Sullivan's Crossing Watch-Along Club is BACK with Steamy and Sentimental Season 3 Premiere
Did the heat crank as high as the flames from Season 2? Weekly recaps are back with all the thoughts crossing my mind after the Season 3 premiere episode
Welcome Back Sullivan’s Crossers!!
(Is that what we’re calling ourselves? Maybe we need to take a vote on our community name in the comments.)
If this is our first time meeting at the Crossing, hey! I’m Liz! I cover Canadian pop culture full-time. We hang out every Saturday on my interview podcast LATE NIGHT SCROLLING (which you can subscribe to by subscribing to this Substack!)
This is your only spoiler warning for Season 3 Episode 1 of Sullivan’s Crossing, and a subject matter warning for the sensitive topics and themes depicted in the show including pregnancy loss
Season 3 is finally here, with all the tears and kisses and eye-rolls from Sully that we’ve been deprived of for the past year. I’m so happy to be back writing these weekly post-episode debriefs, although this week’s is anything but brief.
As a Nova Scotian zillenial who grew up with Chad Michael Murray posters on her wall, this episode was truly made for me. Who needs Freaky Friday 2 when we have Freaky Cal in the Crossing? Well, actually, me — I need Freaky Friday 2 like now. And Freaky Cal in the Crossing? Not exactly the vibe… yet!! The season is young!! And if this season’s trailer is to be believed, we have potential for Freaky Cal to emerge —
Which leads us to our most important update from the season premiere:
FINALLY! More Kissing than Crying in the Crossing!!
Finally! Cal and Maggie kissing without a restaurant on fire behind them!!
My biggest hope and gripe with this show has been the lack of Chad Michael Murray kissing.
Listen: you sell me a romance show with one of the biggest heartthrobs of the 2000’s, and he is so down bad for emotionally unavailable 2020’s Anne of Green Gables herself Maggie, and yet we have been stuck crawling through the desert of yearning for TWO SEASONS??
Don’t get me wrong — I love a slow burn! I love yearning! It makes sense for these characters! But Murray is one of the few television stars who knows how to sell a kiss. How many times must we suffer through okay-chemistry that extinguishes the second we’re reminded these two actors are being paid to kiss? CONSTANTLY.
But not Mr. Murray. No no no. If there was an Emmy for kissing, he would have at least 3 to his name. Maybe the trophy would be named after him. At the very minimum, he’s inducted into the Hall of Kissing on Television right beside Jake Johnson.
All of this to say, about damn time. We deserve the payoff of Cal and Maggie being happy for at least 12 seconds straight. It’s the minimum we deserve for all the heartache they go through. Let them kiss in peace!!!
But while we’re talking about actors being paid to kiss…
Let’s talk about Rafe and Sydney’s firetruck hookup gone wrong. Ugh. I am so sad I didn’t eat this up. Straight from the flames of the 9-1-1 universe, Sydney strolls up to Rafe on the job with NSFW intentions, and is almost immediately shut down by the new fire chief showing up a week early to work.
Maybe it was the length of the scene being too short, or maybe it’s because I’m still rolling my eyes at Season 2’s will-they-won’t-they torturous plot line. I wanted to buy their chemistry so bad, but I love the idea of it more than I actually enjoyed watching this scene play out. Which sucks, because this premise is SO funny and enjoyable! Lindura is acting her ass off!
Rafe, I’m speaking directly to your fictional self now: you’re the problem, IT’S YOU. You are too distracted for how high you’re punching up. Sydney is a supermodel from New York. You live in a village town in Nova Scotia. She is showing up to your work with flames for only YOU to extinguish. She is stripping as much as Canadian television standards will let her in front of your fire truck! And you’re going to turn down her sexy lasagna dinner?? Loser behaviour.
I don’t think Rafe is distracted, I think he’s taking Syd for granted. We saw last season with Frank and Edna how to handle situations like this, so Rafe better get himself to Frank’s garden for some wisdom on how to handle this.
I’m no neurosurgeon, but I’m prescribing Rafe a binge watch of Bucky and Eddie yearning TikTok edits to get his head on straight, before he fumbles Sydney for good.
Second to kissing: Sully is alive!
Maybe I should have led with this one, since it’s the answer to the big cliffhanger from the Season 2 finale. But the posters and promo for this season, and the behind-the-scenes sneak peeks shared on social media from the cast and crew… did anyone really go into this season thinking Sully was dead?
We knew Scott Patterson wasn’t going anywhere. He’s one of the big sells of the show, they can’t just kill him off that easily. But if that was the hook that ensured Season 3 got green lit, I can forgive the fuss.
We spent most of this episode establishing new conflict in Sully’s storyline, now that most of his previous storylines are tied up with bows. And we got it in the form of one plot I love, and one I’m skeptical of.
I was thrilled to see the Cranebears become part owners in the Crossing at the end of Season 2. It was the perfect progression for Edna’s I’m-second-to-Sully conflict, and set up this new tug-of-war with Sully about pushing the Crossing into the 21st century.
