Series / The Republic of Sarah

"In us we trust."

— Greylock's national motto

The Republic of Sarah is a 2021 drama series on The CW, starring Stella Baker and Luke Mitchell.

When coltan is discovered beneath the small New Hampshire town of Greylock, Lydon Industries quickly swoops in, seeking to get their hands on the rare mineral, even if they have to tear the town apart to do it. Hoping to stop them, local schoolteacher Sarah Cooper discovers that Greylock is not technically part of the United States, and therefore leads a movement to declare Greylock its own separate country. This puts her at odds with Lydon, the federal government, and her estranged brother Danny, who left Greylock years ago and now works for Lydon.

The series was canceled after one season.

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This series contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Sarah and Danny's mother, an alcoholic, would abuse Danny when they were growing up, and it got so bad that Danny eventually left Greylock entirely to get away from her. To her credit, though, she clearly regrets this and is willing to publicly air her dirty laundry so that Lydon can't use it against Sarah.
• Alcoholic Parent: Sarah and Danny's mother is a massive alcoholic whose drinking was covered up for years because of she was a state senator. Later she joins AA and goes off to rehab after years of Sarah urging her to.
• Alternate History: Greylock is a New Hampshire town that never existed in OTL, with Greylock being a lost English place-name from West Yorkshire, England in OTL.
• Amoral Attorney: Lydon's chief attorney, Marilyn Hill, began proceedings to get Lydon eminent domain in Greylock before the company was entirely sure that there was anything to mine there. She also has no compunctions about trying to blackmail Sarah into abandoning her bid for independence.
• Antagonistic Governor: Governor Gail Taggert of New Hampshire, who throws every legal obstacle she can at Greylock to punish Sarah for pushing the independence vote and thereby costing the state access to the lucrative coltan deposits.
• Apathetic Student: Hilariously subverted with Bella, Tyler, and Maya, who all become early and very enthusiastic supporters of Greylock's independence movement. Much to Sarah's consternation, they actually did pay attention to her history lessons, and thus are able to back up their arguments with historical precedents.
• Artistic License: In "In Us We Trust", Sarah balks at sending her mother Ellen to a new-age treatment center, because she doesn't believe that the treatment will be science-based, and instead wants her mom to go to a more traditional AA treatment center. Alcoholics Anonymous is notorious for having almost no science backing it up.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Coopers, oh so much. Sarah and Danny's father Paul left the family while the children were young, leading to their mother Ellen being an abusive alcoholic. She mostly took her frustrations out on Danny, leading him to be stricken with PTSD due to the abuse. Sarah is the most well-adjusted out of her family except due to her upbringing, her excessive need to help others burdens her familial relationships, friendships, and romantic life.
• Bittersweet Ending: Since the series was Cut Short, this is what the season-turned-series finale ends up being, though it is more sweet than bitter. On one hand, Paul ends up turning himself in to the State Department against Sarah and Danny's wishes, where he will be tried and prosecuted for his whistleblower activites. Additionally, Corinne and Sarah's friendship isn't mended after it was revealed that Sarah lied to Corinne about her son's parentage. On the other hand, the rest of the cast fares much better. With Paul turning himself in, Greylock is now cleared for official recognition by the United States. Bella gets to stay in Greylock as Sarah's intern and gets to be with Tyler. Grover is starting to accept Patience's death and move forward. Sarah was able to help AJ keep her father in the facility that he's currently in, keeping away the predatory medical company trying to purchase it. Ellen is able to stay sober and starts writing a memoir about her struggles. Corinne is able to keep Josh in Greylock, and Danny decides to stay in Greylock to be with his son and it's clear he and Corinne still have feelings for each other and will restart their romance. Maya is on her way to reconciling with her mother and is starting to love living in Greylock and being with her father. And lastly, it looks like Sarah and Grover's Will They or Won't They? relationship turns into a "They Will" after the final scene of the series shows them in bed, after sleeping with each other.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Sarah, who put others before her needs constantly, is hard on herself for mistakes she's made, and she's somewhat of a Control Freak who thinks she knows the best for everyone.
