Summary
Sheriff Country returns to its roots in “Twenty Four Candles” with more of a focus on Skye, Wes, and weed. It feels a bit overly familiar, granted, but the character stakes are enough to keep things compelling.
With the Blood Moon killer finally apprehended, it’s business as usual in Sheriff Country. And that business is weed, obviously. Episode 16, “Twenty Four Candles”, feels like it’s going back in time a bit, giving Wes and Skye – remember her? – a bit more to do, while shifting the plot back to matters of land grabs and drug deals. But the biggest source of tension comes from Wes not being as legitimate as he pretends to Mickey, not to mention the ongoing romantic tension between Mickey and Boone.
It’s a good thing that this plot is couched in these character-driven terms, since it would probably feel a bit too familiar otherwise. I get that weed is a big industry in Edgewater, but surely there are other crimes going on? Wes’s role as a ghostly figure terrorising the woodland is fun, though, and also effective because of its inevitable ramifications on his relationships with Mickey and Skye, both of whom believe he has gone straight.
Wes is very much not on the straight and narrow, though. In actual fact, he’s sitting at the head of a co-op who are moving significant quantities of product all over the place, having done $2 million in sales in just a few months and now staring down the barrel of a potential $3 million deal with some folks from Colorado. Wes’s long-time pal Dale has set up the deal with Tanner, but at the start of the episode – or at least 36 hours before an in medias res cold open – Dale has gone AWOL, leaving Wes and Tanner to try and salvage the deal.
This takes a turn when Wes and Tanner go looking for Dale and find his son, Tommy, beaten to a pulp. Later, Mickey and Boone find Dale himself strung up like a scarecrow, also beaten half to death, strapped to a sign reading “Should have sold”. The land-grab plot is a callback to earlier in the season. Some nefarious buyer hiding behind a secretive shell company is hoovering up weed-rich acres in and around Edgewater, and anyone who doesn’t agree to sell, even for prices way more than the land is worth, seems to be getting made an example of.
Mickey, not realising that Wes is involved in the co-op, invites him to be part of a sting operation. The sheriff’s department hosts an auction of vehicles and land they have seized in busts, in the hopes of drawing out the buyer. A lawyer working on behalf of the enigmatic shell company tips his hand, but after a brief talking-to by Mickey and Boone, it isn’t clear whether he’s in the know or not about what his employers are really up to.
Proving this involves Gina, who is consistently underused, going undercover at a diner, posing as a waitress while wearing a wire. After a bit of quick thinking, she’s able to get the sheriff enough information to make a move. Nobody’s talking, but the authorities are at least a bit closer to the culprit than they were when they started.
Meanwhile in Sheriff’s Country Episode 16, Wes manages to patch up the deal with the guys from Colorado, despite Tanner’s determined efforts to sabotage the whole thing through sheer stupidity and ego, but Wes, feeling overconfident, drives the proceeds back into town in Dale’s truck. Since there’s an APB out on the vehicle – he couldn’t have used a different car?! – the police give chase while Wes has a cool $3 million in the front seat.
This brings us back to the opening of “Twenty Four Candles”, with the sheriffs pursuing Wes through the woods. He manages to give them the slip and hide the money, but it does make him late for Skye’s 24th birthday celebrations. Not only is Skye back for this episode, but her sudden desire to move into her own apartment also causes a rift between Mickey and Miranda, who is throwing money at Skye under the guise of employee bonuses, which feels too much like preferential treatment to Mickey (who is also probably smarting about not having the same kind of cash to throw around herself).
Anyway, Wes. By the time he arrives with his gift, he’s visibly shaken up, and that’s only going to become more pronounced, since Boone happens to mention that the sheriffs found the money. With the co-op demanding to know where the cash has gone, and the moolah stuck in a lock-up, I think we may be approaching a heist in the next episode. Is Wes still at the top of his game enough to pull it off? I have my doubts.
As I intimated at the top, I don’t love this show’s endless focus on Edgewater’s weed industry, but the rooting in clear character stakes definitely helps things along. We’ll see how it all shakes out before passing judgment.
