'Fire Country,' 'Sheriff Country' Bosses Break Down the Crossover Episode

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.