Tracker Season 2 Episode 11 Review: Shades of Gray

Critic’s Rating: 4.2 / 5.0

4.2

Listen, Tracker Land, if you don’t want me to root for Colter and Reenie to eventually realize they’ve been in love all along, don’t give them cute scenes in front of a fire overlooking the New York skyline.

It’s unnecessary!

But look, Tracker Season 2 Episode 11 wasn’t about romance. It was about mafia wars and Colter almost getting got yet again.

Colter doesn’t have much time to relax before returning to the next job. While he was trying to enjoy a little downtime, Reenie and her boyfriend Elliot’s unexpected call led him to New Jersey, where he inadvertently involved himself in a mob war.

A very Colter-like thing to do, honestly.

Since when did Reenie and Elliot make it official? The last we saw the pair was during Tracker Season 2 Episode 4, and they were reconnecting but not necessarily putting a label on things.

That shows just how little the series feels the need to check in with the supporting cast.

We know this isn’t an ensemble show in the traditional sense, nor does the series care much about expanding or diving into the characters beyond what they can do to help Colter weekly, but it’s still a bummer when they thrust that into our faces, like during this hour.

There was no Bobby, who is seemingly just on a vacation or something, and no Velma. Since the season began, Velma has not only never left Reenie’s office, but they haven’t even alluded to her marriage to Teddi after teasing conflict during Tracker Season 2 Episode 1.

We all know what Tracker is. It’s not a show about relationships, nor the characters, really. And it’s never pretended to be.

But it is a show with characters other than Colter, and the audience would like to get to know them on some level.

The way the secondary characters are treated is criminal.

Anyway, I digress from my grievances to get into the action, which was actually heavy this hour. Colter found himself in a very odd situation, which is par for the course.

Ivy Hale was a businesswoman on the outside and apparently a ruthless mob boss underneath the bakery owner’s façade.

When Colter and Ivy met, you could tell she was hiding something, but it seemed like maybe she was just an overprotective mother who pushed her son away. Perhaps he was hiding out, as overly aggressive cousin Casey pointed out.

Or maybe he was hiding with the married woman he was seeing.

There were many different avenues for Colter to take regarding Matt’s disappearance, including that of his mother, but of course, he wasn’t aware of who she truly was until he got deeper into the mystery.

I appreciate Tracker’s moment of levity when they step outside of the danger and death and let Justin Hartley bathe in his charisma. This was on display when the receptionist at Matt’s office was eager to assist Colter in any way she could.

Colter would be nowhere without Bobby, and he’s lucky that Randy’s a suitable replacement because his whole operation doesn’t work without someone who can take his tips and leads and turn them into tangible things, like names and locations.

Matt’s seeing a married woman just screamed that the woman’s disgruntled husband was looking to exact revenge on the man who was stealing his woman. It made sense for Colter to follow that trail, and it’s a good thing he did because Lucy was in bad shape.

Things started getting tricky here because if it wasn’t the husband, then who the hell was after Matt? And why was he being so paranoid ahead of time?

Tracker loves a misdirect and loves to subvert expectations, so Colter went from having no lead to suddenly fighting for his life in the span of a few hours when he traveled to the hotel Matt was last at and found a mob dealing operation.

Whenever I see one of the high-speed money-counting machines, I’m transported back to Scarface, and I immediately assume those down in shady basements with bad lighting are up to no good!

Poor Colter was just trying to find a missing son when it suddenly became clear that he was in over his head.

It’s not as if Colter was ever in real danger because this is the Colter Show, after all, but it was not looking good for him once he met with Rick Lindo, who more or less didn’t care about where Matt was or what Colter was after.

He wasn’t trying to get in the middle of anything. Still, he did know that he couldn’t have random people sniffing around his operation, and he certainly couldn’t have someone actively employed by his rival just walking away after everything he’d seen.

This hour was really in its Godfather bag when it had Pete and Vargas take Colter out to some abandoned piece of land with train cars littering the background so they could put a bullet in his head.

For a second, I honestly did believe that Colter, with his hands tied and down on his knees with two guns pointing at him, was going to find a way to break free triumphantly and save himself, but I should have known better.

Due to his prowess and strength, Colter has gotten out of many situations he had no business walking away from, but in this scenario, he was just lucky that one of the mob enforcers had a soft spot for his childhood friend.

Vargas must have genuinely hated Pete and loved Matt to turn on his mob brethren and help a man he just met. He wasn’t overly helpful to Colter (he did leave him out there stranded), but he didn’t kill him and gave him some valid information to help him along his way.

Despite bringing the case to Colter, Reenie and Elliot were an afterthought during this one. But good on Reenie for acknowledging that Colter almost died because Elliot’s client was actually insanely dangerous and involved in dangerous activities.

Do I think Elliot is some kind of horrible person? No. But considering how quickly Reenie could suss out who Ivy really was, you would have thought, as her attorney, that Elliot did some research at some point.

Their talk, essentially absolving Elliot of all culpability and blaming their bosses, was lame, but I guess it’s the job or whatever Reenie said to Colter at the end.

It’s very rare that there is a genuine shock on Tracker, and Casey being the one behind everything wasn’t a shock, but for the life of me, I could not figure out who Colter sent to rescue Matt while he dealt with saving Ivy’s life.

Casey was a little TOO eager to crap on both his aunt and his missing cousin to not have involvement in everything. Disrespect was at the root of his reasoning for turning on his aunt, another common theme in The Godfather and Scarface.

Ivy was cruel to him, and she made a business decision that he felt would negatively impact him. His plan to pit the Hale and Lindo families against each other was smart—so smart that I almost wondered if Ivy underestimated her little cousin.

Though, if the plan were foolproof, he would have gotten away with it. And he did get himself electrocuted when it was wildly preventable, so maybe Casey wasn’t some secret genius.

Vargas being the one to save his buddy was a small twist that surprised me. I knew Colter wouldn’t send Reenie or Elliot into that lair, but it didn’t dawn on me that he could use Vargas, someone who cared about Matt and knew his way around a murder.

One thing about Colter is that he is truly there to find what he’s supposed to find, and everything else is a bonus or none of his business.

He got Matt back, and what happened to Ivy was none of his concern, so he let her scamper off into the darkness and then retreated to his airstream for beer and a view.

Again, on this show that absolutely does NOT revolve around romance, the spark between Reenie and Colter deserves a chance to burn someday. And maybe it’s not their time right now, but it should be one day.

Although they are opposites, they have much in common, strengthening their personal and professional relationship.

Some of their best moments are like the one at the episode’s end when they talk outside of a case as confidants who can relate to one another in a way not many can do due to their hectic lifestyles.

And finding yourself in the middle of a mafia ~~movie~~ war will undoubtedly get you thinking about life.

Extra Tracker Notes

But seriously, where the hell are Velma and Bobby? Randy is great, and the more Randy, the better, but can he and Bobby maybe team up because we miss Bobby.