After so much focus on the missing girls of Edgewater and the crossover event with Fire Country, it felt like Sheriff Country had forgotten an arc.
Sheriff Country Season 1 Episode 16 opened with action, as Mickey, Boone, and others chased someone through the woods — someone we learned was Wes.
It’s time to go back to Wes deciding not to go legit after all, but that’s all likely to come crashing down very soon.
A Reminder of Forgotten Arcs
One thing Sheriff Country has managed to do is get a lot of arcs running for individual characters, but there are times when they seem to be forgotten about.
I’d completely forgotten that Wes had decided to form a co-op with the other weed growers in Deadwater.
This arc began before the winter finale, during Sheriff Country Season 1 Episode 8.
After an attack on legal growers while they were trying to pay their taxes, Wes and others realized there was only one course of action.
They couldn’t pursue legal avenues because no one was there to protect them, so most of them banded together to form this co-op of illegal growers.
What this episode proves is that a lot can go on without the sheriff’s department being aware.
Mickey rarely goes to Deadwater, so it makes sense that she and Boone wouldn’t know anything about the operations happening.
Plus, it’s not like Wes, and others don’t have experience in running against the law.
That being said, it was only a matter of time before something happened, and it’s taken eight episodes.
This could have been a much bigger moment if the writers had reminded us here and there that this was going on.
Sure, we need to see that the weed growers can act without Mickey realizing, but there also needs to be something to draw us in.
All we’d need to see if something was happening in the background or if Wes was doing something sneaky. Instead, it feels like the entire arc has been forgotten about until now.
The lack of a reminder also meant that the growers’ disagreements didn’t feel as problematic.
Of course, the older growers with the experience are going to think they know better, and sometimes they do. However, Tanner’s pushback didn’t make much sense.
There’s clearly some sort of animosity between Tanner and Wes, but it’s hard to appreciate it when we’re not shown it all that often.
This wasn’t the only forgotten arc, either. The threat against homeowners in Deadwater also comes up.
During Sheriff Country Season 1 Episode 6, a murder investigation led to conversations about a buyer putting a lot of pressure on people in Deadwater to sell their homes.
While the murder investigation was solved, the house-selling part of it wasn’t, and it ended up being forgotten about.
Just a mention here or there would have helped the audience see that this was still a problem, rather than feeling like the threat against Dale’s house came out of nowhere.
I have a problem with the way that the installment made Mickey seem a little dumb.
She’s supposed to know everyone in town well, and that’s certainly the case when it comes to the growers, but she sometimes gets so fixated on what she thinks she knows.
That leads her not to think outside the box, and it can come across as naive and dumb.
Let’s take her questions about Luna. When she sees that Luna is worried about Dale and is hanging out with other illegal growers, Mickey doesn’t think too much about it.
Sure, she makes a comment, but she doesn’t consider it too deeply when she should.
Why would a legal grower be so close to illegal growers, when she wasn’t in the past? Wouldn’t that sound alarm bells?
I could have understood it if it all came down to the threat against those who refuse to sell their houses and land, but it didn’t.
Luna admits that she and others have had a persistent buyer, and that could have been a reason for her to join in with the illegal growers — they would all want to protect their land, and there’s safety in numbers.
However, Mickey doesn’t once bring up that theory on Sheriff Country Season 1 Episode 16, even though she would have done so during previous installments.
Instead, she just has a thought, then moves on, and, from what we know of Mickey, that doesn’t sit right.
Gina Finally Gets Her Chance to Shine
There was a moment that made me smile: Sheriff Country finally giving Gina something to do.
I certainly felt her disappointment in the world that she does for Mickey and the deputies. She works for the police department, but all she really does is go on coffee runs and make phone calls.
She wants to feel like she matters, and while she does to Wes, it’s easy to see how she’s overlooked at the office.
Now, again, I would have loved to see some sort of buildup to this. Seeing her get frustrated with the tasks she was asked to do would have made this arc seem more believable.
Instead, it’s like her feelings come out of nowhere, and that’s not fair to Caroline Rhea. She deserves to do more on this series, even if she is a regular guest star rather than a series regular.
We get to see how Gina can think on the spot when she goes into the diner with the wire.
Rather than calling off the sting, she works out a way to make sure the conversation can still be heard, though she is lucky the attorney didn’t see her at the sheriff’s office.
It works, as well — not that we had any doubts, right? Gina has been around long enough to know the tricks of the trade.
This is a sign that Gina needs to be used more than just grabbing the “good” coffee from Costco, and I hope to see that throughout Sheriff Country Season 2.
Chit-Chat From the Bullpen
- Skye’s storyline didn’t really move things forward, except to show that nepotism can be a problem that nobody else sees.
- Wes should have had the skills to remain calm at the end of the hour.
- I get the feeling the co-op won’t stick by Wes as the truth comes out, despite knowing it could have happened to any of them.
- That look Boone had for Mickey is certainly going to get the Mickey-Boone shippers going, but I really don’t want Sheriff Country to go there!