Summary
Sheriff Country is very good in an understated way, and “Expecting Trouble” is one of those examples of an episode that works on every level.
People are sleeping on Sheriff Country. I’m not suggesting it’s secretly a prestige drama or anything, but as far as procedurals go, it’s really a very fine version of that oh-so-familiar format, and I think you can see it quite clearly in Episode 5, “Expecting Trouble”. Divided into the typical A, B, and C plots, each strand effectively informs the ongoing character drama, and it still builds to a less-than-ideal conclusion for Mickey, just when things seem to be going too smoothly. There’s an efficiency and economy to the storytelling that some shows – cough, Boston Blue – could learn a lot from.
Consider the main case of the week. Mickey and Boone are tasked with escorting a heavily pregnant witness named Valerie to witness protection after her U.S. Marshals escort is killed. Valerie’s baby daddy was killed by a notorious criminal named Demir Boz, and she’s heading to San Francisco to testify against him. To stop her, Boz has hired a hitman. So, Micky and Boone need to work together to both keep her alive and get her where she’s going.
This works in the typical, simple terms it’s clearly intended to, but it also works on another level. With Mickey and Boone trapped in very close proximity, and Val adamant about them working together at an optimum level to ensure her survival and that of her child, they have no choice but to work through their respective issues stemming from all the drama around Skye’s arrest and Boone having handed in his resignation.
All the requisite drama is here – Mickey’s intimate knowledge of Edgewater gives them an advantage, but Val being on the cusp of giving birth sets them back, and so on, and so forth – but it’s reinforced by the effective character work between Mickey and Boone. I’m not entirely sure if there’s supposed to be a romantic contour here – something happens at the end that left me unsure; more on that in a minute – but their relationship feels very lived-in.
With Mickey occupied, that leaves Cassidy in charge back at the station, for the first time. And her arc is a nice coming-of-age moment when she’s faced with a seemingly insurmountable set of problems – most of them recalcitrant civilians that turns into a deliberate act of sabotage that then reveals a cagier plan for an abused wife to get help from the authorities – that she has to figure out how to deal with in her own way.
This also reveals some of Cass’s own background with domestic abuse. It’s handled in an understated way, but that’s all the better, and it feels fitting with her growth as a deputy independently of just being Mickey’s protege (or Travis’s squeeze). It gives her more individual character and proves that she’s perfectly competent on her own; she just had to let go of her idealised wish to emulate Mickey and forge her own path instead. It’s nice.
And, of course, there’s also Wes and Skye. In Sheriff Country Episode 5, both are toying with the idea of leaving town, the former to return to the mountains and the latter to pursue her academic future, but neither of them is especially sure about it. This ends up manifesting as a jam session with Wes and a bunch of his old grower buddies that quickly turns into a health emergency. Wes has a heart condition that he’s medicated for, but he hasn’t been taking his meds (something that he has kept from Mickey). His buddies and Skye are able to save him, but she puts a pill-popping plan together to avoid something similar happening in the future. She also resolves to stay at home, not just to keep an eye on him – although that’s probably part of it – but because she needs some time to figure out what she actually wants to do with her life, not just what she feels like she should be doing. Wes, 40 years her senior, still feels much the same, so there’s no rush.
This all feels very nice and conflict-averse, but it doesn’t end up working out that way. Smartly, “Expecting Trouble” pulls the rug a little bit at the very end. Mickey tears up Boone’s resignation, since she thinks that’s what she should have done in the first place and what Boone was expecting her to do, but no, it turns out he definitely is leaving. His wife has even turned up to help him do so, and this comes as a major surprise to Mickey, who didn’t even know he was married.
This is a little weird to me. The fact that Mickey didn’t know about this, and her reaction to finding out the news, implies that Boone has deliberately kept it from her. But why? Is he just unnecessarily secretive, or did something happen at some point between Boone and Mickey that perhaps wouldn’t have happened if she’d known he was married? At this point, who knows? I’m sure we’ll get a better sense of that next week.
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