Warning! Spoilers ahead for Sullivan's Cross season 3, episode 3.

The first two seasons of the novels by Robyn Carr, author of Virgin River, but each book follows a different character, while the TV show focuses primarily on Maggie, Sully, and Maggie’s love interest, Cal Jones.

Cal moved to Sullivan’s Crossing to escape the pain of losing his wife, but his childhood was difficult as well. Cal and his siblings were raised by a father diagnosed with schizophrenia who chose not to medicate. In the present, Cal has almost no relationship with his father, but after learning his father has cancer in Sullivan’s Crossing season 3, episode 2, Cal and Maggie go to visit his parents, Jed and Marissa. The reunion proves to be difficult for both father and son, who see the past very differently.

Cal's Father's Schizophrenia Has Finally Taken Center Stage In Sullivan's Crossing Season 3

Cal & Maggie Travel To Cal’s Hometown After His Father’s Cancer Diagnosis

Cal’s relationship with his parents is becoming a major component of Sullivan’s Crossing season 3. Cal and his siblings grew up aware of Jed’s diagnosis and his decision not to take antipsychotic medications [although they were not aware of his reasoning], which contributed to their off-the-grid lifestyle, including a period during Cal’s teenage years when they lived in a converted school bus. A flashback in season 3, episode 2 shows Jed pushing a preteen Cal past his physical limits, paranoid about a threat he believed Cal needed to be strong enough to face.

While Maggie knows some vague details of Cal’s childhood, Jed’s schizophrenia is finally taking center stage in Sullivan’s Crossing. The flashback in episode 2 is just a taste of how increasingly important both of Cal’s parents will be in his present, with Cal and Maggie heading home to meet them both in episode 3. Cal helped Maggie heal in her hometown. Now it may be Maggie’s turn to help Cal heal his relationship with his father in his childhood home.

Jed & Marissa Had No Good Choices When Cal & His Siblings Were Growing Up

Jed Could Be Present But Erratic, Or Medicated But A Zombie

In one of Chad Michael Murray’s best roles, Cal is harboring deep resentment against both of his parents, and learning that Jed is on antipsychotics now seems to make Cal even more angry. Cal carries a heavy bitterness that his parents never tried to understand his perspective, but at the same time, Cal does not consider that his father had no good choices at the time. Earlier versions of the antipsychotics Jed had to take decades ago mellowed out the extremes, but turned him into a zombie.

New episodes of Sullivan's Crossing drop in the U.S. on CW and CWTV.com on Thursdays.

He was not erratic anymore, but he wasn’t present for his children, either. Jed (and to a lesser extent, Marissa) chose the lesser of two evils for Jed and the family. Jed wanted to be an active, involved father, not a shell of himself. When things were good, life could be great, but Jed and Cal have fundamentally very different interpretations of how happy the family was. Cal resents that his father is in such a stable place now, but with the advancement in health science, the new wave of medicines have fewer side effects.

Sullivan's Crossing Season 3, Episode 3 Was Sympathetic To Both Cal & Jed, A Rarity On TV

Jed Is On Meds Now With Little Time Left To Repair His Relationship With His Children

Sullivan’s Crossing tackles the difficult theme of mental health in an unusually nuanced way. Season 3, episode 3 delivers a rare dual portrait of comion, casting both Cal and his father Jed in a sympathetic light without excusing past pain. Their fraught dynamic is explored through Cal’s raw, honest conversations with both his mother and Jed. The emotional complexity is striking, as in different ways everyone is right and wrong, but no one is communicating properly.

It’s not made explicitly clear why Marissa threatened to leave Jed recently unless he started taking his meds, but it could be tied to his cancer diagnosis and a desire to improve every aspect of his health. His terminal prognosis doesn’t rewrite history, but it forces a reckoning, as Cal might begin to reframe the past if he could see Jed’s suffering more clearly. Sullivan’s Crossing tackles mental health with a rare nuance, showing how healing is possible—but never simple—especially when time is running out.

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