With its premiere, Tracker Season 2 had already seemingly set itself up for a plotline dilemma and the most frustrating part was that it didn’t need to set itself up in that position. Tracker Season 1 was incredibly successful for CBS; According to the network, it was its most successful original show in years. Part of the success was due to the fun premise, following “Rewardist” Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) as he tracks down missing people, but also thanks to Trackers engaging cast of characters, both the main characters and the one-off characters that appear in each self-contained episode.
One of the stand-alone characters that endeared the audience to Tracker Is Jensen Ackles’ Russell Shaw, who reappears in Colter’s life with a new case for him and revelations about their father’s mysterious death years ago. What happened to their father and why he was killed was the overarching mystery of Tracker Season 1And the show has barely scratched its surface. Tracker Season 2, however, already introduced another cold case that seems ready to usurp most of the narrative focus.
Tracker Season 2’s missing sister plot risks pulling focus away from the plot of Colter’s dad
There is still a lot to unpack about Ashton Shaw’s murder
Introducing a story arc that’s clearly going to last more than a few episodes, if not the entire season, isn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem is that Tracker Already has one of these: the aforementioned mystery of what really happened to Colter and Russell’s father. The mystery surrounding their father’s death was established early on Tracker Season 1With many flashbacks to their childhood, including the climactic moment where Colter finds their father, Ashton, dead at the bottom of a cliff and looks up to see Russell standing on the cliff, leading Colter to believe that Russell pushed their father and Verify. up very years-long strangers.
Introducing a story arc that’s clearly going to last more than a few episodes, if not the entire season, isn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem is that Tracker Already has one of these: the aforementioned mystery of what really happened to Colter and Russell’s father.
Although Russell’s reentry into Colter’s life finally cleared him of suspicion, The bigger question of who killed their father, and how much their mother, Mary Dove, knows, still remains. It was determined that their father was a brilliant man who went off the grid, seemingly after running against the American government or other powerful figures. It’s a complex mystery that will take time to unravel, but introducing the new storyline of his former lover’s missing sister will undoubtedly take the focus off of it.
It is possible that the storyline was introduced because the writers decided to continue the mystery surrounding Ashton’s death only in the Tracker Season 2 episodes in which Jensen Ackles’ Russell Shaw appears. If this is the case, It’s understandable that they would need a solo plot for Colter to fill in the gaps when Russell isn’t around. That might be a little disappointing, though, as it’s unclear how many episodes Ackles will be in. We know he will be in more than one, but how many more is not known. If it’s just a little, at this rate, the mystery of their father’s death could take years to unravel, a frustratingly slow process.
Tracker cannot balance both overarching mysteries without sacrificing its successful premise
It’s a trap sophomore seasons too often fall into
If Tracker Season 2 isn’t sidelining either the Gina Pickett cold case/Camille Pickett romance or the Ashton Shaw mystery, it’s going to be incredibly tricky to pull off and still use the case-of-the-week format that was so successful in its first season . It is almost impossible to devote enough time to each mystery to move their stories in a meaningful way without sidelining, or at least shortening, some of the one-off episodes and their cases. It’s a problem that often plagues weekly procedurals with longer arcs in their second seasons and beyondWhen a show bites off more than it can chew too soon and abandons its premise to the detriment of the show.
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That said, Tracker Season 2 has two things going for it. One, it’s twice as long as season 1, which was 13 episodes. Considering it was CBS’ biggest hit in years, it was inevitable that the second season would get an episode order bigger than the first season, and indeed, season 2 got a full 22-episode order. This gives it more time to devote to its longer story arcs. Two, the showrunners have mentioned in previous interviews that they have no intention of creating any Tracker Spinoffs at the moment, because they want to focus on season 2 without falling into the trap of their focus being pulled in too many directions, leading to a diminished quality.
Tracker didn’t need the missing sister plot (or a potential new romance)
It just complicates things
None of this is to say that Trackers writers will not skillfully balance both larger mysteries with the episodic narrative format that has been so successful with audiences. Still, it’s frustrating that the show even set itself up for this potential problem in the first place, because it never had to happen. The missing sister plot came out of nowhere Tracker season 2’s premiere, as well as the sudden revelation of his ongoing love affair with Camille. It felt clunky, and that’s partly because The show didn’t need the added storyline to have forward momentum. There’s already a lot going on, from Reenie’s new company, to Teddy and Velma’s split, to Colter’s tangled family history. hope, Tracker Season 2 can accomplish it all without sacrificing stories or character development.