Summary
Sheriff Country is an efficient but familiar-feeling procedural in its pilot episode, but there are glimmers of real potential in the setup.
The hook of Sheriff Country is that it’s about a sheriff for whom the law is the least of her problems. Not that there isn’t a decent helping of garden-variety crime in Edgewater, one of those procedural small towns like Gibsons in Murder in a Small Town, where supposedly shocking events are an everyday occurrence, but Mickey Fox has most of that stuff under control. It’s her spiralling personal life that represents the biggest issue, a hodgepodge of different predicaments, including her battle for the position of Sheriff, an ex-con father, Wes, an ex-husband, Travis, who has struck up a relationship with her colleague, and an addict daughter, Skye, who can’t seem to keep herself out of trouble.
This is a spin-off of Fire Country, but it doesn’t strictly feel like one, which is, on balance, a good thing. It’s set in the same town but is almost entirely devoid of familiar faces, and immediately creates a very intimate circle that feels complex enough to me without having to pull double-duty as a cameo-fest. On its own terms, Sheriff Country is a standard procedural of a pretty high quality. I’d obviously like it to evolve into something a bit more than that, but I also don’t mind it starting on a familiar, sure footing.
Mickey is a fairly standard character thus far – a by-the-book officer who has done everything she can to better herself after growing up in challenging circumstances, given her pot-growing criminal father. Mickey was left to the care of the foster system, but those experiences only solidified her faith in Edgewater and its people, which is why she’s so keen to protect them as Sheriff – she’s the interim Sheriff when we meet her – despite not really wanting the job. Some of this is a bit clunky. Mickey is so beloved in the community that basically everyone loves her, including her protege, Cassidy, who seems to genuinely idolise her, which only makes it more complicated when it’s revealed early on in the pilot that Cassidy is in a relationship with Mickey’s ex, Travis.
Travis is a lawyer, which I’m sure will come up again as we go, but he isn’t antagonistic. In fact, he’s quite reasonable. He and Mickey disagree over how best to parent Skye in light of her addiction issues and bad influence boyfriend, and the Cassidy thing’s a bit awkward, but Travis is among the enthusiastic townfolk who assemble for Mickey’s big Sheriff speech at the end of the episode, and he’s very much on-side.
That speech is the clear endpoint that every element of Sheriff Country Episode 1 is building towards. There’s another subplot about Mickey’s partner, Boone, betraying her to run in opposition to her for the Sheriff position, and it’s really lightly explored just to facilitate a climactic moment where he realizes that she’s the right woman for the job after all – largely because of a stupid mistake that he himself made. The moment works, but it shouldn’t go unremarked upon how obvious a path the episode takes to get to it.
Boone’s decision is so stupid that it’s almost villainous, and he fixes Mickey with a look at the end of the episode – more on this in a moment – that suggests he might be a slightly more antagonist presence than his backing out of the Sheriff’s race suggested. We’ll have to wait and see in that regard, but it’s definitely possible. And the show doesn’t seem shy about getting pretty serious with its bad guys. The case-of-the-week in the pilot, about a seemingly loving couple who are abusing their kids, almost ends with those kids plummeting off a cliff, so there’s a feeling that it might commit to some heavier stuff (dodgy CGI notwithstanding).
For parenting help, Mickey turns not to Travis but to her father, who has some unconventional means of teaching Skye a lesson about her boyfriend’s obvious lack of responsibility. But just when it looks like Skye has extricated herself from her boyfriend’s idiocy – with help from a Fire Country cameo, for good measure – she ends up with literal blood on her hands. Now Mickey has to trust the system and the town she loves so much to do right by her daughter, or weigh up the possibility of following in her father’s footsteps and making sure she’s protected by any means necessary. Should be fun.
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