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Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Millions of viewers tuned in after the Super Bowl to catch (or possibly lapse into a nacho coma during) Tracker, a new procedural from CBS that was chosen to premiere in the plum postgame slot. In terms of the basics, those viewers saw Justin Hartley (This Is Us) play an occasionally shirtless guy with a strong chin, not named Tracker but Colter Shaw, who’s kind of a freelance search-and-rescue artist. Tracker, er, Colter is first seen rescuing an injured hiker, far from civilization; later, he locates a kidnapped child. In in the process, he outsmarts bad guys, local police, and other people whose chins are not as defined as his. In some ways, it’s a standard CBS-level procedural: undemanding, briskly paced, entertaining. You watch one episode and you’ve got the premise, characters, and the hint of tragic backstory all squared away.
But it also feels like a drift away from CBS formula in some respects. Typically, the network procedural focuses on one of two situations: Either there’s an elite team of cops or cop-like figures, preferably referred to via acronym (as seen currently via various NCIS, FBI, and S.W.A.T. programs), or there’s a single Sherlock Holmes-like figure who may work with cops or cop-like figures but has their own particular set of skills that makes them prodigious in the field of solving various cases of the week (as seen in The Equalizer, The Mentalist, or Elementary, where the figure literally was Sherlock Holmes). Tracker reps the latter. But there’s something lonelier and a little more standoffish about Hartley’s character, even in terms of the fashionable lonerism that informs contemporary pulp heroes like Jack Reacher. (The Reacher Prime Video show, with its pumped-up hero, violence, and sex, is like CBS on steroids.)
That’s not to say that Colter Shaw abstains from, ah, more temporary connections. Apart from Hartley repeatedly doffing his shirt (Blue Bloods would never! I mean, one assumes; I’m not allowed to watch Blue Bloods because they take up too many parking spaces on my street), the pilot basically says that Colter is a love-em-and-leave-em type, as evidenced by Rennie (Fiona Rene), a lawyer he previously spurned who comes to his rescue at one point, and a local cop he beds after successfully returning the kidnapped child before driving onward to his next adventure. The half-nudity and offscreen sex are pretty tame by most standards, yet there’s still a feeling of something less staid than the CBS norm, as if the network (which has been older-skewing for decades upon decades at this point) is trying to figure out what youthful sex appeal might look like.
What it looks like when fused with this particular prodigious-Holmes-like mythology is… kind of lonely. Colter Shaw lives in an Airstream, moves from place to place, going where his possible employment takes him. Though this is somewhat reminiscent of older TV shows like The Fugitive or The Incredible Hulk (or, for that matter, the first season of Peacock’s Poker Face), the melancholy of those shows stemmed from characters who were unable to simply go home again. Colter seems to live this way by choice, and for now Tracker basically sets up a CBS procedural version of Nomadland, only here it’s a presumably well-off guy searching for seasonal work, rather than someone on the economic fringes. (Hopefully no pooping in a bucket, either.) Is this an opportunistic attempt to appeal to a disenfranchised audience, or has the CBS procedural become genuinely (if still watchably) alienated from society?
Some of this isolation may be intentional, of course. It’s easy to imagine the show taking Tracker Colter on an arc towards accepting his past and forming (or re-forming) some more lasting relationships. But there’s something slightly chilly about Hartley’s performance, even when he’s regularly removing his shirt, and it’s hard to tell if it’s meant to be Sherlock-style arrogance or a more unsettling disdain for those weaker and less chin-forward than himself. On some level, these procedurals are supposed to provide satisfaction – and on some level, Tracker does. It also feels itself vaguely dissatisfied, as if Hartley is waiting for the right moment to drive the hell away from cases of the week entirely.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
