Summary
Sheriff Country makes its romantic intentions clear in “Plus One”, but it also has a strong core case and introduces the worrying idea of an active Edgewater serial killer.
Okay, we’re definitely doing the Mickey and Boone thing. Sheriff Country has been beating about the bush in that regard for weeks, but now that Travis and Nora are out of the picture, Episode 12 makes it pretty clear what direction we’re heading in. Still, there’s a synthetic weed outbreak to deal with in the meantime, especially since it’s turning the locals into Colin Firth in Kingsman, but I see you, that’s all I’m saying.
Oh, there might be a serial killer in town, too, but that’s related to Cassie’s private investigation into what happened to her sister, so we’ll get to it in a minute. It’s plenty to be going on with, but it’ll take a few weeks to get any answers, since, like Boston Blue, Sheriff Country is also going on a brief hiatus.
Anyway, the weed thing. “Plus One” starts pulling the rug immediately by opening with a home invasion that seems like a kidnapping but ends up being a fake-out when the husband finally wakes up and reveals that his wife went berserk and attacked him. This is just the first in a spate of incidents involving everyday locals going inexplicably nuts, attacking whoever’s nearby, and requiring an unreasonable amount of force to subdue.
Everyone in Edgewater seems to smoke weed, so that’s nothing out of the ordinary, but the homegrown stuff is being supplanted by a sinister synthetic strain that is being sold online by an enigmatic dealer calling himself “The Apothecary”. You get what you pay for, even in the drug game, but the cheap stuff turning people into maniacs isn’t ideal, so the Apothecary needs to be shut down.
Through Wes, Mickey and Boone find an old dude who used to sell by that name back in the day, but those days are long gone, and now he has a teenage assistant who seems to have assumed the mantle. That kid turns out to be Paul, the son of the “home invasion” from the opening. As it turns out, he was sick of his parents pressuring him academically and wanted to become a popular local hero by selling cheap weed. Needless to say, the plan backfired pretty considerably.
I mentioned Wes briefly there, and he is indeed back in Sheriff Country Episode 12, although Skye is mysteriously missing again. Wes thinks he’s going on a date with Gina, but it turns out she’s just asking him for a ride to and from her chemotherapy treatments, since she has breast cancer. It was caught early enough that she should be fine, but it still requires treatment, and since she didn’t want to worry Mickey, Wes seemed like the best bet. If nothing else, he can at least alleviate her symptoms with some proper weed, not that rubbish synthetic kind.
Gina also gives Mickey some dating advice, suggesting a cop-specific app that Boone is on, which is obviously foreshadowing. Before they respond to the home invasion call, Mickey and Boone are chilling out on the couch to watch football and eat snacks, but the fact that they each keep bringing up their exes makes it pretty clear that these aren’t just two colleagues getting along. This comes to the fore at the end of the episode when Boone decides to volunteer himself as Mickey’s plus-one to her friend’s couples-centric birthday party, a reminder that she isn’t a failure just because things didn’t work out between her and Travis.
And is there something blossoming between Cassidy and Hank? I do believe that’s the case, though they have bigger fish to fry, since their investigation into the disappearance of Cassie’s sister turns up another missing girl, and indeed another. As it turns out, one goes missing during every eerily-named “Blood Moon Festival”, meaning that there’s a serial predator at work in town. Something to look forward to.