• Closet Gay: Alexis Whitmore, the wife of the former Mayor, is carrying on an affair with Officer AJ Johnson, who's also closeted initially. Progressively more people, by various methods, learn about them over time.
• Coming-Out Story: AJ comes out to Grover after two people already realized she's a lesbian.
• Daddy DNA Test: Corinne gets a paternity test done for Josh, her son, as she's unsure whether Danny or Adam is his father. Sarah tells Corinne that Adam is the father, but this turns out to be a lie; Danny was the father, but Sarah lied in the hopes that Corinne would end her relationship with Danny.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Bella Whitmore, the daughter of Greylock's former Mayor, is dating Tyler Easterbrook, a lower-class Native boy who also happens to be heavily involved in Greylock's independence movement. Naturally, the elder Whitmore does not approve of Tyler.
• Deal with the Devil: Despite the fact that Lydon's mining plans were what led to Greylock declaring independence, Sarah ultimately strikes a deal allowing them limited mining rights in exchange for funds to keep the newfound nation afloat.
• Derailing Love Interests: Adam has every right to be angry with Corinne after she cheats on him with Danny, but it's hard to defend his actions later as he tells Corinne to stop hanging out with Sarah, as well as filing for divorce in the middle of their reconciliation, trying to take sole custody of Josh, and smearing Corinne as a bad mother during a deposition.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Sarah and Danny's dad disappeared years ago. He reappears in "Sanctuary", revealing that he left the family because he felt unfit to be a father.
  • Danny himself is suspected to be this for Josh by Josh's mother Corinne. A DNA test was done and Sarah tells Corinne that Adam is the father of Josh, but she later admits that she lied, and that Danny is the father.
  • Luis was this to Maya, though through no fault of his own. He tried to find her after learning about Maya for years, though it wasn't possible.
• Election Day Episode: In "A Show of Hands", Greylock hosts elections for a new four-member legislature to help Sarah run things without inadvertently becoming a dictator.
• "Eureka!" Moment: In "From Simple Sources", Weston manages to piece together a few minor clues to realize that Paul is the whistleblower he's been researching.
• Everyone Has Standards: For all of Danny's jerkish tendencies, he refuses to go along with Marilyn's blackmail scheme on the grounds that it's both cheating and hurtful to Sarah. So he informs their mother about it so that she can publicly expose her secrets on her own terms, thereby undermining the blackmail.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Adam overhears Corinne and Danny discussing having sex during the blizzard, due to him hiding in the kitchen closet at just the right moment. The reason he was hiding was to Jump Scare the group coming in for boozy brunch, in a darkly ironic Call-Back to how the group jump scared him at the beginning of that episode (in the same location no less).
• Fictional Currency: Greylock eventually develops its own money, dubbed Greylock Dollars, to stabilize their economy in light of now needing to compensate for foreign transfer fees. They feature pictures of local historical figures and landmarks.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: After Greylock gets a windfall from Lydon's first excavation from the coltan, the town and council is split on using the money for personal stimulus or to help with the town's infrastructure. AJ personally wants stimulus in order to help deal with medical bills for her father staying in a health facility after a predatory medical company wants to buy it and raise costs and begs Sarah to vote for stimulus. Sarah ends up using the money for the town, but she helps out AJ in the finale by signing a treaty with New Hampshire to help stop predatory medical companies.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Bella realizes AJ's been having an affair with Alexis, her stepmother, after AJ knows something about a locket that was kept private between them, and it simultaneously reveals they're queer.
