Special to The Lede
In such a serene setting as SULLIVAN’S CROSSING, a sure way to cause consternation among the locals is to utter the dreaded “P” word.
Progress.
As Season 3 of SULLIVAN’S CROSSING begins – Sunday, April 27 at 7 p.m. ET on CTV, CTV.ca, and the CTV app – a development threat quickly emerges. Obviously any big changes in the beautiful and blissful Nova Scotia waterfront community could directly impact the lives of Maggie (Morgan Kohan), Cal (played by Chad Michael Murray), Sully (Scott Patterson), Frank (Tom Jackson), and Edna (Andrea Menard).
But evaluating the positives of progress versus the negatives is complicated, and Murray found a funny way to relate to it.
“I think that as we get older, we like to appreciate what has been, and I know that I’m becoming far more traditional every day,” Murray said. “Because you’re used to life a certain way. It can be something as simple as, there didn’t used to be a stoplight here in this neighbourhood. Now, I gotta stop every time. So now my doughnut shop is an extra two minutes away, and I’m gonna be late. They only serve hot doughnuts till 10:59 a.m., and then they’re gone, right?”
He continued, “so that being said, I think there is an element of that – not the doughnut part, although there should be – in SULLIVAN’S CROSSING this year. They want to protect the traditional aspects of what that land means, and what that land is. Can progress be great? Yes, it can be. But it’s hard on the people who are already here.”
As far as Cal and Maggie’s personal progress is concerned, they’re probably in the best place they’ve ever been as a couple at the start of Season 3. It’s still technically a new romance, so there surely will be ups and downs, but at least they’ve admitted their full feelings to each other.
“We’re starting from a very different place this year, and a different place in their relationship,” Kohan said. “I think a lot of what we kind of look at this year is, now that Maggie and Cal have made a commitment to each other, what does that life look like? What does that entail? What are the new challenges that come up with that?”
At which point Murray interjected, “and, FOR ONCE, can we see Maggie happy?”
Kohan chuckled, and added, “I can tell you that this season, we do get some beautiful moments of lightness, and we get to see that different side of Maggie and Cal together, too. We’ve earned it at this point, I think!”
They certainly have. But individual struggles remain. For example, Maggie has given up her professional life as a surgeon, but will she start to miss it?
“Yeah, that’s definitely something Maggie deals with throughout Season 3,” Kohan said. “Now that she has made this decision, we get to see what the reality of that actually looks like for her. She went from having a busy, busy, fast-paced life to wanting to slow down, and wanting to really have community and strong people around her. But what is the real day-to-day of that? What does the minute-to-minute look like for her?”
And for Cal, who for now has given up his career as a lawyer for what he perceives to be a more simple existence, he’ll be forced to confront his childhood in a way that fans of SULLIVAN’S CROSSING have never seen before.
“It’s absolutely fascinating, and it’s such a lesson, but a lot of people will skip that lesson,” Murray said. “You think you know what you want, or at least you’re pretty sure, and then you get it, and you realize it’s not what you wanted in the first place, or at least it didn’t shape out to be the way that you thought it would be.”
Murray pointed to recent developments in his own life.
“I’m kind of living a little bit of that right now, in that my wife and kids, we moved back to Buffalo – still in L.A., but we’re also now in Buffalo, which is where I grew up,” he explained. “I left 26 years ago to chase dreams and do all these things, because they weren’t attainable in Buffalo. But coming back home, all of a sudden, it’s the simplicities of, hey, dad’s right down the street, and my kids get to see him all the time. My brother just had a baby on Monday. And these guys I graduated high school with, my buddies, they’re coming over and hanging out. It’s so interesting, you go and you go one way, and all of a sudden, here you are, you’re back home, and I just never, never expected these things.”
Reconsidering, reconfirming, and re-experiencing what’s important is exactly what SULLIVAN’S CROSSING is all about.
“And it just gets better and better, man, it really does,” Murray promised. “Like, they elevated all aspects of the show, location, sets, everything. And a lot of our new cast members who are going to come in throughout the season, and make their characters grow, they’re great. Every aspect of this season is just better.”
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