Mickey and her team may have survived the siege, but Sheriff Country Season 1, Episode 11 ‘The Aftermath’ showed us how they’ve struggled to move on.
Healing from trauma doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to overcome the fear of having to survive an attack and fight for your life. And once the dust settled on the morning after the siege, it was clear that nobody was okay. Cassidy was left rattled by taking someone’s life, and Mickey didn’t want to talk about Enoch Barlow at all. Boone’s wife, Nora, was shaken by the reality that she won’t know if he’ll come home at the end of the day.
As much as we wanted Mickey and Travis to work, they’ll always butt heads in an ugly way where nobody can win. Nora and Boone met the same doomed fate, even if it was a softer break-off. Overall, we’re hurting because we love second-chance romance. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not naive, as we know not every relationship works. We just had a little hope here.
Sheriff Country Season 1, Episode 11 ‘The Aftermath’ was all about characters having hard conversations with each other that were emotional and heavy. There were big moments that elevated an hour surrounding the team’s investigation into a hacker’s death.
MORE: Did you miss last week’s ‘Crucible: Part Two‘ and want to read our thoughts? Read our review HERE!
Cassidy Was Front and Center
We love it when shows can intertwine personal and overall storylines together, and ‘The Aftermath’ delivers on creating the balance. Michele Weaver’s Cassidy shines in this hour as she navigates having taken someone’s life in the siege. There were many bullets shot that night between both cops and the Barlow family, but Cassidy knew she had struck someone to end their life. The moment had flashed through her head at different times throughout the episode as she returned for her first day back to work. And that was the first sign that Cassidy was still haunted by the attack.
The reminder of the harm she had done had rattled Cassidy throughout the hour. She was jumpy and loud when interrogating suspects. And lost in thought when interacting with civilians who believed her, Mickey, and Boone were Edgewater heroes. Feeling as if she was just doing her job, she felt detached from the public’s opinion about her. She didn’t feel like a hero. Not when people were injured and hurt in the aftermath. Cassidy was a survivor who did what she had to do to save herself and her team. It’s not a good feeling, not right now.
So, it wasn’t a surprise to us to see Cassidy lose her careful composure when finding out the suspect in this week’s investigation was a court judge who put her sister Zoe in jail. She had good reason for throwing professionalism out the window. At least for a second. Personally, we don’t blame Cassidy for losing her cool the way she did. She had the right to take Judge McRae down herself by bending the rules to get a warrant.
MORE: Did you miss our interview with Christopher Gorham, where he discussed Mickey and Travis in Season 2? Read HERE!
Zoe’s Investigation Needs Cassidy at Her Best
It may have been wrong to do as a cop, but it was what she needed to do as a sister. The judge was corrupt in arresting kids for petty crimes and putting them in for-profit prisons. She was the reason why Zoe spent so much time in jail as a teenager. Being in that environment changed her for the worse into somebody Cassidy couldn’t connect with.
Arresting the judge was personal for Cassidy in ‘The Aftermath’ and we’re glad she didn’t back down from finding McRae’s car without a warrant. Cassidy has a big heart that makes it easy for her to care about doing the right thing. For example, we previously saw just how far she went in connecting a single father and his son with an elderly widow with a big house when they needed somewhere to live. Although she technically did the “wrong” thing here, we know her actions were rooted in good.
However, that doesn’t mean Cassidy doesn’t need time away from active duty. She’s cracked at the edges and a little unstable right now.
Getting reprimanded by Mickey was one of the first times we’ve seen them get in each other’s faces. While we didn’t enjoy seeing those two argue, we know Mickey had done it out of love for her friend. Cassidy needs to give herself time to heal from the trauma surrounding the siege. She can’t dive headfirst into searching for Zoe if she isn’t at her best. Overall, we love both women, but we’ll have to agree with Mickey in ‘The Aftermath’. Cassidy can’t be directly in the field if she’s feeling like she’s a snap away from falling apart.
Mickey and Boone are Stubborn
In regard to Nora in ‘The Aftermath’, her reasons to leave Boone were justifiable because she didn’t want the past to repeat itself. She had already lost someone she loved who was in the line of duty. We get that she doesn’t want to spend her life unsure if her husband is going to come home. It’s undeniable that these two loved each other, but Boone wasn’t going to give up being a cop for love. We understand his love for the job just as much as we respect Nora for walking away from a relationship that would only worry her.
As for Mickey and Travis, we should’ve seen this coming. We knew they had work to do, mostly in improving communication skills. But communication isn’t even the issue anymore because both explained their feelings in their argument. Mickey’s need to be supported will never match Travis’s decisiveness. She gave him an ultimatum to choose between representing Enoch Barlow in court or being with her. And the choice wasn’t hard in the end, which hurt Mickey.
Their fight felt like we were watching two people play a game where both would lose at the end. Because Travis was justified in wanting to repay the man who saved his life. He didn’t care about winning the case. On the same note, Mickey’s anger is valid because Barlow’s family wanted her and her team dead. And representing them in court is something that deeply unsettled her. Not as a cop, but a survivor of an attack they instigated.
Sheriff Country Season 1, Episode 11 ‘The Aftermath’ put an end to both of these relationships. However, if we’re honest, neither Boone nor Mickey really fought back to hold onto love. Boone had let Nora go because he listened to her. And Mickey was too fragile to fight and stay with Travis after he did something she didn’t like.
Sheriff Country airs on Fridays at 8 pm EST on CBS.