• The Ghost: Patience, Grover's late wife, is repeatedly mentioned by remains entirely unseen until "Two Imposters", when Grover gifts Tyler with Patience's old camcorder, and Tyler decides to repay him by giving him a digitized copy of all of the home movies that Patience shot, which finally gives us a glimpse of Patience as she looked during her lifetime.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion:
  • Danny believes that he got Corinne pregnant years ago before walking out on her, and that she declined to get an abortion because she believed he would come back. In reality, she told herself that Adam was the father, and thus chose to marry him.
  • Averted with Alexis, who gets an abortion without telling her husband about the pregnancy, until AJ unwittingly torpedoes the situation.
• Heroic BSoD: Sarah has a mini-BSOD episode after she inadvertently reveals in front of the whole town that she lied about the paternity results to Corinne.
• Hidden Depths: On the surface, Maya looks like a teenage delinquent, but she happens to be a prodigy at civics and history, and also has some talent for cooking.
• Hypocrite: Grover clearly thinks Sarah is one after she leads Greylock to become independent over their public lands being seized under eminent domain, but takes his house later because of this too. In both cases, it's even given to the same company which wants to mine the area. Sarah knows it, but they need the revenue to survive.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In the pilot, we learn that Alexis is having an affair with AJ, but other characters take some time to.
  • Sarah learns Corinne suspects Danny may be her son's father only in 1x9, long after the audience did.
• Is This Thing Still On?: Played out dramatically, as Sarah confesses to Corinne that she lied to her about Adam being Josh's father, on a hot mic that the entire town heard, right after Sarah was done making a public presentation on how to use the surplus money.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: After a citizen taunts Sarah as the "Supreme Leader and Guiding Sun Beam" - a reference to Kim Jong-Il - Sarah objects... because the title was "Guiding Sun Ray".
• Jerkass: Danny has nothing but contempt for Greylock, and has no compunctions about selling out his hometown and helping his employers go to war against his sister.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Paul left his family behind without notice, which is terrible but when Ellen blames him for everything that happened afterward, Paul points out she still has no excuse for abusing Danny.
• Jump Scare: Sarah and her friends play a game with each other called "Fraidy Cat" where they try to pull this off on one another. When Corinne's husband tries to pull this off on the others, he inadvertently overhears Corinne and Danny talking about when they had sex during the blizzard.
• Land of One City: Greylock becomes this after becoming independent from the US, as it's just a small town (previously in New Hampshire).
• Laser-Guided Karma: Thanks to Gov. Taggert deciding to play dirty and shutting down the border with Greylock, Danny finds himself stuck in the same town he'd intended to see wiped off the map.
• Left Hanging: There's a couple threads in the finale that will never be resolved due to the show being canceled. Namely Sarah and Corinne's friendship being on the rocks after Sarah's big lie, the sticky co-parenting situation between Corinne, Danny, and Adam, and just where Sarah and Grover's relationship will go now that they hooked up and confirmed their feelings for one another.
• Lingerie Scene:
  • Alexis and AJ are both seen while in their bras after having sex. Both are quite attractive.
  • Sarah and Corinne strip to their underwear before having sex with men. Both are also beautiful.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Alexis Whitmore is a very elegant feminine woman who always wears skirts and has long hair (she might be bisexual, as she's married to a man), who's seeing AJ (herself more chapstick, as her style is a bit less femme, though hardly butch either).
• Loophole Abuse: The basis for the independence bid — when the British and Americans finalized the US-Canada border, it was decided that all the land north of a certain river would go to Canada while everything south of the river would be part of New Hampshire. However, no mention was made of the land in the middle of the river, where Greylock now exists, meaning it was technically never officially part of either country.
• Lost Lenore: Grover's main hang-up in his relationship with Sarah is the fact that his first wife Patience died less than two years ago and he's still grieving.
• Love Triangle: Danny/Corinne/Adam forms one triangle, with AJ/Alexis/William forms the other. Technically Sarah/Grover/Patience counts as Sarah and Grover are clearly into each other, but Patience's death less than two years before the series's events keeps them apart as Grover is still grieving.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • Alexis vandalizes her mailbox to make up a reason for filing a police report, then has sex with AJ (a cop) in her office.
