. He was a frazzled man at the end of his rope, who’d maybe seen one too many Taken movies, and was preparing himself to do whatever he had to do to find Noelle.
Colter could see both the pain and desperation radiating off him, and most people would have told him to keep trying the police, and then they’d go about their day. But Colter has never been the guy to leave someone in pain when he had the capacity to help.
Reward be damned.
Noelle’s kidnapping at the beginning of the hour was very much planned, and not the kind of thing where she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was nervous and hypervigilant, and her attacker wasn’t leaving there without her in tow.
The key to this case was not only retracing Noelle’s steps but also figuring out what motivated her to seemingly disappear in the first place.
Father Dale didn’t believe it was drug-related, and once Colter got information from her weirdo boss, he was able to track her to the lawyer’s office, which was the lead that brought the whole case to a close.
Do you ever wonder while watching Tracker what day of the week it is when Colter is on his 24-hour adventure? I ask because it was important to note that it was still the weekend here, because otherwise, someone would have found that dead lawyer’s body much quicker than they did.
I’ve missed the condescending cops who don’t take Colter seriously, if only because I do enjoy seeing him show them up, but the officer at the scene wasn’t there to do anything other than be a nuisance.
And to prove Dale’s point about the police being absolutely no help in this situation, if they weren’t even willing to listen to facts.
After Tracker Season 3 Episode 6 gave us no Reenie, we got our girl back here, and she was pretty instrumental (and Randy too!) in figuring out who was behind Noelle’s disappearance.
We have to take a break here to talk about Reenie.
Reenie is an absolute rockstar, and she’s tough as they come, but what happened to her during Tracker Season 2 has clearly affected her in ways she may not even realize yet.
She went through a traumatic event, was almost killed, and nearly lost someone she cared about, and even though she’s worked on many cases with Colter and been placed in dangerous situations, this one was personal and terrifying in a way you can’t easily get over.
She’s putting on a smile and going about her business, and from what we can tell, her work isn’t suffering in any tangible way, but it would appear she’s spending her nights getting drunk and, in this hour, having a little late-night fun with a stranger.
And I’d say good on her for letting her hair down, but it’s obvious she’s engaging in these activities to mask the pain of what happened to her, and she’s lying to the people who care about her on top of it.
She’s not being honest with Randy or Colter, and probably not herself, and it’s breaking my heart, but it’s also so relatable in the way we as humans deal with trauma. What I’m fearful for with Reenie is that she’s going to hit rock bottom before she’s able to start healing from her pain.
I know Randy sees that something isn’t right, and if Colter and Reenie spent one afternoon together, he’d see it too.
But for now, we keep seeing these little glimpses showing us she’s not okay, and it’s sad. But I’m glad the series isn’t glossing over her experience and putting in the work to show us that the case was solved, everyone lived, and everything worked out, but that doesn’t mean the pain goes away.
Back to the case at hand, once Randy and Colter heard the name Bennings, everything fell into place.
The Bennings were made out to be the equivalent of a family like the Rockefellers of Boston. As soon as it became apparent that they were a party with influence and a need to keep scandal away from the family name, it became clear that Noelle likely posed a threat to their dynasty.
Going as far as cutting Colter’s brakes and sending a man after him to shoot him in broad daylight showed a family that was willing to cheat, steal, kill, or do whatever was necessary to make sure they avoided implication in anything that could damage what they built.
And all the powerful families have an Olivia Pope on their payroll.
For the Bennings, they had MC, and she was every bit as diabolical as television has made us think fixers are supposed to be.
Graham was a mess in every sense of the word, but killing the waiter at the party must have been the moment he realized his life was truly out of control, and I believed him when he told both that scary Milo person and MC that he was ready to go to the police.
He seemed like a pretty broken guy with a lot on his conscience already, and he wasn’t interested in adding another dead body to it in the form of a woman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The problem was just like I believed Graham, so did MC. And within minutes, he was dead because of it.
You have to take some parts of Tracker with a grain of salt, and the family (or MC mores specifically) keeping a girl they kidnapped on the same property they were holding a big fundraiser at, and staging a suicide mere hours before made zero sense in the grander scheme of things.
But MC had a plan, and considering she got away with it in the end, I’m in no position to judge.
When Colter found Noelle, after killing Milo, and MC snuck into the room, I kept wondering why Colter felt so comfortable keeping his back to her. I was holding my breath almost the whole time because I was sure she was going to hit him over the head with something.
But when Colter and MC had their stalemate at the episode’s end, Colter made it clear that he had her whole plan clocked. Now, whether he knew it in that moment when he was rescuing Noelle, or it came to him later, was not clear.
He threw Noelle’s whole plan back in her face, but this was one of those rare instances where Colter solved the case, but there wasn’t really any justice in the long run because that family was going to live on to ruin someone else’s life when something else inevitably went wrong for them.
And I’m not sure how I feel about it.
An open-ended conclusion isn’t the worst thing the show has ever done, and I understand that MC isn’t a novice. She’s cleaned up bigger messes than this one, so it’s hardly unfathomable that she would find her way out of this one.
But we’re so used to neat, tidy conclusions more often than not, and much like The Process, MC was just left with a question mark.
Might she make another appearance one day so Colter can bring her down? I’d never say never.
Tracker Notes
- That scene between Justin Hartley and Italia Ricci was great. They played off each other so well.
- Did anyone else think Reenie’s one-night stand was going to somehow be involved in the case after they had the two of them have that flirty morning-after banter? It would have been so silly and made no sense, but when has that ever stopped Tracker in the past?
- No Mel this hour, so my suspicious meter will stay exactly where it is.
Another great hour in what has been a decent season overall. Tracker is what Tracker is at this point, and that’s entertaining. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Let me know in the comments how you felt about this one so we can discuss! I love to read everyone’s comments each week!
You can watch Tracker on Sundays at 8/7 on CBS.
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