Edna is stepping into her girlboss era — out from behind the register and stepping into the roll of holding the Crossing together. But let’s be real, now she’s just being paid for what she’s literally always done. Bringing in an actual POS system for checking in guests? Absolutely needed. Adding rain wear to the store inventory? An obvious choice. Getting a personal statement from Sully for the website? Okay marketing queen!
I’m going to need Frank and Sully to back off of our girl — she’s not going overboard, she’s doing the work that they should have done years ago. I swear if they make this perfectly reasonable business baddie the villain for simply upgrading the Crossing to modern day standards… smh. Edna, get behind me. I’ll defend you until the end, AKA whatever dramatic ending we’re in for this season.
Even when we’re kissing, we’re still crying
What electrolytes is Morgan Kohan drinking to keep up with all the crying she’s doing on this show? In the notes I took while watching I literally wrote the following:
It’s nice to see Maggie not crying for a change
Oh spoke too soon she’s crying in Cal’s bathroom
Canadian Screen Award for best crying goes to Morgan
Poor Maggie can’t catch a break. That said, the writers knew what they were doing here (phew). This episode struck the delicate balance of occupying the necessary screen time to make Maggie’s miscarriage grief believable, with some of Kohan’s best acting (and crying) on the show to date.
In this grief we also see the start of a potential wedge between Cal and Maggie — will she be able to finally open up to him and work through this new grief without pushing him out? We’ve seen Maggie open up to Cal in the moments where romance is seemingly off the table — like when Sedona and Andrew come to the Crossing in Season 2, Cal and Maggie have moments of sharing their inner worlds with each other to deal with the visits. But now they’re left to their own devices, unpacking poetry books and interior decorating their respective houses. In the silence and solitude of this seemingly peaceful moment, can they actually emotionally invest in each other the way we have all screamed at our screens for them to for two seasons?
This is where the writers really deserve their flowers. We have so much proof-in-the-pudding that these two can figure it out because we are so in tune to their inner worlds and pasts. Like Cal’s flashback scenes in the hospital with his wife immediately jumped to mind when we saw him comfort Maggie in the hospital after her miscarriage. We knew how Cal would respond and show up for Maggie in that moment because we’ve been led here so masterfully. And in the small moments, like sitting on the front steps, the sidelong looks while Maggie plants the tree — it could have felt cringey if we didn’t have so much reason to believe this steadiness is what Cal has always offered to Maggie. It works. Now keep it working, writers, and let them kiss and be happy!!!
A hot new bombshell enters the villa Crossing
This writer is here to write… the next chapter in Sully’s love life, that is.
For the amount of time we spent developing this new plot line in this episode, we don’t actually know a lot about this woman. I can’t actually remember her name and she spelt it while checking in. We know she’s a writer and likes coffee… *looks at self* okay, maybe the writers clocked the show demographic a little bit here. It is giving Gilmore Girls, especially with her 5-6 cups of coffee a day mandate giving Lorelai at Luke’s flashbacks.
There’s something about the portrayal of this character that’s giving Moira Rose. The glam from-the-city energy, the word enunciation, the glasses. We’ll see if she makes a wig wall in Cabin 8 or decides to direct a Crossing Cabaret.
(Speaking of Schitt’s Creek — did the new fire chief look familiar to you? That’s Nova Scotia’s very own Steve Lund, who played Stevie and David’s mutual hook-up interest Jake.)
I’m not sold on a Sully having a love B-plot this season. Maybe like his daughter, it’s time for him to make a choice for his own happiness. I hope we see this parallel develop, and I hope to be convinced it’s worth the screen time!
I’d rather the love B-plot screen time go to sorting out Rafe and Sydney, and Rob and Jane. We’ve been sowing the seeds of those relationships for so long, and it’s time we see them flush out beyond the C and D plots they have become.
Enter the season villain: Corporate Canada
Yeah, I get it. The Crossing needed an existential threat that will inevitably rally the community together, and a luxury resort knocking down trees does the trick for the writer’s room.
I mean, it is certainly a huge deal for the preservation of the land, the financial security of the Crossing, and probably for that golf course across the way. But did it make for a punchy ending to the season premiere? I’m not sure it did. My reaction was more like — yeah, that makes sense for this season’s big bad, I guess.
But hey, this show knows how to surprise me even when I predict where plots will go. And even if this cliffhanger didn’t woo me, I’ll say it again, and I can’t be more clear: Cal and Maggie kissed without a disaster immediately occurring. And that’s enough for me to stamp my approval on this season opener.
What did you think of this season opener?! We didn’t even get into the fact that my girl Lola was NO WHERE TO BE FOUND in this season opener. Amalia, Canadian queen of televison, come back to us!! The Crossing needs you and your perfect wardrobe and beach waves!!!
I want to hear all the thoughts crossing your mind in the comments. I’ll be back next week, hopefully to talk about a renewed faith in Rafe and Sydney’s relationship.