  • Corinne and Danny hook up while stuck inside the town hall.
  • It appears that Bella and Tyler end up having their first time on the floor.
• Missing Mom: Bella's birth mother abandoned her when she was little.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Corinne wraps the bedcovers around her torso after she had slept with Danny.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Grover's main arc is his struggle to move on from the death of his wife, a process which is made harder after his house is seized by eminent domain and sold in order to fund the new republic of Greylock.
• The Needs of the Many:
  • Gov. Taggert's excuse for trying to sell Greylock over to Lydon is that the money that would have come out of the sale could be spent on the rest of New Hampshire. Of course, given that her hardball policies over Greylock's borders will also have an adverse effect on the towns nearby, Sarah questions whether or not Taggert really cares about her citizens.
  • In order to get the lights back on in her new Republic, Sarah sells the land containing Grover's home. While she loves Grover and knows how much the house means to him, she can see no other way to get the money needed to pay for Greylock's needed power source.
  • In "From Simple Sources", in order to prevent a flood from burying all of Greylock, Paul arranges for the floodwaters to be diverted to the Glenn, resulting in the loss of one of Greylock's oldest districts. They end up on the other end of this logic when they discover that Canada is letting their dam fail and flood Greylock in order prevent a flood in Quebec.
  • In "Two Imposters", Greylock discovers that they've got a windfall coming because the price of coltan has gone up since they started mining it, and thus they have to decide how to spend it. AJ and Tyler (serving as a proxy for Maya while she's away) want to offer up stimulus checks, which AJ personally needs, because her dad's facility is about to raise its prices. On the other hand, Liz and Danny want to invest the money into building a new hospital and a new high school, as the previous high school and hospital were heavily damaged in the flood. Sarah ends up taking a third option, building the new hospital and the new high school into a single building, then using the leftover money for diplomatic efforts.
• No Antagonist: The U.S. Government is depicted more as a rival and possible Worthy Opponent to the fledgling nation of Greylock than a Big Bad. Most of the conflict comes from political issues or relationship issues, or in some cases, LGBT issues, rather than a Big Bad causing the tension. Governor Gail Taggert is more of a Jerkass than a true Big Bad.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: In "The Criminals It Deserves", Sarah is threatened with a walkout by the town clerks unless she finds a way to make the Lydon workers behave. The clerks also try to bully her into deporting Maya Jimenez after she runs afoul of Sarah's executive order.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy:
  • Maya was conceived by a "one-time thing" her mother and father had.
  • Josh was conceived the night before Danny left Greylock, when he and Corinne had unprotected sex. Shortly after, Corinne met Adam and did this again, so when she found out that she was pregnant a month later, she convinced herself and everyone else that Adam knocked her up. Sarah claimed a DNA test confirmed that Adam is the father, but she turns out to be lying, as she did not want Danny to have a reason to reconcile with Corinne.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Bella's pursuit of Maya's approval played a role in her becoming involved in Greylock's independence, and the two are almost as close to each other as Bella is to her boyfriend Tyler.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Maya gets a seat in the legislature by building a coalition among the seniors, the goths, the band kids, and everyone else who feels left out from Greylock's rising government.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • In order to get funding from Lydon to maintain the newly independent Greylock's infrastructure, Sarah has to allow them to build a mine on the land containing Grover's home. She's clearly pained by the decision but ultimately goes through with it for the sake of the town.
  • Sarah is faced with another one in the finale: To help get Greylock official recognition from the United States, she must turn in her father Paul to the authorities. Sarah decides to not do it, but Paul takes the option away from her and turns himself in to help Sarah and Greylock.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: As soon as the vote ends with a win for independence, the mayor quits on the spot and walks away out of disgust.
• Secretly Gay Activity: Alexis uses filing a (fake) police report for a chance to hook up with AJ (a cop) in her office. She then fills in as the police station receptionist to facilitate this.
