Summary
Sheriff Country continues to build an intimate web of overlapping narrative strands in Episode 2, and it’s working pretty damn well.
It’s hard not to compare Sheriff Country to Boston Blue. They’re pretty different shows on the face of it, sure, but are they really? Both debuted at the same time on CBS and Paramount+, both are spin-offs from beloved parent shows, both are about law enforcement, both have a strong underpinning of family, and so on, and so forth. But, at least as of Episode 2, the former is significantly more involving, at least in part because it seems to be genuinely trying to make things challenging for its characters in the exact way that I’ve just moaned about the latter not doing.
“Firewall” is better than the season premiere because it doubles down on the fractious dynamics rather than shying away from them. As the episode progresses, it becomes more and more likely that Skye killed Brandon, or at the very least that she knows more about his death than she’s letting on. This leads to several important knock-on effects, including Mickey clashing with Boone, Brandon’s family, and, on some level, her very idea of justice and right and wrong. As someone who has made a proud career of upholding the law, how can she reconcile that urge to do the right thing with her motherly instincts to protect her daughter?
Skye’s story starts out reasonable enough. She apparently found Brandon’s body, pulled the knife from his back – for some reason – and then dropped it and fled. She knew he was dead, she claims, because she once saw the family dog after it had passed away, and is now uniquely gifted at identifying when things were dead. This is a bit of a stretch, but Travis confirms it, since he’s sitting in as her lawyer, which apparently doesn’t constitute a conflict of interest despite Mickey not being allowed in the interview room.
Boone believes her. Why wouldn’t he? Evidence doesn’t emerge until later that she’s keeping something back. And yet, because of the teases in the premiere, we suspect Boone isn’t playing by the book pretty much immediately, which is a nice angle. I tend to lead towards the idea that he is just doing his job by following the investigation wherever it leads, even after discovering that the murder weapon is missing and Skye had stolen drugs from Brandon, which he confronted her about. She had motive. She was a known drug addict. Brandon was stabbed by someone he felt comfortable enough to turn his back on. Things aren’t looking good.
Mickey is distracted in Sheriff Country Episode 2 by a kidnapping case. Some out-of-town students decided to spend their summer trimming buds on a weed farm, but realised too late that they were doing a favour for sinister newcomers who kept them prisoner. I like this case because it lets us explore Deadwater, a more rural, lawless part of town where the cops aren’t welcome, and because it gives Wes something to do. Wes’s arc is interesting. He’s an ostensibly reformed criminal who is now living in town instead of up in the middle of nowhere, and his instincts are chafing against his responsibilities to Mickey and Skye. His past gives Mickey a way into Deadwater and helps her solve the case, but his inclination to flee the country with Skye keeps reminding us that he’s prone to doing something illicit at a moment’s notice. And I’m sure he will.
This case also features Cassidy, whose heart isn’t in it because she’s worrying about how her investigating Brandon’s murder and turning up more evidence against Skye is also affecting her new relationship with Travis, which is already awkward because he’s Mickey’s ex. The feel of an insulated small town is really prevalent in this show, and even though it doesn’t feel connected to the same version of that small town seen in Fire Country, it still has a very particular vibe that helps all these overlapping subplots to feel part of a wider picture.
At the end of “Firewall”, Skye is more on the hook for Brandon’s murder than ever and is now at risk from his family. Boone is continuing to investigate a case that might implicate his boss’s daughter, and we still don’t know if he can necessarily be trusted. Mickey is being forced to weigh up believing in the system and in Boone, or taking matters into her own hands, with influence from her father. It’s all cohering into a proper story, and I’m interested to see where it might go. You see how much conflict helps a show along?
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