SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Sheriff Country” Season 2, Episode 5, “No Way In” and “Fire Country” Season 5, Episode 5, “No Way Out.” Both series stream on Paramount+.
It was all hands on deck for the most recent crossover between CBS procedurals “Sheriff Country” and “Fire Country.” A raging wildfire sent Manny (Kevin Alejandro) and the rest of Station 42 to the Edgewater Police Department to ask Mickey (Morena Baccarin) and her squad for help evacuating residents if the flames moved closer to town. The request was made a bit awkward by the reveal that Manny and Mickey once went on a date from hell after being paired up at the police department’s annual date auction.
There wasn’t too much time to dwell on that, as the mission was complicated by the news of a prison break. Three women inmates escaped a transport van in the midst of the fire chaos, and Mickey needed her troops to find the missing convicts instead of helping with the fire. Mickey ultimately sacrificed herself to the convicts after they were found at The Meat Up, and would only let the hostages inside go if Mickey let them take her daughter, Skye (Amanda Arcuri), with them as collateral to make it across the county border.
Matt Lauria and Morena Baccarin
Courtesy of Darren Goldstein/CBS
Skye was saved by her mom, and Manny didn’t let a bad date stop him from volunteering to drive the fire truck the trio wanted to escape in so he could help them fight the incoming flames at the top of the crossover’s second hour. The situation went from stressful to terrifying when a downed semi-truck forced Mickey to improvise and call in his crew so they could allegedly clear the truck, but also buy him and Mickey time to escape their captors. The trio realized what was going on before Mickey and Manny could fully escape, leading to a shootout and one inmate with a serious grudge trying to ax Mickey to death.
Eventually, Boone (Matt Lauria), Bode (Max Thieriot), and the crew were able to subdue Manny and Mickey’s captors, allowing everyone to go home to their families in one piece. Manny and Mickey ended the day with a beer, and they cleared the air about their awful date. The chemistry was crackling as they shared a drink, and they weren’t the only pair with sparks flying in the two-hour crossover.
Variety spoke to “Sheriff Country” showrunner Matt Lopez and “Fire Country” showrunner Eric Guggenheim about how they crafted this year’s action-packed crossover episodes with shows that film on opposite coasts — and what burgeoning relationships are going to extend into the rest of the season.
What is the biggest logistical challenge of planning a crossover for two shows that shoot on opposite sides of Canada, with “Fire Country” filming in Vancouver, and “Sheriff Country” in Toronto?
Eric Guggenheim: You said it. The shows film on opposite sides of the country, and across three time zones. Scheduling is probably the biggest challenge, but it’s a fun puzzle for us to figure out. It’s a real credit to the line producers on both “Sheriff” and “Fire” that they were able to make it work. The next thing is continuity, because we shot scenes for Part 2 in Toronto before we started shooting “Fire Country” Season 5. Then we shot scenes from Part 1 in Vancouver further down the road.
Matt Lopez: It’s definitely the scheduling. If an actor is needed in the other city for two days, you have to tack on a couple of days of travel on either end of that. That is very tricky. I know for the cast, they enjoy it, but it is hard for them with the jet lag and everything. I think they love visiting the sister show and visiting with the other cast. We do these one-offs all the time where Wes [W. Earl Brown]]will go to “Fire,” or Jake [Jordan Halloway] will go to “Sheriff,” but it feels a bit like “Avengers” when the whole gang gets together.
Matt Lauria and Max Thieriot
Courtesy of Sergei Bachlakov/CBS
Can you talk about the learning curve when “Fire Country” cast members have to learn how to do a sting or arrest someone properly and “Sheriff Country” actors have to deal with flames?
Matt Lopez: I love going over to “Fire.” Dawn, who is one of our “Sheriff” consultants, [is] a retired SWAT commander, and she’s incredible. She’s on my “Sheriff” set all the time. I love sitting with tech consultants on “Fire” and learning about everything. I think the cast loves that too. It’s just like, “Oh, that’s how the other club does it.”
What made a prison break the right premise to bring the casts together for this crossover?
Guggenhiem: “Con Air” was certainly an inspiration. It’s funny, because there’s almost a whole subgenre of ‘90s action films that seemed to take place during weather events, whether it was rainfall, tornadoes or fires. That was also a big inspiration for us. Then throw in “Thelma & Louise,” which is another great ‘90s thriller. That’s how this idea was born, and then it was figuring out what the shape of it was. One of the things I love about this particular crossover is that there are stakes right away, but as the two-hour story progresses, the scope just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It feels like every few minutes there is a new card turned, a new obstacle, a new reveal.
Morena Baccarin
Courtesy of Darren Goldstein/CBS
Mickey and Manny end up being the odd couple at the center of both hours. What made them the ideal pairing to put together? We haven’t seen them interact much before this.
