Tracker Season 3 Episode 13 Is Action Overload That Mostly Works

Critic’s Rating: 4.2 / 5.0

4.2

What’s up with Tracker episodes feeling like they’re straight out of a movie lately?

I’m not complaining, but I didn’t expect a full-blown Fast and the Furious car chase and a shootout that could rival any blockbuster’s climactic scene when I sat down for this episode.

This unpredictability has kept things interesting.

I absolutely love when shows peel back the curtains and center stories around television productions. It’s usually a little exaggerated, and while I wish we’d gotten to see a bit more of the production, the little we saw at the start was good.

Ripley was clearly a stuntman who might have been feeling the effects of a long life falling out of fake windows and engaging in fights, even choreographed ones. Though, as is typically the case with this series, there’s a lot more to these cases than initially meets the eye.

The trend continued with Tracker Season 3 Episode 13.

Colter sneaking onto a closed film set was about the least surprising thing in the world, though it was a little worrisome just how easy he was able to walk around, as if he belonged there and no one batted an eye.

The power of Colter Shaw, I guess.

At first, I wondered if the plot would revolve around the aggressive director or something suspicious on set, especially after seeing the man with drugs in the stunt trailer. However, the real story began with the introduction of the mob-backed producer, shifting the focus from mere suspicion to a deeper, more dangerous conflict.

Per usual, you need to get through about 8 or so steps before the story starts to take shape, and Cranston was that first step.

Another hour, another opportunity for Colter to break into someone’s home!

What got me about this one was him looking dead at the security camera before he did it, though that wasn’t foreshadowing him getting in any sort of breaking and entering trouble, but instead just to help set up what he’d eventually see on Cranston’s computer.

I genuinely love how Randy can get a picture of a man, plug it into some program, get the guy’s full life story, then just as easily ping his phone to find his location, and voila! Colter puts his boots to the ground and is off to the next place.

Is it really that easy in real life? Because if so, I’ve got QUESTIONS.

Anyway, it wouldn’t be Tracker without Colter coming upon a shady place and having to investigate with literally no backup and no idea what he was walking into. And this time, I’ll admit, I was not expecting to see the very men who dragged Ripley out of that swanky apartment, bloody and tied up.

Was it far-fetched to believe Ripley could overpower multiple armed assailants? Absolutely, but that’s classic Tracker.

They exist in this space where no person is ever outnumbered, and logic is often sidelined for entertainment. And that’s not even exclusive to Tracker, or an inherently bad thing.

But sometimes things are just so grandiose you can’t ignore them.

A car being the key to so much of this case really felt like something out of a movie I’d seen before. And Colter stumbling upon a car race and just fitting his big old truck in to get to that cherry red Dodge had no business being that impressive.

The cars were drifting at breakneck speeds, and while Colter was clearly not executing slick moves in that big truck, the scene was genuinely entertaining—if maybe a touch overlong.

Of course, it wasn’t easy enough to just have Ripley in that car and the whole thing be over, but things finally started to come together when it was revealed that Dalton was the one who typically went out racing, not his father.

When we got that glimpse of Colter looking at an old picture of himself and Ashton, it should have been apparent that this was going to be a case that would circle back to a father and son.

Even though we didn’t know too much about Ripley and Dalton’s relationship, we didn’t really need to. Whether they were close or not didn’t matter at the end of the day, because Ripley was a father first and foremost, and he was there when Dalton needed him.

As more information came out, I was so interested in learning more about Dalton and just his whole backstory. He was also a stuntman, so did he follow in his famous father’s footsteps, but he wasn’t quite as successful, and he spiraled a bit, engaging in less-than-savory activities?

What was their dynamic like in general? Dalton went to his father when he was in trouble, so there was some level of comfort there, but what was the strain?

We didn’t get to see more of Dalton and Ripley’s dynamic, but the hints were intriguing.

If you’re a big professional wrestling fan like me, then you immediately recognized Chris Jericho as Virgil, who was the big bad of this whole thing.

Based on the brief interaction between Ripley and Virgil, it was clear that a robbery was planned, necessitating a getaway driver. But the level of the robbery caught me off guard, because trying to rob an armored truck? Really?

That had disaster written all over it, and they didn’t even realize Colter Shaw and his one handgun were about to ruin their whole day.

After Colter found Dalton, he absolutely should have called the police. He was not equipped to confront an unknown number of men engaged in a high-stakes robbery, and what was he even hoping to do there?

Was he trying to stop the whole thing? Was he just trying to get Ripley out of the situation? It was not remotely clear, and even though I knew Colter would be safe because duh, it just felt like a very confusing situation.

But confusing or not, the shootouts were intense and shot pretty damn well. Even though I knew Colter would survive, I wasn’t sure about anyone else, and for some fleeting moments, I wondered if Ripley would have to step in and save his son yet again, but not walk away from it.

This was another hour where Colter killed multiple people, and we saw nary a police siren, let alone an actual policeman, and seemingly everyone went about their business afterwards like they didn’t just recently engage in a gunfight for the ages.

It’s just something to be expected of the series at this point, but even so, it does make you scratch your head a little bit. Especially how many people Colter, a private citizen, kills on a routine basis.

Does he have any feelings about this?

When Colter had that dramatic reaction after killing Virgil, I wondered if we might get some reflection from him about what happened, but that’s not how it played out.

Considering there was also this contrasting story with Reenie continuing to struggle with the trauma from what happened to her during Tracker Season 2, I’m still waiting for Colter and Reenie to have a conversation.

Maybe in that we could explore how Colter feels about everything he goes through. I don’t think anyone should take advice on handling difficult emotions from the compartmentalizing king himself; it could still be beneficial for Reenie to speak to someone she trusts.

Maxine was trying to get Reenie to open up to her, and it was admirable, but Reenie was never going to break down her innermost fears to a business acquaintance.

My heart breaks more and more for Reenie each week, and I am BEGGING for Colter and Reenie to just be in the same room at this point.

There’s simply no one else Reenie feels comfortable confiding in, and with each passing week, her isolation deepens.

This isn’t about me wanting Colter to save her; she desperately needs someone to remind her that she doesn’t have to carry everything alone. And he’s the one person I believe she’d let in enough to do that.

Tracker Notes

• Maxine talking about her husband was a little scary. Good luck to that man after she’s done with him.

• Good to see David Ramsey!

• I’ll never get over that final shootout and Colter and his one guy prevailing. Yes, he did need help from Laura, but he was really in his action star bag.

Solid hour with lots of fun bits to talk about! Let me know what you thought about this one in the comments!

You can watch Tracker on Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.