Sheriff Country EP Unpacks Fall Finale's 'Emotionally Clarifying' Siege — Plus, Get Exclusive First Look At February Return

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Friday's "Sheriff Country" fall finale.

"Sheriff Country" is under fire — how will Mickey and Boone survive the attack? Per TVLine's exclusive first look at the midseason premiere, our two Edgewater cops are relying on each other to get through the violent strike... and they look pretty cozy doing it! (How can something so tragic look so steamy?!)

In Friday's fall finale of the freshman CBS drama, the Barlows, a local separatist group, laid siege to the sheriff's office. The conflict started with a familial dispute between a Barlow man and his wife concerning the custody of their child. Mickey and Boone helped the father pursue an emergency protective order against others in the group. But Enoch Barlow, the group's patriarch, was not happy about it and confronted Mickey at her office. 

CBS

The episode ended with shots firing into the sheriff's office. As Mickey took cover under a desk, she received a call from Cassidy, who was hiding elsewhere in the building: Travis had been shot. 

Keep scrolling to find out what "Sheriff Country" showrunner Matt Lopez has to say about the dramatic siege, Boone and Mickey's romantic lives, Cassidy's forthcoming search for her sister, and more of what's to come when the show returns on Friday, Feb. 27.

TVLINE | The episode ends with a huge attack. Right before the gunfire begins, Travis tells Mickey that he loves her, and she doesn't say it back. When she finds out that he's been shot, what's going through her head?
MATT LOPEZ | They start the episode going to bed together. So they're both wrestling with, "Oh my God, am I falling in love with my ex-spouse?" And there's something deeply romantic about that. They grew up together, and when you grow up with someone, you have a child with them at a young age, you can fall in and out of love, but there's such a bedrock of affection and admiration. You never fall fully out of love.

TVLINE | So will this tragedy clarify Mickey's feelings for Travis? Will it help her express her feelings?
The assault on the Edgewater County Sheriff's Office is the kind of experience that I think is instantly emotionally clarifying where all the other stuff, the flotsam and jetsam of our lives, kind of falls away, and you become laser focused on the things that are deeply important, including who we love. There will be clarity for Mickey and Travis moving forward.

TVLINE | Will she make a concrete choice, whether that's going all in with him or cutting him off completely?
He says to her in Episode 9, "Just let me know." In the next episode, she will let him know.

TVLINE | Similarly, Boone professes his love to Nora, but she doesn't hear his whole spiel because the power goes out. I know how hard it is for these manly men to share their feelings. I'm worried he's going to take it all back since she didn't hear it the first time. How will their relationship be affected by this tragedy?
It's unclear — when did the phone cut out? It's really poignant. He has some terrific moments in the [midseason premiere] where he has to wrestle with some of his own unanswered emotional questions. Like you say, he's a cop from Oakland. He does not wear his emotions on his sleeve. He'll have to come to a reckoning. And for Nora as well: Does she want to be married to a cop again? That is a very specific thing, and the people who are spouses and significant others of police officers, it's a real trial that they go through.

TVLINE | Earlier in the season, I was kind of 'shipping Boone and Mickey. A situation like this siege can really bond people. Is there any possibility that they might walk away from this with a newfound affection?
That's a great question. I think what you're starting to see by Episode 9 is that the conflict they had in their relationship back in the early episodes — Boone had to investigate Sky, then you find out Boone is married — it's like one obstacle or another is thrown in their path and prevents them from being together. What you see now is a return to the relationship they used to have before the show really started back when they were partners. You see that banter, you see that big sister/little brother dynamic. Cops will tell you there's an intimacy to your relationship with your partner that, in many ways, surpasses that of your spouse. It doesn't mean it's necessarily physical, but it's very formative. We are leaving the door open to that. 

TVLINE | I love that: They're giving Benson and Stabler from "Law & Order: SVU." There's so much love already between them, whether it turns out to be romantic is kind of unimportant.
Yes, it feels like the low hanging fruit is to have them race into a romantic thing together. And the idea of telling a male-female relationship just as a partnership, friendship, a relationship of mutual admiration and respect and affection, audiences seem to be really responding to it.

TVLINE | The fall finale also delivered more backstory on Cassidy, and I'm suddenly very invested. Will the siege affect her forthcoming search for her sister, who went missing on her way to a party many years ago?
The siege will dominate the next episode in this very exciting way. The second half of the fall finale is almost a real-time episode. It's like an hour long. You're just with them while this thing is happening, and then there are ripple effects. There's an aftermath, emotional and otherwise, but almost immediately, we pick up the Cassidy story, and if [Episode 9] is our action movie, the story of Cassidy and what happened to her sister is our great mystery whodunit. She will realize that what has always been believed about what happened that night is not the entire story, and it'll send her down a rabbit hole, and Mickey and Boone will come on board with her journey.

TVLINE | I'm really hoping she can get some closure.
When you research these cases of people who go missing, you hear a lot of versions of the same thing, which is there's this weird mixture of a sliver of hope, but no closure. We love the idea that it's this character of Hank, who I think audiences are going to love down the stretch, who's her rival and he's kind of a ball buster, but he gives her some tough love and gets through to her in a way that maybe even Mickey couldn't.

TVLINE | What role does Enoch Barlow play in this siege? I wonder if he's going to make an about-face, and come to the sheriff's rescue.
You're onto something with Barlow. On the one hand, he's very formidable. He's quite scary, and he gets quite scary in the next episode, but we have a rule on this show that there are no cardboard cutout villains. Their means might be extremely different, but there's a real symmetry and parallel nature to Mickey and Barlow. They both are acting in the best interests of their community, as they deem it to be. Their primary concern is protecting their family.

TVLINE | Will there be any casualties from this siege? Anybody that we've come to know and love?
Without assigning names, or specific outcomes, the ripple effects of the siege will last. The siege will leave a deep mark on our heroes, that they'll be wrestling with for some time and will also bond them in a way. The season started where Mickey's relationships, the family that she had put together at the sheriff's office, those bonds were fraying. If they can survive this night of their lives, they'll emerge stronger than ever, but it will not be easy.

What was your reaction to the devastating siege in the "Sheriff Country" fall finale? And how will Mickey and Boone forge ahead — professionally and personally? Grade the episode in the poll below, then sound off in the comments!