Lopez: Kevin Alejandro came over and directed two episodes of Season 1 of “Sheriff Country.” I was able to see, off camera, how Morena and Kevin would josh each other and bust each other’s chops in a really fun, good-natured way. When we first sat down we looked at last year’s crossover pairings, we had unexpected pairings, like we threw Wes and Eve together. We looked at those two rosters, and asked who we wanted to see that we haven’t seen and whether there are any that we wanted to repeat. Bode and Boone have their buddy cop — speaking of ‘80s and ‘90s action movies — thing. We felt like we wanted to see that again. When it came to different pairings, Mickey and Manny came to mind.
Joan Rater, one of the creators of both shows, told me once that there was an early outline for the “Sheriff Country” pilot where it was strongly suggested that Mickey and Manny had dated. It ended up completely falling away, but I guess it stayed in my subconscious. That turned into, “What if they went on this historically bad date?” It wasn’t like Joan’s version where they had dated for months. We morphed it into them just having the date from hell.
They go from strangers who had been on one bad date to being friends — or potentially more. Should fans be reading into that final scene between them? The chemistry was palpable.
Guggenheim: It’s funny that you say that, because we felt the same thing watching the cut. The chemistry is off the charts, but Manny is in a committed relationship.
Lopez: If you read the last scene on the page, it was just a friendly wrap-up. It’s two colleagues having a beer. When we saw it, it was like, “OK, there’s definitely chemistry there.” It’s interesting and fun to think about.
Amanda Acuri
Courtesy of Darren Goldstein/CBS
Two people who were a lot more overt with their romantic intentions were Tex (Elias Cacavas) and Skye. Can you tease what you’re setting up there and how Mickey is going to feel about it? Her daughter is going to stay sober, but she wants to date an inmate at Three Rock.
Lopez: We agree, they have great chemistry. The folks at the studio and the network wanted more of them. They are really, really good. It’s a pairing that we are going to see again on both shows. We were talking about this yesterday in the writers’ room. Both Mickey and Wes are going to find out about Skye’s new boyfriend. For a guy who has served two stints in a federal penitentiary, Wes is not cool with it and does not think it is a good idea for Skye to be dating an ex-con.
Mickey faces an inmate in this episode who wants to kill her, but Mickey promises that she’ll try to reunite Crystal (Britney Young) with her son. Does that go out the window when Crystal still tries to kill her? They share a look before Crystal is taken away that says maybe Mickey still has it in her to try.
Lopez: You’ve hit on a key piece of Mickey’s DNA as a cop. What makes her different from so many other cops on television is the level of compassion and empathy that she has. We’ve seen it time and again, especially when it comes to mothers. While I think attempted murder is a bridge too far with Crystal, it’s not a stretch of my imagination to think that Mickey, at the very least, would check up on that kid. That’s just very much who she is.
Kevin Alejandro
Courtesy of Justine Yeung/CBS
Station 42 was facing some very serious budget and resource issues before this crossover. Are there going to be repercussions for Manny demanding a fire truck that could have potentially been stolen by three convicts?
Guggenheim: This crossover exists almost as its own piece. We are tracking some of the character things through these two episodes, but what’s happening with 42 isn’t really addressed in the crossover. You can kind of just drop in without having too much information.
Sharon (Dianne Farr) does show up in the crossover, but we don’t learn anything more about what she’s done with that giant bag of money. What can you tell us about what’s next for that storyline and how it’s going to play out on “Fire Country”?
Guggenheim: Sharon has done a bad thing for good and noble reasons, but it’s going to come back to bite her. That’s something that’s going to play out over the next several episodes, beginning with Episode 6.
For “Sheriff Country,” we’ve been dodging the elephant in the room, which is Mickey’s Season 2 premiere confession that she regrets not giving Boone a chance. Is that going to become relevant in the next few episodes?
Lopez: It will 1,000% become relevant. Cassidy [Michele Weaver] witnessed that confession. Boone witnessed it. All of those emotions are churning under the surface through the first chapter of our Season 2 and they are going to bubble up in a big way. They will have to be dealt with in ways that I think will force Mickey and Boone into a new dynamic that’ll change their working relationship and their personal relationship moving forward, maybe forever.
Have you started thinking about the next crossover yet? If ‘90s action movies were the inspiration for this one, what genre of film will you be queueing up for the next one?
Guggenheim: I thought it would be really nice to flip the order for the next one and have “Fire Country” come first, and then “Sheriff.” That’s been my only thought so far.
Lopez: I like that idea as well. We’ve talked a little bit about that. I’ve taken a beat to say, “We work for Jerry Bruckheimer: Let’s do a Bruckheimer movie.” That’s where “Con Air” came from. It doesn’t hurt that we usually get a little more money than we ordinarily would for the crossovers. Our attitude is to go big or go home, but I will say this: the crossover romance you cited, whether it’s Mickey and Manny or Tex and Skye, is a really fun fixture that we’re going to see going forward. Maybe John Hughes movies, with a little bit of the jock going out with the nerdy emo girl.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Source: variety.com
