Summary
Sheriff Country delivers Part 1 of a two-part crossover event in “The Finest”, and while the broad strokes work well, some of the minor details are questionable.
As if it wasn’t already impossible not to compare Boston Blue and Sheriff Country – a comparison which virtually never flatters the former – it’s even less so now, since Episode 13 of both shows goes out of its way to remind us of the connections to a wider TV universe. But while Boston Blue’s tasteful cameo worked quite well, the big two-part crossover between Sheriff Country and Fire Country arguably causes more problems than it solves.
Crossovers are always a mixed bag. When everyone is on the same page, they can be tremendous, not to mention effective marketing drives. But even though Sheriff Country is set in the same town as Fire Country, the storytelling streams rarely cross, and that conspires a bit here to make a good chunk of “The Finest” feel lightly contrived. I’m not going to fault the urgent, compelling core case from ending on a cliffhanger that’ll be resolved elsewhere, since that’s kind of the point, but some of the more specific character-driven drama feels a bit off.
Even the fact that the episode starts with an interdepartmental baseball game that has never been mentioned before this point is a little weird. Likewise, there’s a constant reminder that most of these characters should have met each other before, but generally haven’t, whereas there are some pre-existing relationships – notably a rivalry between Boone and Bode – that are designed to function as introductions for people who don’t watch both shows. It’s all quite clunky.
And, more to the point, it’s all kind of pointless. Some of Boone’s dialogue is designed to give audiences a primer on who Bode is, which is fine, but then there’s a small note later about Wes heavily criticising Three Rock as a forced-labour prison camp, and it’s defended primarily through how it helped redefine Bode’s life. But anyone unfamiliar enough with the character to need an introduction through Boone isn’t going to get anything out of this. “The Finest” struggles to thread the needle between existing fans already in-the-know and people who only watch one of the two shows.
Wes bickering with Eve, and later with Sharon, feels a bit forced because, as mentioned, there isn’t a great deal of crossover in general aside from Sharon, who has shown up a few times. Understandably, then, Sharon and Mickey share the bulk of the drama, which is fine, but the stuff with Wes, and even with Bode and Boone, is clearly intended to create an interconnected texture that generally speaking just doesn’t exist here. Again, it isn’t bad, but it is a noticeable thing that, understandably, most episodes of this show don’t suffer from.
The main case of Sheriff Country Episode 13 is pretty good, though. A school bus explodes during that aforementioned baseball game, but luckily, none of the kids it should have been transporting were inside. Somewhat unluckily, though, that’s because they have all been kidnapped and are being held to ransom. Mickey’s job, then, becomes not only trying to figure out who the kidnappers are, but also keeping the peace around town as a huge number of parents all suffer the same panic about their missing children.
All of this works – mostly. Mickey’s position isn’t enviable, since the default response is obviously not to negotiate with terrorists, but try telling that to parents whose children are being live-streamed from a shipping container. She’s trying to keep her cards close to her chest so she doesn’t tip off the kidnappers, but that means keeping crucial information back from the citizens, which obviously backfires after a while. Her predicament isn’t helped by Sharon, whose mommy issues pull focus away from the crisis in a way that Mickey also, understandably, feels compelled to take charge of.
There are plenty of exciting late developments once it’s discovered where the children are, but the fiery cliffhanger will be dealt with in Fire Country, so it’s not entirely relevant to “The Finest” specifically. The job here was to get the right pieces into place, and almost blowing Boone and Bode up definitely accomplishes that. The kids having been buried alive is appropriately dramatic, and it all works rather well. It’s just a shame that some of the decisions made to get there ended up feeling a bit lacklustre and contrived.