• Secret Relationship: Alexis and AJ are in one, due to the former being married, while AJ's afraid of people's (apparently homophobic) reactions if it was discovered.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: In "From Simple Sources", while Sarah and her friends are planning how to steal some of Lydon's backhoes to help alleviate the flooding with trenches, most of the group falls into a discussion about which slasher villain is from which franchise.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: All of the sex scenes are dealt with this way, as a couple will be shown undressing and otherwise intimate, then the scene will change to show them afterward.
• Shipper on Deck: Corinne has been trying to get Sarah and Grover to admit their feelings for each other for years. She also tries to set up AJ with another lesbian in the hopes that AJ will break up with Alexis before their affair is exposed.
• Shoulders-Up Nudity: Alexis and AJ are shot like this after having sex offscreen.
• Spoiled Sweet: Despite coming from one of the most affluent families in Greylock, Bella is very sweet and approachable.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Since planning to remove the federal government's control of an area is illegal, Sarah ends up arrested by the FBI after winning the independence vote. Fortunately, Greylock's unique situation provides enough of a legal loophole for her to get acquitted (it helps that her mother, who defended her, is a skilled attorney).
  • As Greylock is now a foreign territory, and on poor terms with its newfound national neighbors, soon armed checkpoints are established at the border to stop people from crossing until proper diplomatic ties can be established.
  • Another side effect of Greylock now being its own country is that anyone with banking and credit card accounts based in the US has to pay foreign transfer fees for virtually any transaction.
  • Alexis and AJ having sex in the latter's office nearly gets them caught by a delivery man.
  • Corinne's blow-up at Liz Fernsby during the election debates comes back to bite her in the ass when Adam walks out on her and cites the incident as an example of her impulse-control issues; combined with her affair with Danny, she ends up looking like an unfit mother.
• Teen Pregnancy: It's mentioned that Corinne had her son Josh as a teenager. She thinks his father is Danny, though only Danny and Corinne are aware of this at first. Corinne gets a DNA test and Sarah tells her that Adam, her husband, actually fathered him, though this turns out to be a lie; Danny is the father.
• Their First Time: Bella and Tyler arrange to have their first time together, but at first it doesn't work out as a result of the pressure. However, later they have sex - multiple times, in fact.
• Token Minority:
  • Grover is a Black man.
  • Tyler is Native American.
• Token Minority Couple: AJ, who's Black, and Alexis (played by a Latina) are having an affair at the beginning (plus being a same-gender couple).
• Transparent Closet: AJ is very paranoid about getting outed, and tries not to show public affection toward her lover Alexis. Corinne however sees right through it, and asks her point-blank how long they've been having sex.
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • AJ (Amy) Johnson is a Black woman, along with being a closeted lesbian.
  • Maya is Latina. Her father Luis is both Latino and gay.
  • Alexis is played by a Latina and is a closeted lesbian or bi woman.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • Sarah and Grover are clearly into each other, but Grover is still mourning his wife who passed away prior to the events of the series. They decide to stay Just Friends, but each of them find that to be very difficult. The sexual tension is resolved in the season-turned-series finale when they sleep together.
  • Corinne and Danny; Corinne is married and Danny is engaged but they still carry a torch for each other since their teenage days. They end up actually having sex and reconnecting, and Danny breaks up with his fiancee due to still being in love with Corinne. But Corinne is still married and thinks that Danny isn't the father of her son.
• Waving Signs Around: After the New Hampshire government puts up roadblocks to cut Greylock off from outside supplies, the town's residents protest with signs beside the new border.
• Who's Your Daddy?: Due to having had sex with both of them in close proximity Corinne has been uncertain for years whether Adam or Danny is her son's father. It turns out Danny is.
• Wild Card: This is supposedly Maya's niche in the new legislature, as she has no official loyalties to any of the other factions in the emerging government of Greylock.