Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Tracker season 2, episode 16
After a week's break, Tracker is back. This week's episode is a deliciously creepy horror movie in miniature, but I'm not sure how to feel about the return of a favorite character. Last episode, Tracker saw Colter (Justin Hartley) reconnecting with more than one old friend, and while the episode itself was on the slow side, it had me incredibly excited because it hinted at a bigger story for Bobby. This week, the show does a complete 180, with an episode that was gloriously blood-curdling in the main rescue, but which resolved Bobby's return in a disappointingly prosaic way.
"The Mercy Seat" starts without any of the usual "finding the case" preamble, but with Colter already trudging through the snow with a Search & Rescue friend, on the lookout for two missing snowboarders. It seems to be a straightforward backwoods search at first, but quickly gets weird with a capital W. A mysterious man with antlers lurking in the woods, gunshots and tripwires in the snow, a group of young people in a cabin who give off serious horror movie vibes, and finally, a "father" figure who is doing unspeakably disturbing things in the backwoods.
This main story is very well done and shows Colter's skills and his compassion, while the lack of phones gives the horror a wonderfully solitary edge. Reenie's story also gets to move forward, with an increasing number of hints about the true business with the Client being dropped. I would say that it's clear this will be the big finish of the season, but given how Bobby (Eric Graise) returned this week, I'm no longer willing to make logical predictions about where the show is going.
Bobby Is Back, But It's Not A Big Deal – Even Though It Should Be
After Weeks Missing, This Feels Like A Bizarre Resolution
Bobby — Colter's impossibly brilliant tech guy — has been missing since Episode 9, with his place at the computer chair taken over by his cousin Randy (Chris Lee). Over the course of those six episodes, he is only mentioned twice: first, when Randy appears, and it is revealed that Bobby is dealing with a "family thing", and then again in last week's episode, where Colter finally asks Randy if he has heard from Bobby.
At first, it seemed like Tracker was just going to be writing Bobby off, replacing him with Randy. Then it seemed like Bobby may actually have a mystery of his own, and Colter was going to have to track him down. In the end, having him just reappear, at his desk, bickering with Randy about computer setup, felt incredibly anticlimactic.
Perhaps that's because I let my fan-theory brain run away with me, but Tracker is a show that lends itself to fan theories — just look at how they are teasing out the situation with Colter's dad. Almost nothing is said about Bobby's absence other than that he is "taking it one day at a time".
In some ways, this feels almost like I've missed an episode, one where Colter tracked Bobby down and saved him. I want to be thrilled that Bobby is back, and I did very much enjoy the sibling-esque banter between the cousins, but after being MIA for most of the second half of the season, Bobby deserved a bigger homecoming. Hopefully, we'll get some deeper explanation to come, and some more of Bobby and Randy as a duo.
"The Mercy Seat" Is A Great Example Of Cabin-In-The-Woods Horror
Leaving Details Up To The Imagination Is A Great Way To Make It Even Scarier
The main storyline in the episode is a great example of what Tracker does best – creepy and vaguely paranormal backwoods murder — and it more than makes up for Bobby's disappointing return. It launches straight into the action, and gives Colter a chance to shine in his best environment, although I was surprised to see that he doesn't clock a tripwire without help. Maybe he's been spending too much time messing with crime syndicates in the big city!
What really deserves a mention, though, is how well Tracker manages to draw out the tension and the fear in this one. While some elements felt a little predictable (yes, the group of slightly strange-looking young people who just happen to be in a lonely cabin in the woods are giving me serial killer vibes), it stayed safely on the beautiful horror homage end of the spectrum, never veering into boring territory. And for once, Colter only spends a couple of shots with a gun in his hand, which is a refreshing change!
The best part was that Father Ammon's (Sean Bridgers) twisted games are never revealed in full. Amelia (Ariana Guerra) alludes to "terrible things", and there are plenty of reports of missing people — the titular "mercy chair" — but the show never spells the horror out. Are Ammon and his boys torturing anyone who wanders into their path, shooting them and leaving them for dead? What are the "games" and gods they refer to? By not answering any of those questions, we're left to come up with whatever horrors live in the darkest corners of our minds – and those are the most frightening.
Up Next: "Memories" Takes Colter To Reno
Randy Gets To Step Out From Behind The Desk
Next week, it looks like Tracker is going to be giving Randy the spotlight, with an episode that connects to his past – read the full description below:
Randy enlists Colter's services for his ex after her best friend goes missing following a night on the town in Reno.
From the promo, it looks like the two are headed to Reno, to hunt down a woman who goes missing after a show at a strip club, and Randy is here to make sure that Colter doesn't go it alone.
This may well be another episode that is a fairly straightforward find-the-bad-guy, but the choice to give Randy a bigger role is an interesting one. This could be a way to give Randy an exit — he finds that actually, this job is a bit too dangerous for his liking, heads out, and leaves Bobby back in the chair. However, it seems more likely that this may be about giving Randy a more permanent place on the team as a sidekick, the Robin to Colter's Batman.
The episode is also very likely going to continue to expand on the situation with Reenie and her client. This was another focus of "The Mercy Seat", with hints at more secrets to be revealed, although it's unlikely the answers are going to come just yet. Instead, I'm expecting to see a little more drip-feeding on this storyline, while Bobby and Randy settle into co-working on Team Tracker, and Colter, of course, saves the day.
New episodes of Tracker season 2 air on CBS each Sunday at 8pm ET.
