Tracker is an action-drama show based on the novel The Never Game by Jeffrey Deaver and currently airing its second season. It stars Justin Hartley, who you may know as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on Smallville.
Justin plays Colter Shaw, a man who makes his living helping people find their missing loved ones around the country. But he’s not who we’re talking about (mostly) today. We’re talking about Colter’s right hand man, Bobby Exley. Bobby is a computer hacker who helps Colter with intel, hacking into systems and helping with locations, etc.
He is also a bilateral amputee and guess what? His actor, Eric Graise, is too. It’s unclear how Eric became a bilateral amputee, if it was from birth or an accident, but his character has been one since birth.
Unfortunately but also fortunately, that’s about all the information we have about Bobby’s disability. In season one, there is no backstory. I haven’t been able to watch season two yet since it’s not on Hulu, but from the summaries I’m reading on Wikipedia, it doesn’t look like we will have a backstory then either.
You might be wondering why I said “unfortunately but also fortunately.” Let’s talk about the need for disabled characters to just be disabled but without making everything just about their disability. It’s something we touch on a bit in the previous piece about the deaf community and their having to create their own media while also feeling like we shouldn’t have to.
In Tracker, you really don’t hear much being talked about in regards to Bobby’s disability. You see the camera pan to his prosthetics often enough, and it gets mentioned once or twice, but overall, it doesn’t end up being that big of a deal.
The most it becomes a big deal is in the episode Chicago where Colter takes a job in Chicago to help Bobby look for his friend, Sun Mai. Bobby wants to help Colter in the field, but Colter tells him that he needs to be on his own. Colter says he needs to “Attack “light and fast,” and you can see the hurt in Bobby’s eyes when he says it.
The question is, did Colter say this because of the possibility that Bobby will slow them both down and risk getting hurt because he would have to run on prosthetics, or did Colter say this mostly because he’s just a man who is aloof, stoic, and always on his own. Or both? It’s a scene that is up for interpretation.
At the end of the day, I don’t believe that Colter meant any intentional harm behind his statement, whether it was or wasn’t about Bobby’s disability. After all, he’s pretty consistent in his pattern of telling people to stay put and he’ll go alone. But at the same time, I understand Bobby’s pain. When it’s your best friend you need to save, you want to do everything you can.
At the end of the day, Bobby didn’t listen and actually went into the building himself and ended up saving both Colter and Sun Mai when Colter got caught by the bad guys. Of course, Colter being Colter, scolded Bobby a little for this, but at the end of the day, he was grateful Bobby didn’t listen and was able to save them.
So, again, is this a moment of someone looking down on a disabled person and pitying them, infantilizing them? Honestly, it’s hard to say given who Colter is naturally because he would say the same to anyone else. But in that moment, I think Bobby did feel for a second that Colter may have been referring to his disability when he initially rejected the help.
This is not the first show to hire disabled actors and to have their character just be disabled without making it everything about them. NCIS: New Orleans has a character named Patton Plame, played by Daryl Mitchell, who is a wheelchair user. He is also an investigative computer specialist/hacker. And now that I’ve written that, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a pattern here casting disabled actors for hacker roles. Regardless, I don’t recall the show focusing a lot of time on Patton’s disability either. I do recall a backstory being told at one point, but it doesn’t become a major plot point like it would if it was a disabled focused show or movie.
So here comes another question: do we want disability brought up in our disability representation? Well, sure! There’s no avoiding disability and disabled people. We exist and we deserve to be out there for everyone to see. Do we need every disabled character to have their disability be the sole focus of their role, of the TV show/movie? Absolutely not! Give us a backstory once or twice to tell us what happened, sure. After all, we learn the backstories of non-disabled characters. But I think there’s a difference between an episode or two of one’s life of disability, a few more moments sprinkled in here and there, and there being the entire plot about disability.
Give us the roles where we’re computer hackers, moms, fathers, teachers, farmers, cooks, whatever! We live everyday lives just like everyone else. And while, yes, our disabilities come into play in our everyday lives, we’re also living lives where it’s just… that. We’re just living.