Summary
Sheriff Country continues to build most of its drama around the fates of Mickey and Skye in “The Sixth Man”, as even more evidence implicates them in Brandon’s murder.
It’s only Episode 3, and things really aren’t looking good for Mickey or Skye in Sheriff Country. Half of Edgewater believes Skye killed Brandon, and Mickey helped her cover it up, and the other half still doesn’t think she should be sheriff, just in case. Most people do continue to rely on Mickey when something goes wrong, obviously, but you can’t really fault them for the whole Skye thing, since “The Sixth Man” turns up even more evidence against her, not to mention implicating Mickey herself in a potential cover-up.
I don’t think there’s a great deal of suspense here – we know Mickey wasn’t involved in Brandon’s death, and there’s so much evidence mounting against Skye that it’s unlikely she was either – but it does keep things interesting week by week, because conflict thrives in things going wrong. And lots of things are going wrong. With all the debacle about the missing murder weapon, Skye looks guilty, and there’s still more that she isn’t letting on.
In the meantime, though, life has to go on. Mickey has to investigate an armoured truck robbery, and she has to do it alongside Boone, who is continuing to investigate Brandon’s murder as objectively as he can. This relationship is key to how the season is progressing, since it represents a lot of other themes and ideas in microcosm. Boone represents the home-grown by-the-book local lawman, whereas there has always been lingering suspicion around Mickey, thanks to her coming from Deadwater and her lifelong criminal father. For many in Edgewater, what’s happening with Skye, and what they imagine to be Mickey’s role in it, is long-held prejudices being vindicated.
This also leads us to another interesting dynamic. Wes, having moved into town and being forced to play by civilised rules, has kind of put himself at odds with Mickey and Boone by default. His way of dealing with things is very different from the accepted norm, and thus, his advice to Skye on how to deal with things is similarly risky. This is at least in part why she has made such consistently bad decisions since the start of the whole scandal, but we shouldn’t absolve her of personal responsibility too much, since a lot of her decision-making leaves a lot to be desired.
Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire, though, which is precisely why Brandon’s family doesn’t respond to Mickey pushing for a restraining order, but are rattled by Wes taking matters into his own hands and threatening them directly. I do get the sense from Sheriff Country Episode 3 that we’re going to see this kind of thing playing out more and more, especially as Mickey and Skye continue to look more and more guilty, which certainly seems to be the direction we’re heading in.
“The Sixth Man” is so-called, by the way, because the armoured truck robbery used a clever ruse where an online ad hired people to paint an empty storefront and dressed them all up in the same overalls and masks to disguise the identity and activities of the mysterious sixth man. The case is fine, on its own terms, but it’s primarily of interest because of how Mickey and Boone work together to solve it, since it highlights they’re both independently capable and that there’s no love lost on account of Boone investigating Skye. At least, not until there is love lost over that, obviously.
But Boone repeatedly claims to be following the evidence, and, to be fair, he is. It just so happens that the evidence keeps leading him back to Mickey and Skye. When he learns that Mickey had picked Brandon up in the premiere and not arrested him, it only casts more suspicion over her. Why didn’t she process him? Where did she take his drugs? We know it was innocent, obviously. But nobody else does. And this is happening at just about the same time that Skye has finally decided to tell Mickey that she bought the knife that was used to kill Brandon, ostensibly as a gift. Mickey barely has a second to process this revelation before Boone is at the door with a warrant to search the place.
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