Sheriff Country Season 1 Episode 14 Tests Cassidy’s Theory

Critic’s Rating: 3.8 / 5.0

3.8

After an intense crossover with Fire Country, Sheriff Country dives into a case that could run for multiple episodes.

Titled “Show of Force,” it’s finally time for Cassidy to put forward her theory to Mickey.

What I would like to know is why she left it just days before the Blood Moon Festival.

I know the kidnapped children and Boone being trapped underground with Bode took time away from the main Sheriff Country Season 1 plot, but Cassidy should have told Mickey as soon as she saw the pattern, with everyone having two weeks to put a theory together.

Mickey Does the Best She Can with Limitations Placed on Her

As usual in small towns, we see a mayor who is more bothered by money and people’s fun than by their safety.

Safety is Mickey’s purview, and he makes that very clear from the beginning of the hour.

So, it’s not all that surprising he is unwilling to shut the festival down.

I will admit, though, that he was right not to shut down the festival. Punch was always going to be more concerned with optics than actually keeping people safe.

So, Mickey did what she needed to do: put multiple extra deputies on duty to keep the people of Edgewater safe.

While shutting it down could have helped to save a life, it wouldn’t have helped to capture the guy, so I wasn’t all that mad that the festival went ahead.

This could have been the perfect opportunity to look out for anyone who fit the bill.

On top of making a big deal about shutting down the event, Mickey made a huge mistake in having multiple deputies there in uniform.

She should have had just the normal number of deputies there in other years, and then everyone else in plain clothes.

The minute the serial killer saw the higher number of deputies, he was likely going to rethink his plan. It would have been too much of a risk for him.

In the end, the decision to have this show of force that she kept banging on about didn’t work.

Okay, it was great to see her take down a sexual predator, but he isn’t the serial killer.

Social media posts can be delayed, so I wouldn’t usually trust them as proof that the guy was out of state or out of the country, but in this case, it all adds up.

Cassidy Handled the Case Well

There was a moment when I questioned whether Cassidy should be heading this search. Well, there were two moments.

The first was when she went out to hunt for the bodies. I love that Mickey trusted her — and, in the end, she was the right person for the job — but she is far too close to this search, and it should have been handed off to someone else.

However, nobody else would have likely looked at that tree and considered another place to bury bodies.

Most people would have looked at the ground. Why wouldn’t you bury a body in Deadwater? As Punch says, it’s called Deadwater for a reason.

Cassidy has always shown that she can think outside the box.

She was the one to put all the pieces together to figure out that there is a serial killer, and she was the one earlier in the season who was able to figure out that a domestic abuse victim was the one to start the fire in the sheriff’s office as a cry for help.

She is a deputy willing to look beyond the norm and work on a hunch, so yes, she was needed in the initial search.

The second time was when Mickey was arguing with Punch about shutting down the festival. She looked over and saw how uncomfortable the woman was with the artist.

How could she not even question that?

She knows a domestic violence situation because she has been in one. As a woman, she’s likely also experienced uncomfortable situations with leering men.

With everything going on and the fact that the uncomfortable woman was Black, Cassidy should have considered that this needed to be reported.

It took finding an old photo in Maggie’s CPS file to connect all the dots, which was completely out of character for Cassidy, and made me wonder if she was just a little too close to the case.

In the end, she managed to get to him before he could attack, but sadly, he’s not the actual guy they’re looking for.

To be honest, everyone jumped to conclusions way too quickly when it came to that arrest.

There was nothing to point him to the killings at the time of the arrest, and it didn’t take long for his lawyer to prove he wasn’t there.

It all goes back to that show of force that Mickey is so sure worked. It didn’t work at all!

Instead, it tipped the real serial killer off, and now Cassidy is going to find herself in a far more perilous situation than she needed to be.

It’s going to make for a great story, I’m sure, but it is frustrating that it didn’t have to come to this if the writing for Cassidy’s character had been a little more consistent.

I am glad this wasn’t all crammed into one episode, and that the Sheriff Country writers gave the whole story time to breathe.

Marginalized girls and women are taken and forgotten about all the time, and this particular storyline helps to put their names on the map.

Yes, this is fictional, but it shows what needs to happen in the real world. It’s time to change the narrative.

Chit-Chat From the Bull Pen

• Hank — or I guess, Burrito Boy — is growing on me a lot as a character, and I’m so glad Ian Quinlan has been promoted to a series regular for Sheriff Country Season 2.
• Boone acknowledging Hank is like a younger version of him made me smile, as it gives us a little more detail about Boone’s past.
• We need to see more of Mickey dealing with the emotions that come from questioning her predecessor.

Enjoyed this review? Help us out.
Drop a comment or share it — it’s free, painless, and helps keep independent TV coverage alive. Let’s explore everything you loved, didn’t love, and maybe even hated about the latest episode of Sheriff Country.