Forget 'Tracker,' Disney+'s Forgotten 13-Episode Crime Series Is a Perfect Weekend Binge
Giovana Gelhoren is a High-Trending Topics Writer at Collider, covering the most-talked-about stars, movies, and TV shows. Before joining Collider, she was a Digital News Writer at People Magazine and served as Associate Editor at SheKnows, where she honed her expertise in celebrity coverage and entertainment journalism.
A proud Latina from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Giovana graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Journalism and International Studies. She has interviewed countless celebrities, including Anne Hathaway, Halle Berry, Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Brenda Song, and is known for her encyclopedic knowledge of film, TV, and pop culture.
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For 12 seasons, the Fox series Bones proved to have an unbeatable formula. With the will-they-won't-they main characters played by Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz, the series delivered years of classic procedural drama with a twist as they look into a corpse's body (and bones) to get to what really happened. But while the series was certainly a hit, Bones' spin-off series never reached the same fate.
In the sixth season of Bones, audiences tuned to an odd backdoor pilot episode titled “The Finder.” In the episode, they were introduced to Geoff Stults's Walter Sherman, a character who inspired his very own spin-off, also titled The Finder. The series premiered on January 12, 2012, but, like many TV shows over the years, was canceled after one season and never had enough time to find its groove.
What Is 'The Finder' About?
The Finder is a crime procedural that follows Walter Sherman (Geoff Stults), a character from Bones who's sought for his ability to find anything, from the incredibly important to the mundane, like a pair of socks. Walter's talent was refined after he suffered brain damage from his time serving in the Army in Iraq, which caused him to be incredibly paranoid about the people and the world around him. This brain damage also created an inherent impulse to find missing things, hence Walter's nickname as "The Finder."
Along the way, Walter has the friendship of Leo Knox (Michael Clarke Duncan), a former lawyer who acts not only as a local bar owner, but as Walter's manager, and sometimes, his bodyguard. Walter, who lives out in the Florida Keys, also relies on Willa Monday (Maddie Hasson), a rebellious teenager who becomes his assistant. Together, the unlikely team takes on cases involving missing people, stolen valuables and unexplained disappearances.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Tracker Character Are You? Colter · Reenie · Bobby · Russell
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you which one you are. Tracker launched out of the Super Bowl and immediately became the biggest new drama on American television, built around a man who lives in a trailer and finds people for a reward.
🧭Colter Shaw(Justin Hartley)
⚖Reenie Greene(Fiona Rene)
💻Bobby Exley(Eric Graise)
🎯Russell Shaw(Jensen Ackles)
01
Where would you rather work? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
03
What is your home like? One answer only.
04
How do you solve a problem? Pick the closest answer.
05
Pick a skill. No wrong answers here.
06
What is your relationship with your family? Pick the closest answer.
07
How do you feel about getting paid? Think about your last job.
08
What do you want out of a case? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
Reward Offered You Are…
Tracker works because the case changes every week and the four people solving it never do. Here is which of them you are, what it says about you, and the case for yours being the best of the four.
Colter Shaw
You would rather handle it yourself and you are usually capable of doing so. Colter is a survivalist who lives in an Airstream and takes reward money for finding missing people, which is a premise that only works because he is clearly running from something of his own.
- You are competent and self-contained, and the people who love you find both of those slightly difficult.
- The show premiered after the Super Bowl in February 2024 and became the most watched new drama of that season.
- Justin Hartley came straight off This Is Us into it, which is about as hard a pivot as network TV offers.
- Your flaw is that handling everything yourself is a decision, not a personality, and people can tell.
Reenie Greene
You know somebody, and that somebody owes you a favour. Reenie is the lawyer Colter calls when a case needs a door opened legally, and she is the only person on the show who can get further with a phone call than he can on foot.
- Your network is your real skill, and you have been quietly building it for years.
- She was promoted to a series regular because the audience responded to her faster than anybody planned for.
- Every episode where she takes the lead is an argument that the show should let her do it more often.
- Your risk is that being the fixer for everybody leaves nobody fixing things for you.
Bobby Exley
You are two steps ahead and you rarely mention it. Bobby is the one who finds the thing that unlocks the case, usually from a desk, usually about ninety seconds before anybody realises they needed it.
- You do the part of the work nobody sees and you are completely fine with that, mostly.
- Eric Graise brought the character in from the pilot and he has grown into the show's best deadpan.
- Every procedural needs this role and very few of them make it this watchable.
- Your weakness is assuming people have noticed what you did, because they have not.
Russell Shaw
You turn up, change the temperature of the room, and leave people arguing about you. Russell is Colter's brother, ex-military, and the show has never once let the audience settle on whether he is a help or a problem, which is exactly why he keeps coming back.
- You are the most interesting person in most rooms and the hardest to plan around.
- Jensen Ackles arrived in the first season and the response was strong enough that CBS kept bringing him back.
- Fifteen years of Supernatural means he can play charming and unsettling in the same line reading.
- Your flaw is that keeping people guessing is fun for you and tiring for everybody else.
'The Finder' Deserves a Second Chance
While fans of Bones might've rejoiced when they heard about a series spin-off, The Finder was never able to achieve the same success. The show was met with significant barriers from its inception; after originally being slated for Thursday night airings, the series was moved to Friday nights and aired out of order. Also important to its lackluster success was The Finder's mid-season premiere. The odd-timed premiere meant that already established and returning shows are midway through their seasons, meaning The Finder's pilot slot had a bigger risk of not gaining the same viewing audience as something premiering in the fall.
Overall, while critics were not overly supportive of the series, The Finder did receive a warm reception from audiences, even if not enough to warrant a renewal. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds 82% on the Popcornmeter, with reviews calling the series "entertaining and fun." "Good, lighthearted, fun show. Talented and engaging cast," wrote one review. "At every episode I wanted to watch another. Never knowing what unexpected thing Walter was going to be asked to find next." The Finder also marked one of Duncan's last credits before his death on September 3, 2012. He passed just four months after The Finder came to an end.
With all that said, while The Finder never achieved the same success and numbers as Bones, let alone another comparable show, The Tracker, The Finder still makes for an entertaining, light watch. With a fascinating protagonist, an excellent cast of supporting characters, and mind-bending cases, it delivers another well-done procedural, and the perfect weekend binge.
- Release Date
- 2012 - 2012-00-00
- Network
- FOX
- Directors
- Daniel Sackheim, Adam Arkin, Alex Chapple, David Boreanaz, David Straiton, Dwight H. Little, James Hayman, Kevin Hooks, Milan Cheylov, Seith Mann, Terrence O'Hara
- Writers
- John Zinman, Matt MacLeod, Patrick Massett, Sanford Golden, Aaron Ginsburg, Karen Wyscarver, Wade McIntyre
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Arjay Smith
Trey
-
Blake Shields
Young Eddie Ross
-
Chris Tardio
Det. Curtis Gillespie
-
Cloie Wyatt Taylor
Teacher
An Iraq war vet suffers a brain injury that triggers the ability to see connections between seemingly unrelated events, objects or people.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.